Chances are,
many of you have probably seen, and read, Anna Jesus’s opinion piece, “Pregnant in Medical School” in that mecca of print journalism,
the Sunday New York Times. I may have exclaimed just a little bit over my granola on Sunday morning – she has what I have! <jaw agape>.
And then I read it. And then <cog slowly turning> I had some rambling,
non-sense, it’s the middle of the two week wait, people! thoughts.
On one hand:
thank goodness we’re talking about vaginas. VAGINA, VAGINA, VAGINA.[1]
I mean it. When was the last time you saw “transvaginal ultrasound” in a major
print publication and it wasn’t connected to one of[2]
these
dolts?
I’d be lying if I said career wasn’t something I’m trying (desperately) to
balance amidst all of this uncertainty. And who doesn’t appreciate a professional woman
candid enough to concede her worries about showing up to work smelling of her
own vomit?
On the other
hand: <hoisting myself up on the ole soapbox> While I know she wasn’t
aiming for a thorough social commentary on the matter and so any critique is wildly unfair, her analysis of
infertility and her ultimately successful conception and pregnancy seem
reductionist and incomplete. Her proposed remedy – which seems to boil down to
“put your career on hold and rely on your gainfully-employed partner to support
you” – is narrowly tailored to a group of (mostly) highly educated, middle
class women[3]
and profoundly out of reach for so many others. Yes, she acknowledges that she
was lucky, fortunate to have the support of her spouse, and she seems to at
least fleetingly concede that “[e]very woman is different” but still, I was
left a little wanting.
But…<falls
off soapbox into crowd of angry, clawing women> also grateful for any
intelligent discussion of not-as-easy-as-it-sounds-conception in the mass media
and thankful that another hole has been poked in the shroud of isolation that
is infertility. (It’s just that, you know, I’m greedy, so I want to, like, have
my infertility cake[4]
and eat it, too.)
But enough about
me. (If you have suffered along with me continued reading this far) what did you guys think? (Besides that I am kind of a smug jerk). What
would you have told your younger, more free-wheeling-maybe-not-yet-ready-to-be-a-mama
selves?
[1] You know, to the tune of marsha, marsha, marsha. Because. Obviously.
[2] But seriously, remember when this guy was on the Real World?
[3] Yours truly. Ahem.
[4] Whatever you do, do not drop everything
and Google image search “infertility cake.” After not doing that, you will not
be flabbergasted – and terribly bemused – to find that oh my god my blood orange upside down cake is one of a shocking number of cakes that appear.
