What a performance

On other people's pregnancies and the roles we're required to play

Photo by Ahmad Odeh on Unsplash

Just act natural. Smile! After all, it’s a pregnancy announcement. It’s supposed to be good news. Not too much though, you don’t want it to look fake.

That’s it, now try to relax your jaw. Try not to remind people that this might be difficult for you.

Oh good. Another one. What’s the right number of heart emojis for a WhatsApp chat that’s just sprouted another ultrasound photo? Did you leave it too long to reply? Or did you, in fact, reply too quickly, so that everybody must know that as soon as you put your phone down, you sat and stared at a wall for seven dead-eyed minutes.   

Don’t stop smiling. Keep smiling through the conversations about gender and due dates and the need to book nursery places before the third trimester has begun. Make sure you don’t project your anxiety on to other people. Best not to answer honestly about how your child was three months old before you bought a cot. Keep it to yourself that your local NCT was full up by the time your dared book it.

Whatever you do, don’t mention that time you were pregnant, but didn’t bring home a baby. Don’t make it weird. No one wants that.

Speaking of weird, is it awkward if you don’t hold their baby? Or is it more awkward if you *do* hold the baby?

What is the precise right way to cuddle a baby to convey that you think this baby – which is not your baby – is wonderful, but in a reassuringly normal way. How can this cuddle convince everybody that you’re Actually Fine and not a lunatic who might burst into tears and/or steal this baby (which is not your baby)?

Just checking: are you still smiling?

I think I thought other people’s pregnancies and babies would get easier, once I had my son.

But, actually, I still find myself acting my socks off, sometimes.

There’s a lot of performance required of us during the reproductive years in general. We pretend we don’t want babies until the last possible minute; especially at work. Then we pretend we’re not trying, or we pretend we’re not pregnant for the first months. We perform gratitude and play down anxiety and physical discomfort. And then, when we’re officially cast in the role of mother, we’re encouraged to pick a method for our craft: all-the-drugs-sleep-training-and-Gina-Ford or EBF-baby-led-spiritual-midwifery.

For the most part, these are skits and characters I’ve tried on and left behind now. But other people’s pregnancies can still feel like walking a tightrope. And something about this point in the calendar makes the performance feel even more forced. Sequins, jazzhands, plus a Santa hat on top.

There are lots of reasons that Christmas and the simultaneous looking back on the year while gearing up for a brand-new one can be difficult if you’re grieving, and/or if you want a baby, but don’t have one. (Reasons that we’ll discuss in more depth in next week’s thread for paying subscribers).

For now, suffice to say, along with the recurring seasonal motifs and soundtracks that so easily collapse time and space, transporting us straight back to a previous pregnancy, a previous loss, a previous – more in tact – version of ourselves, this does also seem to be boom-time for pregnancy announcements. Tis, I guess, the season.

Unfortunately, at precisely the moment that a more studied performance is required – the more effort it takes – the less energy I have for it. It’s not only pregnancy stuff. It’s any kind of artifice. As the year and the daylight dwindles, I feel less inclined, or able, to perform anything, whether that’s the confident, professional writer, the organised mum, the ‘fun’ mum, the shiny woman at the party...

At this time of year, I feel like there’s less of a protective barrier between myself and the world than normal. It all feels quite raw; emotions running too close to the surface. I’m too tired. Every muscle feels tense; shaking with the effort of holding it just so.

It’s all a bit…wobbly.

I wish I had an elegant solution to offer at this point, for anyone else who might be walking this tightrope, but I don’t. Though perhaps by attempting to write this down, it helps simply to see that there is effort here; work that you’re doing all the time. In other words, there’s a reason you might be tired – on top of the normal reasons we all tend to be energetically overdrawn at this time of year.

The most uncomfortable part, I think, is that when it comes to fertility and grief, relationships and spaces that previously were a safe harbour can be transformed into something more effortful. It’s hard when you find yourself having to perform for people who previously you could just be with. Again, I have no easy answer for this.

All I can offer is that we try to notice it as it’s happening, accept it for what it is, and give ourselves some other space and time to just be. Whatever that looks like for you. Close the curtain, take it all off, unmask. Take a bow: you’re done.