Why People Go Mad: Part One
I wrote this a while ago and then developed a superstitious fear of publishing it until various things had been confirmed, so here it is now. It contains discussion of pregnancy loss and complications so if you don’t fancy that then please feel free to skip it.
Before you get pregnant, you probably have an idea of how it might be, and you have a sense that there will be two distinct states of being. It turns you into a thought experiment, both one thing and another, and obviously you know the signifiers – being sick in a waste basket at work, being suddenly reminded of how long it’s been since you’ve had a period; the camera zooms in on your wide eyes while you count the days and count again. If you’re actively trying, then there is an eldritch vocabulary attached to it that you very quickly learn.
You know about the usual symptoms, and if you don’t, it’s easy to find out. You’re faintly aware of seeing things from time to time about how human foetuses are unique in the mammalian world for the strain they put on your body. You might have seen a post about how if a pregnant person doesn’t get enough calcium the baby starts to ingest their bones and organs, but then again you’ve also seen a post confidently claiming that most of Swarovski’s money comes not from crystal sales but from arms deals, and that doesn’t appear to be true either. The question is: how much body horror can you tolerate? For me, it’s minimal.
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