Last year when I was in Denver for work, I got an unexpected message from a friend’s friend saying that she and her family had actually moved here from New York, and that she’d like to catch up if possible. Unfortunately at that time, all my evenings were packed with pre-booked work events, so I wasn’t able to get away. It was a bit unexpected, to be frank, that she reached out. While I’d never really considered her a friend while in New York, I did see her from time to time at mutual friends’ events, and we did get along. We’d tried hanging out once before with our partners, but we never did much more than that. So when she reached out, I figured she was having a difficult time transitioning from urban to suburban life, coupled with transitioning into motherhood (her daughter is about six months younger than Kaia). She probably wanted to see a familiar face.
So this time ahead of this trip, I reached out to see if she could meet. We did have a decent amount in common on paper: we both love food, desserts, travel, and now we’re both mothers, so we’d have that to bond over. She immediately accepted and we made plans for dinner, which ended up happening last night. I was really touched; she actually drove almost an hour to see me (Denver traffic can be crazy during rush hour), and we spent three hours discussing marriage, motherhood, work, travel, moving, and life in general. I honestly couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen her, but it felt really good to have a deep chat… and to get away from colleagues for a night.
Sometimes, I think about all the trials and tribulations that women have to go through just to procreate, and I cannot believe that women still want to bear children. This friend had three miscarriages: two happened before her daughter was conceived; the third happened last year, before her current pregnancy. Miscarriages are more common than they are not, but her first one was particularly traumatic. At around 11 weeks of pregnancy, she started bleeding profusely. She drove herself to the hospital, where they confirmed she had miscarried. She was given the option of having a dilation and curettage (D&C) to remove the dead fetal tissue from her uterus, or letting it expel itself naturally. Her father, who is a doctor, advised her against the D&C, and suggested she just go home and let it happen naturally. Well, it just got worse from there: the next two days, everything she sat or lied on was soaked with pools of blood, and she basically laid on her bathroom floor most of that time, experiencing painful contractions for almost 48 hours. These are one of those scary miscarriage stories that no one warns you about, that for some women when they have miscarriages, regardless of whether it’s first trimester or not, they can actually go into labor.
The thought is just beyond sad and excruciating — to go through labor without seeing a living, breathing baby at the end. I think of all the women who have had stillbirths, where they know their fetus is dead, but they still have to go through the labor and “give birth” to a dead baby. The mere thought brings me to tears. And somehow, even after this horrible and painful experience, this friend kept trekking along to try to conceive. She went on to experience a second miscarriage, a viable pregnancy and birth and baby, and then a THIRD miscarriage, and finally a second viable pregnancy, and she’s still here and excited to be pregnant. It just shows how much burden women have to bear, literally on their own, and how resilient we all are. It takes a lot emotionally, mentally, physically, to go through all this stress and loss. It likely raises cortisol levels and puts you on the defensive for everything. In the end, we vacillate between surviving and thriving.
But it sounds like since she’s moved down to the southern suburbs of Denver, she’s been mostly in survival mode. She has no friends here. She works fully remotely. She has a sister and their family who live in a nearby suburb, but that’s it. She misses walking (people drive everywhere here, like in most of the U.S.) and going from store to store to restaurant by foot. She feels isolated and like she does 90 percent-plus of all the child rearing. When she saw me for dinner last night, it was the only time since they’d moved here that she’d actually gone out to dinner, alone without her daughter, to catch up with a friend. While she’s excited for her second baby, she’s terrified what it will mean for the division of labor at home, her marriage, and the effect it will have on her daughter, who is extremely attached to her and who has had an assortment of frustrating health issues since birth.
I hear these stories, and I realize even more how lucky I am. Although IVF was certainly no walk on the beach, I went through just one stimulation cycle. I’ve never had a physically painful miscarriage experience (though I do still mourn my “vanishing twin”). I had a straightforward pregnancy and child birth. I was lucky and privileged to have a healthy, easy-going baby in Kaia Pookie. Kaia Pookie, knock on wood, is still thriving and impressing (while simultaneously infuriating) Chris and me every single day with all she learns and knows. I’m also lucky to have a partner who has done his share and tries to make sure I’m not carrying all the burden of child rearing. At the same time, it makes me sad and angry that women who are as smart, accomplished, well educated, and confident like this friend still allow themselves to be put into situations where they have to bear the brunt of all stereotypical gender roles, such as child rearing and the mental load of maintaining a functional household – much against their own wishes. Are men really that ill equipped for the current century, or are women just so desperate to have heterosexual partners to procreate with that we “settle” in that regard?
