It began with a subtle tightening in my throat.
The middle-aged man in the grocery store queue placed his hand on my midsection with reverence, large palm and splayed fingers spanning the swell of my abdomen. “Do you plan to breastfeed? Breastfed children have IQs that are as much as eight points higher. My wife breastfed our twins, tandem. It’s the most natural thing, you know.”
It was the dry, recirculated air. It was always so damn dry in the supermarket. Swiping a sweaty bottle of Evian water from the little fridge beside the cash register, I downed half the cool liquid in a single swallow. But the sensation persisted.
The tightening increased during a visit with my friend Genevieve.
“Are you still having sex?” She’d asked as she tugged at the roomy waistband of her pre-pregnancy jeans. The jeans hung too low on her diminished frame: old skin, ready to be shed and expose the new, improved Genevieve underneath. Determined not to become one of those mothers, she’d been putting in two hours a day on her Peloton bike since popping out The Kid three months prior. “Ted and I had sex right up until a few hours before delivery. If you don’t keep them happy, they’ll just go find it elsewhere. Honestly, who can blame them. They put up with all our mood swings. And you know, just because you can’t screw for six weeks after, doesn’t mean you can’t still satisfy him. You wouldn’t believe how many divorces coincide with the arrival of a new baby.”
It was acid reflux. I’d heard that reflux was common in pregnancy. I popped one of the chalky little pastel antacids from the roll I’d stashed in the change pocket of my purse for just such an occasion. But the sensation persisted.
The tightening intensified during our big gender reveal dinner with my in-laws.
“You’ll of course circumcise the baby.” My mother in-law had said, while dishing me up a hearty portion of something white and nebulous, with flecks of pink that might have been crab salad. “We circumcised Ethan so his would look like his dad’s. The uncircumcised ones look a bit… Well, I just think it could be confusing to a little boy to have different-looking parts.”
It was an allergy: I had developed a sudden and intense allergy to shellfish. My face felt numb. Like the time I’d mistaken a tube of Lidocaine for my overpriced BB cream. I raced to the medicine cabinet and frantically downed a few cloying-sweet tablespoons of grape-flavoured Benadryl. But the sensation persisted.
The tightening worsened as my husband watched the anesthesiologist prepare the epidural.
He’d been researching the safety profile for epidurals and had fallen down some dank neo-naturalist rabbit hole. He’d even started insisting the baby forgo diapers altogether and we hold him over a toilet to do his business right from birth—because that’s what people in cultures that don’t have access to diapers do. As if given a choice they wouldn’t trade being covered in piss for a pack of pampers.
“The Militant Naturalist says epidurals prolong labour. It can put the mother and baby at risk. I’m not saying you shouldn’t, just that maybe it’s not too late to at least consider a natural birth.”
It was low blood pressure. The doctor explained that blood pressure often dropped during an epidural. He administered IV fluids to increase my blood pressure. But the sensation persisted.
The tightening became unbearable as the nurse placed the squalling, beet-faced bundle in my arms.
The nurse inspected the poor latch with a critical eye. “It’s hospital policy to hold out on giving formula for as long as possible.” Instead of suctioning to my nipple like he was supposed to, the baby chewed and gummed it, turning tender flesh into bloody hamburger. “Just keep trying, he’ll eventually get the hang of nursing.”
The walls of the room contracted, along with the walls of my throat.
As I lay prostrate a faint echo reached through the cotton batting web of my insensibility.
“So, what you’re telling me is that her womb has migrated through her body and is now in her throat?”
“Indeed. It’s called the suffocation of the mother, a fairly common feature of hysteria.”
“Is there something we can do? There must be some sort of medical treatment for this kind of thing?”
“Unfortunately, there aren’t really any effective medical treatments for the condition. Not to worry though, hysteria is mostly benign, a nuisance—it’s only very occasionally fatal. I suggest she walk more and try regular masturbation.”
“But can’t you just remove the uterus?”
“I’m sorry, we simply don’t do removals on women under 30 unless they’ve had at least two children. I’m afraid she’ll just have to learn to live with it.”
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