Pregnancy is not a disease.
This phrase has been circulating in our culture for at least 40 years. I first heard it when I was 6 years old, from a group of women in my apartment building as they talked about a neighbor—eight months pregnant—who was helping her husband run a fruit and vegetable shop. I heard it again on many other occasions—while my three cousins were expecting their babies (in the ’90s), and then during my residency (it was the early 2000s, and my chief resident at the time man (he expected my pregnant coworkers to still work night shifts at the psychiatric hospital), then during my pregnancy (while I was filling in for general practitioners during the summer in 43-degree heat, seven months pregnant, fulfilling my duty as a “healthy” woman who shouldn’t make a big deal out of it), and then after my perinatal bereavement (Your pregnancy was “It’s physiological—you’re NOT sick; something unpredictable must have happened…” Finally, this phrase has echoed in my ears during dozens and dozens of training courses I’ve led for midwives and psychologists. Every time, there’s always some highly experienced “insider” among the professionals who snorts in exasperation because I draw attention to all the (numerous) times when, alas, this phrase simply doesn’t apply. Because it doesn’t ring true to him. In fact, in their experience, such cases are “extremely rare.” And off they go, trying to convince me that they’re right and that I’m overreacting. Let’s assume that’s true.
Pregnancy is not a disease. (let’s pretend that this is a law set in stone, indisputable as such: now you can lower the aforementioned eyebrows)
This sentence has its own internal logic (in itself, managing a child is not a pathological process ).
This phrase is part of a certain aspect of Italian popular culture: we find it scattered far and wide, in healthcare facilities and town squares, on Facebook under photos of famous women who are “expecting,” or during the chatter that accompanies an aperitif with friends (who, of course, are gossiping about friends who aren’t there—and who may be pregnant).
I believe that most of the women who are expecting a baby every year in Italy hear this phrase from one or more people, as a nice motivational mantra.
As if we were all stupid, and we needed positive reinforcement not to ask for a nine-month-long TSO (oh the beauty of spending nine months in the clinic! You are right, I say, to remind us that pregnancy is not a disease, because the temptation to get to a hospital bed, I must admit she is hormone addicted and some weeks very strong, do you want to give the advantage of eating mashed potatoes and semolina every day?).
Pregnancy is not eeeeeeee a diseaseaaaaa (this time we pronounce this statement in the “smile of pity” version: poor thing, if you feel so bad in the first trimester how are you going to do with the nights? Or, if you prefer, there is also the “scolding look” version like: my grandmother worked in the fields until giving birth and yet she had 4, and you are in bed for ” two ” contractions?).
SPOILER:
In many, still too many cases, pregnancy, even if it started out as “physiological”, is associated with more or less transient, more or less serious physical or psychological disorders.
So a complete sentence, to be pronounced, if we really can’t keep quiet, the first pregnant woman we meet for reasons of queue at the post office – friendship – profession could be: pregnancy is not a disease, but since it is a time of many psychic changes and physical, could be associated with complications, which can still be taken care of.
When we talk about pregnancy and maternity we should be able to think of all possible scenarios, all maternity and all pregnancies, not just those that are most convenient for us (those whose most important problem is the filling of the cake for the baby shower for meaning: chocolate or custard?)
If we want to talk about maternity and pregnancies, we must take into account a fair share of the population that is currently neglected. Neglected and uncomfortable.
Because it is true, pregnancy is NOT a disease, as it is pregnancy (as menopause is NOT a disease, as it is menopause).
The physiological conditions related to the life cycle are NOT pathologies. Not even death is a pathology, for that matter. Nevertheless.
Yet, in our adult minds, we continue to use ” scacciaguai phrases ” to keep us away from risky situations.
The reality is that with this phrase (combined with the specific facial expression mentioned above), our brain draws a clear line between what it can think and accept without distress, and what is unthinkable to it—and as such must be exorcised, kept at a distance, and denied with all possible force. Even at the cost of denying the evidence.
This process has an MA though.
A very big, and bulky MA. An MA that tries to keep under the carpet of public and private attention, because it is uncomfortable, as only taboos can be.
An MA that hopefully always and only concerns others. At a safe distance from our bellies, from our professional offices, from our friends.
This Alzheimer’s affects 1 in 6 pregnant women, physically .
It also affects 1 in 6 women after childbirth, from a mental point of view.
It concerns about 1 in 6 women (it could be less, but even more, the statistics are not very precise) who, for the whole pregnancy and for the whole puerperium, deal with symptoms of the anxious sphere (the latter particularly trivialized and ridiculed by work during visits).
Out of every 6 women who embark on a journey toward a planned pregnancy, therefore, 1 will lose her baby and enter the parallel realm of perinatal grief; another will feel as if she is losing herself, entering the parallel realm of postpartum depression; one will be labeled “too anxious” and will become entangled in the cycle of rumination and skyrocketing cortisol levels.
About half of all pregnant women are exposed to a tsunami— whether physical or emotional, more or less intense—that, for a significant period of time, will engulf them with emotions, thoughts, sensations, and behaviors that differ fromthe much-touted“physiology” with which we tend to cloak the complex and varied world of pregnancy and motherhood. As if not being “100% physiological” made mothers any less like mothers or children any less like children.
As if by stating that “Pregnancy is not a disease” at every turn, you were stating that if there is an illness / bereavement it is not really a pregnancy, you are not really a mother: so what is that experience? what are those 3 out of 6 women? What are we talking about, in that case?
Pregnancy and motherhood are all-encompassing and overwhelming experiences: institutions, professionals, and citizenship should put in place all strategies to protect all pregnant women, to preserve where possible all aspects of physiology (if find some, intact even in women with complicated pregnancies), but also to promptly identify all risk indicators, individual physical or psychological problems: pregnancy is not a disease but in three out of six women it is associated with difficulties often very important and significant.
A state that protects motherhood is not afraid to talk about perinatal bereavement, postpartum depression and maternal health.
A state that protects motherhood helps its citizens not to feed ancient and dangerous taboos, to support expectant mothers, to protect their physical and mental health.
An operator who protects motherhood trains his brain to think the unthinkable , and recognizes the difference between “welcoming” and “exorcising”.
Mourning mothers exist and can return to full life, even if they are lame at heart .
Mothers with postpartum depression exist and can return to full life beyond the dark .
To go back to living fully they also need a culture of motherhood that is respectful of all motherhood, of people, of stories.
To go back to living fully they need to forget the grim and derisive faces of those who told them, in unsuspecting times: Pregnancy is not a disease !.
