Today I am feeling: Headachey

This week I am reading...

Naomi Wolf's Misconceptions. I'm about 2/3 of the way through it, enjoyed the first section which was an extremely personal account of her experience of pregnancy. Ms. Wolf began questioning her own feminist principles and identity, particually in relation to her feelings towards abortion and also gender roles within relationships.

It is with this second point that I most related. The effects of the pregnancy hormones, not just physically but psychologically and emotionally, as women grow they beocome more depended upon their mate as a simple survival instinct, women find themselves becoming more clingy and dependent.

Personally I have been embarassed by much of my domestic behaviour of most of 2007, with the newborn in tow, I became what I never wanted to be... a frickin' housewife can you beleive! I had a friend staying early on in the year and she was in the kitchen with me as I was making my partner his sandwich for work the next day, he came in and made some comment along the lines of "needs more meat/pickel/jam/..." whatever it was. when he left my friend said "man, I would have thrown it at him and told him to make it himself" and all I could think was, 'thats exactly what I would have expected I would say/do.' I was so embarrased! I didn't tell her I was getting up at 5am to make him a Milo before work!

Another point I found very relivant was on the first page. 'I wish someone could have let me know I would lose my self in the process of becoming a mother - and that I would need to mourn that self.' This is something I still struggle with two years on. The rare opportunity that I get to take a walk just on my own feels like freedom, I miss the old me and often have those guilt inducing moments where I wonder if I have made all the right decisions.

The middle section has been a critique of the U.S. hospital system in relation to birthing mothers, not overly relivent here (and don't go getting me started on the U.S. healthcare system or maternaty provisions!) but still many points worth considering. I am hoping the last section will head back to the personal format of the first.

I would recomend this book to anyone who has ever felt a sense of guilt or regret at the extreme changes their lives have taken in becoming a parent, who has struggled, or is still struggling with their new identity. Anyone whose experience of pregnancy, birth and life afterwards is not all as beautiful and rosy as society can sometimes build our expectiations up to beleive it will be.