The first time a doctor told me that having a kid would alleviate the horrible, menstrual cycle-centered anguish that plagued me every month, I was fourteen years old.
I was also advised that conceiving would be difficult. Throughout the next two decades, health professionals would frequently provide me with some advice and cautions in response to my unremitting agony.
I was ignorant when I became pregnant. In countless ways, having a kid is a crash course in the unexpected, but at the top of my list was the assumption that pregnancy would provide me with a nine-month reprieve followed by the possibility of a treatment for the chronic pain I have endured for over two decades.
When I informed the many practitioners at the pain clinic I frequent that I was pregnant, the collective sigh of relief was palpable.
The many medications and strategies they had offered had failed to alleviate my agony over the course of a year, and I had witnessed them gradually lose patience and interest as the suffering persisted. The good news of my pregnancy allowed them to release me from their care.
I was initially unaware that I was pregnant. I continued to have severe premenstrual pain as my menstruation approached. But it never arrived, and two days beyond the expected date, a faint second line appeared on my pregnancy test. This was both good and bad news, as it verified my pregnancy but foretold that my new circumstances would not alleviate my anguish.
A few days later, I was wrapped in heat packs and suffering on the couch. It felt just like the onset of my cycle. The strange pain persisted, and a week later, morning sickness manifested itself. This moved my attention. Over the course of a few days, nausea intensified until I was afflicted with constant nausea and intolerance to virtually every odor. I was told that by the tenth or twelfth week, the pressure will begin to abate. I threw up in the car, on side streets, and at playgrounds. I was pregnant for 42 weeks, and I threw up every day for those 10 months.
Additionally, the pelvic pain worsened over time. It manifested as a continual agony and the sensation that my legs would be torn from the rest of my body. It seemed as though a hot knife was being dragged across my pelvis at night, scorching and cutting my organs.
The phrase “as long as the baby is healthy” became a mantra for me health professionals. This was uttered to the agonizing husk of a body that held the baby, a body so wracked with anguish that I needed crutches for the last two months of my pregnancy. I began to feel marginalized in my own body: neither I nor my health mattered.
I was overjoyed to be pregnant. The infant was much desired. I feel fortunate that I was able to conceive effortlessly despite being told it would be difficult. I feel fortunate that my child was born and delivered healthily. It is perplexing to experience such extreme illness throughout pregnancy. Pregnancy is portrayed as a beautiful moment and the most natural thing in the world.
Being difficult, hurtful, and depressing at times is alienating and isolating. In this respect, it resembles the chronic pain I’ve experienced for the majority of my life. Nobody likes to discuss something that must be endured but that nobody wants to discuss.
The reality is that pregnancy has not alleviated my chronic discomfort, despite my current adoration for my child.
I am fortunate to have waited until I was ready to have a child, but the promise of a cure was dangled before me 20 years ago. I was told that having a child is a valid treatment for persistently misunderstood pelvic pain disorders, which is a deadly falsehood.
I will likely return to pain clinics; to practitioners who have exhausted all treatment choices. This time, I will be facing chronic pain as a mother, which will add to my burden.
