The Final Frontier

Francesca Woodman: House #3, Providence, Rhode Island, 1976

Otherwise known as the Third Trimester. We have begun birthing classes, we have had baby showers, we are in the middle of a move. Ladies and gentleman, the future is nigh upon us.

Many refer to pregnancy and early motherhood as a time when a woman's body becomes hijacked. And while I no longer remember what it feels like not to be pregnant, I do feel more like a snake shedding her skin. I am the skin. And the baby is the snake. Not in an evil, biblical way, just that my body is less about me and more about what's growing inside. I feel superfluous, somewhat useless these days, compared to all the metamorphosis happening in there. As she grows, I feel the who-that-I-am shrinking. Not unlike an Alice in Wonderland.

And to what extent do I disappear? That is the hardest part to imagine of what comes next: the absolute change of my identity; the compulsory initiation into the tribe known as Parents; the loss of self as I know it. And too, I am fulfilling the biological imperative of what it means to be a woman. There are parts of a woman's body that simply lie dormant until she is pregnant. Another way of looking at is that you are never fully developed as a woman until you are pregnant and, among other things, have filled up your mammary glands. That is not supposed to be a cultural acceptance, but judging from the way in which I am now treated and embraced as a pregnant woman – as a woman who has finally achieved her biological destiny – one begins to wonder.

It is surprising then, for such a rite of passage, there are not more rituals or sacraments involved save a registering at the local big-box store for gifts. These exist for birth, of course, to mark the entrance of a child into the world and out of the uterus, but not for the woman whose body has been altered more significantly than any other time in her life. I guess from that point forward, it it gets hard to distinguish where the woman stops, the mother starts, and the child begins.

The Dream

Kathy Ruttenberg
Overgrown

They say pregnant ladies have particularly vibrant dreams. And, it seems, I seem to remember a good many of them. I finally had my first baby dream, however. The dream started with a newborn infant whom I nursed, but whom gradually began to appear overly mature. She was alert, active, and very much able to hold her head up. The baby got squirmier and squirmier, until she was crawling–this, only within a matter of days. She also got tinier and tinier, until she could crawl on my hand, up my shoulder, and onto the wall. The baby, we soon realized was half gecko.

The half gecko baby was neither a surprise. Her hybridness in the dream, seems to have been a metaphor for my real baby's sperm donorness. I had chosen a gecko to co-create my baby–for reasons still not clear to me–but I had not imagined the possibility of her wildness. And wild she was, flitting away from me, nursing then clambering up walls, in search of whatever it is that beckons the gecko. When I awoke, the first thing I thought was what have I done? Who, exactly, had I chosen to be the second half of her gene pool and what affect would this have on her? How not in control I felt! Would she be domesticatable or would she, too, be wild to this otherness inside her?

500 Noses Are More Beautiful Than One

Iggy Pop, 1971

OK, upon a closer reading from Ina May Gaskin's, Guide to Childbirth, I have come to the conclusion that it is natural childbirth that is punk as fuck. In fact women in childbirth look a lot like Iggy Pop circa 1971 minus the spandex. Or maybe it's really vice versa. In any case, it doesn't take too many birth stories to make one realize there is no way in hell to actually prepare for this and all the screaming, pissing, shitting, tearing, vomiting, biting, and raw animalness trumps any antics the Pistols could have come up with.

So, as my belly swells and stretches, as my internal organs get more and more pressed upon, and, as the feeling of a child squirming, kicking and punching from within becomes fairly regular, I am aware of the fact that I am pregnant 110% of the time. And judging from the way I look, everyone else is now to.    The nice thing about 10 months of pregnancy is that you get to ease into it. And though, there are startling changes around each bend, it does begin to feel like a holy sacrament. Breeder politics aside, I welcome this little bit of religion into my life.

Yoko Ono said some lovely things like the title of this blog post. It is not entirely a bad idea to randomly open her book, Grapefruit: A book of Instructions and Drawings, and read a passage. It pairs well with the rawness of all these birth stories I am consuming.

Today:

Painting to Exist Only When It's Copied or Photographed

Let People copy or photograph your paintings.
Destroy the originals.

I would say, this could apply to many other things besides paintings.

Rineke Dijkstra is a Dutch photographer who takes mainly portraits against clean, simple backgrounds. Here she photographs women just after they have given birth.