In New York, pregnancy is a form of tyranny
11 April 2009
Alexandra Starr discovers that in Manhattan expecting a baby is all about you and your performance, rather than the child: doctors and websites give the mother-to-be no quarter
Even Sylvia Plath (though usually pretty downbeat about life) viewed pregnancy as an exalted state. In her diary she characterised gestation as ‘the Great Experience a [woman’s] body is formed to partake of, to nourish’, while in her poem ‘Morning Song’ she celebrated feeling ‘cow heavy and floral’. Bringing children into the world clearly fulfilled a profound need for Plath. But I suspect that even she would have felt differently about the joys of maternity had she experienced it not in London in the early 1960s, but in Manhattan circa 2009.
Trust me, I know what I’m talking about. My husband and I spent most of last year in London, all the while ignoring our parents’ insinuations that we should attempt to produce British-born children. There were benefits to remaining a two-person household. We had evenings at the theatre followed by long dinners and trips to places as far flung as India and Egypt. Now that I’m stateside, a few months removed from first-time motherhood, however, I wonder if succumbing to familial pressure might not have been such a bad idea. It would have allowed me to escape the tyranny of a New York pregnancy.
In a city obsessed with self-improvement and status, becoming big with child is not a mellow experience. New Yorkers may appear to be concerned about your baby, but in fact it’s all about you, not your child. How you eat during pregnancy is seen as a reflection of your character and social standing.
Pregnancy in Manhattan combines crunchy-granola wholesomeness — go organic, absolutely no drinking (to say nothing of lighting up a cigarette), cut out the caffeine — with an urban prejudice against growing anything bigger than the ‘Perfect Bump’ (as the title of a New York magazine article describing the city’s epidemic of skinny pregnancies put it). Before conceiving, I had known that you were supposed to stay away from sushi and decline all but the occasional glass of wine. But I was surprised, if not stunned, by the list of ‘prohibited items’ that fill US pregnancy websites. Here’s a partial list: deli meats, raw sprouts, smoked salmon, soft cheeses, alcohol, coffee, even camomile tea.
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cityboozer
April 8th, 2009 3:07pm Report this commentActually the advice to avoid "deli meats" generally refers to cured meats like salami and prosciutto, which can carry toxoplasmosis.
David Short
April 8th, 2009 4:10pm Report this commentMore Polly Filla in the formerly serious Speccie!
Expecting Lady
April 8th, 2009 11:02pm Report this commentIs this the sex and the city version of Manhattan pregnancy? As someone who is expecting and lives in nyc, I have to say I have not encountered any of this. Granted, I'm using more common sense than by-the-book guidelines. Like anywhere else, there are cultural bias' when it comes to pregnancy, and the US really tops them all with the no caffeine, alcohol, sushi, deli meat, etc. restrictions. It's not an NYC/Manhattan thing, it's nationwide.
Sally
April 8th, 2009 11:10pm Report this commentAnd this is news to who? I live in NYC and YES it is TRUE! That is why we are called neurotic new yorkers.
eb
April 9th, 2009 1:13am Report this commentHah! Try working at Conde Nast while pregnant. Torture. A woman in the elevator told me, "geez, you're kind of big for seven months." So much for my brownie...
ladykatie
April 9th, 2009 5:16pm Report this commentThis is lovely, thank you! People are ridiculous.
Bree
April 9th, 2009 6:21pm Report this commentActually, the deli meat and soft cheese ban is because they can have harbor the bacteria that causes listeria, which can cause miscarriage. I don't understand why pregnant women aren't informed of what the exact risk of eating these things are. They are just added to a list with no explanation, so women don't have the opportunity to understand why they should be avoided.
Jen DC
April 9th, 2009 6:39pm Report this commentYou live in NYC. Tell anyone giving you the stink eye about your breakfast/lunch meats/coffee/wine that unless they want to wear said breakfast/lunch meat/coffee/wine that they should pay more attention to themselves and their plate/glass/bottle and less to you and your growing belly.
And change OBs. She sounds like a harridan, and one who's not empathetic either, which is going to be necessary in the delivery room. What is she going to say to you then? "Oh, you shouldn't be in enough pain to need the epidural."
David Short
April 10th, 2009 2:00am Report this commentHow can 'Pregnancy' be a 'Form of Tyranny'?
A pregnant woman in New York City perhaps feels hard done by, but she (and certainly not her state) is not the initiator of her supposed hardship.
Who writes the silly headlines in the Spectator these days?
Not Even Likely
April 13th, 2009 9:18pm Report this commentBe thankful you don't live at a time when the latest conventional wisdom said that painkilling drugs during childbirth and delivery were harmful to the baby, and you were a selfish weakling if you wanted them, and childbirth wasn't "real" pain anyway, unless you were a neurotic, self-centered hypocondriac. There wouldn't have been any pain if you had jogged through your pregnancy, like you were supposed to! That baby is at university now, and I obviously still resent it. By the time her sister came along several years later, conventional wisdom grudgingly permitted pain relief at the time of the birth. The prohibitions against smoking and alcohol, though, get more and more absolute with each passing year, and look to be headed to the lawbooks.
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