|
recent posts
----------
Red In Tooth and Claw
The Tube and the Immature Brain
Mother's Day Distraction
Class Class Classy
Going Home Again
When You Become the Obstacle
Windows to the Soul
Lessons
Scattered Tidbits (In the News)
What Does Looking Back Get You?
|
 |
You've got questions, she's got answers. Be among the first to read Elise Mac Adam's new etiquette guide.
Pre-order from:
- Simon & Schuster
- Amazon
- Barnes & Noble
Smoking Mother
A woman I don't know is pregnant right now. She is a friend of a friend, so everything I know about her experience is complete hearsay. I have no sense of her actual feelings or reactions but I know she surely has them. The woman in question smokes.
According to my source (who told me about her friend for a reason) she has cut back considerably on her cigarette intake since discovering her happy condition, but has been unable to stop lighting up entirely.
The reason I heard about all of this is that a smoking pregnant woman creates sharp social circumstances. Because in New York one must smoke outside if one is not in one's own home, she is visible to all. Of course she is doing something ill advised, but people, strangers, treat her in astonishing ways.
Of course one shouldn't smoke when one is pregnant. Really, smoking at all isn't a good idea and there are very few people who watch television or have obtained a first grade reading level who could claim not to know this. It is not news. No one gets knocked up and continues smoking because she thinks it is a wise move.
But here is this woman, who surely knows the score, smoking outside her office, her pregnancy showing to the world. A few months ago, people would have passed her without even registering her existence. Now she is a wounded fish in open water.
So people are snide and nasty or lift their voices as they chat on cell phones, hoping she'll overhear their rage and disgust. And this woman surely feels lousy and guilty and angry and stuck because quitting smoking is no mean feat. What to these smug passers-by think they are accomplishing? Do they feel they are doing a public service, correcting this woman's dangerous behavior? Would it be a sin not to tell her about the harm she is doing and advise her about what a horrible mother she must be? What kind of help is that? Why are people so entitled?
I've said before that pregnancy is terribly lonely. Part of the strangeness came from the way in which I was me-but-not-me. I was Pregnant Elise and people could ask me questions they wouldn't dare pronounce otherwise, or call me "Fatso" (in jest, of course- ha, ha I'm still chuckling), and they could advise me. I was told what to eat and how to consume it. A relative told my husband that my eating habits and coffee consumption would damage my child. I got death ray glances when I ate sushi (my doctor was absolutely fine with it). Someone at a party was scandalized when I confessed that I went to trapeze school two days before I found out I was knocked up in the first place, saying she wouldn't have been surprised if that killed the baby right there (before it was really alive).
Finally someone sent me an article from the Guardian called "Lay Off My Pelvic Floor" that was quite comforting, and now I know what a "French Pregnancy" is.
There is a sense that hangs like a cloud over pregnant women that they are not really themselves but belong to some collective group that should live with a special purity, following increasingly complicated policies that will ensure the health of their children. To violate or ignore these rules sets puts one on the outside, makes you wicked in the eyes of the world.
Pregnancy really is just the start. It's an important part, but still, I have known perfectly cosseted babies born to perfectly pure mothers who have been damaged quite remarkably. All of this clean living doesn't make people any more kind or generous, qualities one would think would be rather appealing in parents.
At any rate, if I find myself ambling past this woman or someone like her, I won't be saying anything.
posted by Elise at 2:56 AM
........................................................
said...
Dear Elise, I liked this post. And I agree with it. The most irksome thing is that none of those people and their self-righteous comments will change the woman's behavior. I don't know why people cannot seethe quietly inside, but then again, I am from the South, where confronting someone dorectly is rude. The truth is, the baby will probably be fine. Just 30 years ago, woment were encouraged to smoke to kep their weight down. Sad but true. It is awful that woment cannot be left alone to manage their own bodies, their own pregnancies. Becasue once the baby comes, there isn't a lot of help or sympathy.
5/22/2006 6:34 AM
........................................................
<< Home
........................................................
|
said...