Thread by @simone__kern

The Alabama abortion ban still allows for abortion if the pregnancy “avoids a serious health risk” to the person. I’m sorry, these assholes think pregnancy of itself is not a SERIOUS HEALTH RISK?

Time to spill the gory details & quit lying about pregnancy & birth. Thread.

When you ask a pregnant person how they are, and they say, “Great! A little tired. Very excited.” They are FUCKING LYING. Bc it is not socially acceptable to rant honestly about how pregnancy is 40 weeks of TORTURE, because if we did, it might mean the end of the species.

And if you’re like me, and you had a fourth-degree tear with your birth that left you disabled for a year, and with permanent pain and pelvic floor disfunction, causing you to end your career, it’s generally not polite to corner people at parties with your tragic, gory details.

BUT millions of assholes are walking around thinking that forcing a person to carry a pregnancy to term is NBD and that pregnancy & birth aren’t “serious health risks,” so here we are. Time to cut the bullshit and get honest as fuck about the horror show of human gestation.

So if you’re pregnant, the next time someone asks you how you’re doing, fucking UNLOAD ON THEM like the fate of reproductive rights depends on it. Tell em what it’s like to live with a mix of constant nausea, bloating, constipation, reflux and heartburn ALL AT THE SAME TIME.

Talk about how you can’t get shit done at work, because you’re exhausted as hell, taking naps in your car, and your brain feels so fuzzy you forget your own telephone number sometimes because IDK, your body is busy producing 150% more blood than normal.

Tell them about how EVERY mucous membrane in your body gets swollen and won’t stop running, so that not only do you have a 40-week cold (which, of course, you are forbidden from taking any medicine to alleviate) you ALSO have to change out your panties twice a day.

Tell em about having a foot stuck up under your rib age for three months, or not being able to sleep bc someone is kicking you all night long FROM INSIDE YOUR BODY. Don’t make that shit sound cute. Is it cute when a toddler does it to your seat back on an airplane?!

Tell them about having your body policed. Not being “allowed” to use most things that make adult life semi-bearable—caffeine, sushi, fun kinds of exercise, ibuprofen, alcohol. You’re not even supposed to take HOT BATHS even though every muscle in your body will scream for it.

I was pregnant at the same time as this one lady at work who once told me, “I love being pregnant, because I love being careful about what I put in my body.” But she was deeply religious, & I’ll maintain till my dying day that she was brainwashed & in the preggo sunken place.

And those symptoms I’ve listed, that’s when everything goes RIGHT and the pregnancy is totally healthy! Let’s not forget hyperemesis, where you puke so much you have to be hydrated via IV, or gestational diabetes & others which can make you hospital-bound for months or KILL you

Maybe you’re thinking, well those are extremes, and yea pregnancy sounds uncomfortable, but if you’re healthy then it’s only 40 weeks and then it’s over, to which I say: FIRST OFF I was pregnant for 42 week, and second FUCK YOU BUCKLE UP bc it’s time to talk about birth.

If you have never been shot, had major surgery w/out anesthetic, or gone through labor, then you have no frame of reference for real pain. I’m talking about ego-death pain, where you forget everything, even your own name, & all that is left of you is the wanting the pain to stop.

There are so many horrifying ways for birth to go wrong. IT WAS THE #1 KILLER OF WOMEN FOR MOST OF HUMAN HISTORY. Modern medicine has made things slightly better, but maternal mortality rates are still shockingly high—and they’re far higher in anti-abortion southern states.

There were so many horrifying aspects of giving birth that no one told me UNTIL IT WAS HAPPENING TO ME. I had to be induced at 42 weeks. I still wanted to try to do it without an epidural. When I told the nurses, they laughed at me and rolled their eyes.

I’d bought into the weird flexing about drugless births. I made it through 16 hours of active labor on pitocin, yoga breathing & shit, but my cervix wouldn’t dilate, so they stuck a balloon up there—A FUCKING BALLOON, and blew it up. That was the 1st time I hit ego-death pain.

I got an epidural after that, that most blessed of all medical advancements, but guess what? An epidural only lasts for the birth. And if you have a “worst-case-scenario tear,” like I did, you’re going to be in pain a lot longer than that. Like, forever.

I knew tearing was a thing that happened, but NO ONE told me about “degrees.” My dr. said I had a 4th degree, & I had to google what that meant WHILE learning to nurse WHILE my dr. spent TWO FUCKING HOURS stitching me up. I asked “how many stitches?” She said “Idk, hundreds?”

That repair failed, so I had to have a second major surgery. I spent a year recovering basic functions of my body. I had to quit my job. I spent three months on Norco and developed a dependency on painkillers that was a bitch to shake (and still tugs at my brain).

I spent six months in physical therapy. I will always struggle with vaginismus & interstitial cystitis. When I tried to go back to work, another woman had been hired to my job for $20,000 less, and the only jobs I could get in that school district meant a $30,000 pay cut.

I will be bitter about this forever. I have PTSD forever from my birth & my second surgery (where a nurse mixup meant I was denied painkillers for 6 hours after). My pregnancy literally broke my body, fucked my brain, & ruined my career. But at least I CHOSE to have this baby.

If I’d been FORCED to go through all this? Against my will? I think my sanity would shatter. Honestly. I don’t think I would’ve ever recovered. And there are pregnancy and birth stories far worse than mine. Pregnancy KILLS people. It can kill you with no warning, horrifically.

SO IN CONCLUSION FUCKING OBVIOUSLY NO ONE SHOULD BE FORCED TO GO THROUGH THIS IF THEY DON’T 100% WANT TO. The UN considers forced birth to be a form of torture. YES. THAT IS ACCURATE. If you support forced birth, you are a cruel, bad person, full stop.

Now I’m gonna go crawl into a hole and die, because sharing all this with the internet is my nightmare. But I do think it might be helpful to stop being all tactful and bullshitty about the hellscape of human reproduction, so...
anyways, I may not respond to comments.

Maybe we need #shoutyourbirthtrauma as much as we need #shoutyourabortion