Friday Thoughts: On Pregnancy

Recently met a friend who is 8 months pregnant and she told me how she had to climb up 4 floors to write her BA semester exams.  Earlier this week, at an USAID event, Dr. Harshvardhan, India’s current Union Health Minister outlined six ways to improve maternal health, which included gender equity.

I began thinking of my many interactions with pregnant women. Last month I met a young cleaner who was four months pregnant. I noticed her on Labour Day, cleaning the long corridor while I had a holiday. There are no fans in the corridors. We became acquainted thereafter. She would frequently offer to clean my room—her official way of getting to sit under fan in my room, trying to chat a bit—she in Tulu and me in Hindi/Tamil, accepting a fruit when I had some. It took her 1.5 hrs to reach home—2 buses and a short walk. I wondered how long she will be able to work and what after that.

I remember a close friend when she was pregnant. How she would run home when she saw her husband’s car drive in. She had to make coffee and then dinner. I think she made coffee till delivery. No, she didn’t go home. It was her second pregnancy. And that relative who married into a conservative family. How she made puris in the hot kitchen for 15 members of a joint family. How her mother-in-law claimed to have a dream that she would have a disabled kid and was, therefore, taken to abortion clinic. She confided with the doctor who told family she would die if there was an abortion. The child was born premature, healthy and able. Today he is a six- foot tall guy.

Then I remember a former director of Women’s Resource Centre at University of New Mexico. About her stories on how she found refugee in the same centre decades back as a raped and pregnant young woman. We celebrated her daughter’s graduation. I wonder what happens in India.

I remember pregnant colleagues at work, working till almost close to delivery so that they can maternity leave later. I remember the snigger, the shrugging of shoulders of managers—there goes another employee to pregnancy. I remember pregnant women trying to hide their pregnancy at interview. And then I remember celebrity women having to sign clauses that they wouldn’t be pregnant during the contract period. How their bodies come under purview of contract but celebrity men who inseminate don’t.

I remember talking to an activist on issues of breastpumping in workplace. I remember wondering if this talk about Motherland, Mother Ganges, Mother this and Mother that translate into anything in practice. Why aren’t workplace norms, labour practices, accessibility, social practices pirouetting around this legendary motherhood?