Pregnancy as a cause of disability

[Contents: ableism, gender essentialism, medical]

So I have a lot of thoughts related to the #solidarityisfortheablebodied tag that I've been watching (and participating in) on the Twittermachine, especially in relation to pregnancy. This will probably turn in to a whole series of posts, but to start with, I wanted to record some of the tweets and talk a bit about how pregnancy can cause disability.

(Just as an FYI, #solidarityisfortheablebodied was started by Neal Carter to talk about ableism. It was inspired by #solidarityisforwhitewomen, which was started by Mikki Kendall to talk about racism in social justice movements, especially feminism. I really recommend checking them both out.)

So while participating in the tag, K Boyd, Cabell Gathman, and I were talking a bit about the intersection of pregnancy, ableism, and disability. Here are some of the highlights:

#solidarityisfortheablebodied when pregnancy cn only be "inconvenient," never disabling. Pregnant ppl even ashamed to name it to themselves.
— Cabell Gathman (@cabell) November 16, 2013

"@cabell: #solidarityisfortheablebodied when pregnancy cn only be "inconvenient" never disabling. Pregnant ppl even ashamed to name it to themselves."

@kingdomofwench and just btw, I do become physically disabled when pregnant. :/
— K Boyd (@MendyLady) November 16, 2013

"@MendyLady: @kingdomofwench and just btw, I do become physically disabled when pregnant. :/"

MT @MendyLady: @me Many people do not, and so it's awful that society assumes they do. But then for those of us who do, it's ...
— Wench (@kingdomofwench) November 16, 2013

"@kingdomofwench: MT @MendyLady @me Many people do not, and so it's awful that society assumes they do. But then for those of us who do, it's..."

@kingdomofwench miserable to get our condition taken seriously. #solidarityisfortheablebodied
— K Boyd (@MendyLady) November 16, 2013

"@MendyLady: miserable to get our condition taken seriously. #solidarityisfortheablebodied"

One of the things that continues to strike me about pregnancy is this overwhelming assumption of it and framing of the experience that it is the best, most fulfilling thing that a woman [sic] can ever do. That you will feel SO WONDERFUL in your second trimester, even if you felt horrid in your first trimester! It's fine! It's all great! (Don't believe me? Start looking at pretty much any pregnancy book or website out there.) And while the sites and books will talk about "round ligament pain", and "sore feet", and "mood swings", and while they'll often go in to detail about all of the things that can go wrong with the pregnancy, like placental abruption, they don't generally talk about how pregnancy can really be disabling.

The exception to that seems to be pelvic girdle pain, which is mentioned specifically both as "common" and "potentially debilitating". The Wikipedia article is way better (even if it does assume that all pregnant people are women). It's more detailed as to symptoms, potential effects, and way more thorough in terms of what treatment is available. "What To Expect" - which, I seem to recall hearing that this was so detailed it was too detailed about pregnancy and that's why no one liked it - has scant information, and scant options. And beyond that first mention of "debilitating", doesn't really go in to much else.

But PGP is far, FAR from the only change in pregnancy that can disable someone. Some of the easier ones to figure on are things like the loosening and spreading of your joints causing foot pain, or the lower back pain that can also be very common in pregnancy. Even in those cases though, the response often is "well get new shoes", "it's not that bad", "if you exercise more it will feel better". And yeah, foot pain and joint pain doesn't sound so bad. Until you have it, like I do, and when I went grocery shopping last Monday I could barely make it out of the store, hunched over the cart, unable to carry my groceries in, and having to slowly, painfully lurch my way up the stairs to my apartment, and immediately lay down. If you'd like to inform me that that's not disability, that that kind of pain isn't disabling, you can fuck right off. CAN'T. GET. MY. OWN. GROCERIES.

Then there's the nausea and vomiting, and the extreme nausea and vomiting known as hyperemesis gravidarum. HG can get people hospitalized. They literally cannot keep anything down, and are so dehydrated they usually wind up getting IV fluids and nutrients. It's incredibly dangerous both for the pregnant person and the embryo/fetus they're carrying. And even milder forms of "morning sickness" can be disabling. It's hard to function if you can't eat, if common smells make you ill, if you just feel like shit all the damn time with no relief.

Pregnancy doesn't just affect you physically though. There are so many mental and emotional changes that happen. Those often get dismissed as "hormones". And while hormones may be the cause, they're not always. Even if the cause is hormones, that doesn't make the effects any less real. Plus, any sort of mental health issue is incredibly stigmatized, and especially in women, tends to get pooh-poohed. "You're just lazy", "oh take a deep breath", "it's all in your head". Well that's fine and dandy (asshole), but when you're so ill you can't get out of the house, can't get out of bed? When you're afraid to move because WHAT IF IT HURTS THE BABY, and a part of you knows that's not really rational and it's the disease talking, but you still can't move? All the deep-breathing in the world ain't gonna fix that, and to suggest that it's such an easy fix, and that it's not disabling, is incredibly shitty.

And like was quoted above, lots of people do NOT experience debilitating, disabling side effects during pregnancy (and the ones I mentioned above are an extremely abbreviated list, mostly drawn from my own experience). That is genuinely awesome for them. My problem is when that becomes the only acceptable narrative for pregnancy, as it often seems to be. Again, the narrative we're presented about pregnancy so often is along the lines of "it's the most fulfilling, wonderful thing you can do!" and that completely erases people for whom it is emphatically not (such as myself!). It's one thing if you want to say "I found pregnancy amazingly fulfilling" or "I felt wonderful during my pregnancy", but to describe pregnancy in general as those things is bullshit. The kindest thing I can say about being pregnant is that it's incredibly uncomfortable and undignified, and part of the reason I use that phrasing is because if I tell it how it really is, I have gotten people jumping down my throat about how WELL JUST DO THIS and YOU'RE TERRIBLE and OH IT'S NOT THAT BAD etc. and so on. Many people are sympathetic - but that's also a function of the fact that I largely surround myself with people who aren't shitheads.

Which brings me to another point: I've gotten to the point, even this "early" in my pregnancy, a few times where I have significant trouble standing upright or walking. And even I hesitate to call that "disabled". I can't get groceries on my own, I have to plan dinners so that if I cook something that involves more than five minutes of effort one day, the next day I have to have something that only requires five minutes of effort, I'm back to doing PT exercises for my fucked up back and hips, I hate hate HATE that I have to pee all the time because goddammit I just got comfortable and standing up is going to hurt, and I dread the possibility of The Kid laying on my spine as they get bigger and aggravating my degenerated disks. And this is all shit that started after I got pregnant.

There's incredible stigma against disability, being disabled, and identifying as disabled here in the US. Being a pregnant person on top of that? There should be a really elegant math metaphor here, but I'll settle for "it way more than doubles the bullshit and stigma".