Louise McSharry: ‘Some people feel a bizarre sense of ownership and entitlement over pregnant women’

Just over a year ago, I sat across from a fertility specialist as he told me that my egg count was in the very low to undetectable range. It was heartbreaking – more difficult than my cancer diagnosis the previous year, the treatment of which had led to the decimation of my eggs.

Afterwards, I wept outside the clinic as the man I was marrying a few weeks later did his best to comfort me. There was nothing he could do, however. There was nothing anyone could do to make me feel better.

You see, I have always wanted to be a mother. Not just a mother, but to carry my own baby and experience everything that goes with it. Just as some women know from an early age that they definitely do not want children, I always knew that I did.

Next month, I am due to give birth. I did not have to have special fertility treatment, I am just very, very lucky. I followed the specialist’s instructions to “Go away and try for a year,” and in January, I found out that I was pregnant.

I’d like to tell you I was thrilled and over the moon, and I suppose on one level I was, but the truth is my overwhelming emotion was fear. I couldn’t believe that I could possibly be so lucky as to beat the odds in such a way.

I felt certain something would go wrong, and refused to allow myself to believe that the pregnancy could last. During one night of particularly bad digestive cramps, I lay on the bathroom floor feeling stoic. This was it. I was losing the pregnancy. Just as I expected.

We hear so many sad stories these days, I suppose it’s not surprising that many mothers I’ve shared my fears with have told me they felt the same. Still, my pregnancy progressed, and each week the odds of my baby’s survival were greater.

Eventually, I accepted that I was probably going to be a mother, and decided to try to have the pregnancy that I had always dreamed of, instead of the intensely fearful experience I had been having thus far.

Alas, it was not to be. It was not to be, because pregnancy is bloody difficult. I know that there are women who absolutely love every moment of it, and I really hoped that I would be one of them, but I am not. I am hot. I can’t sleep. I am leaking. I am exhausted. I have strange skin tags developing in surprising places. My husband has started to call me Parpy because of my increasing issues with gas.

I smell vomit everywhere, for some reason, and my iron supplements are having an unfortunate effect on my digestive system. I miss my social life, which yes, probably revolved a little too much around late nights and alcohol. I miss my (relative) autonomy over my own body.

Outside of my very close friends and family, though, I dare not complain. On the rare occasion that I do mention something negative on social media, or around people I don’t know very well, I feel I have to match the comment with a quick, “I know I’m very lucky though!”

Once, on my personal Facebook page, I posted a jokey status about missing booze and failed to match it with an, "Of course I wouldn't change it for a thing", (I felt it was obvious). I soon received an angry message from an acquaintance who felt I didn't appreciate my good luck.

I know I’m not the only one who has experienced this type of thing. Some people feel a bizarre sense of ownership and entitlement over women when they become pregnant. They suddenly expect the woman in question to be the perfect earth mother and, on the occasion that the new mother fails in that effort, they feel it is perfectly within their rights to tell them so.

This entitlement can be demonstrated in many ways – from an angry Facebook message, to a disapproving look or a comment on the street. A friend of a friend was recently stopped on the street by a stranger who enquired as to their stage of pregnancy as they planted their hand firmly on her belly.

The friend of a friend replied politely, resisting the urge to swat the stranger’s hand away. “Oh, really?”, replied the stranger, “You’re absolutely enormous – expect to go early” before sauntering away, leaving a flabbergasted woman in her wake.

Here’s the thing. Pregnant women are still the women they were before they were pregnant. If they did not feel comfortable with strangers touching and judging them on the street before, they are not comfortable with it now. If they liked a glass or four of wine before, they’d probably still like it now. If they didn’t enjoy incessant heartburn before, they probably don’t enjoy it now!

That doesn’t mean they don’t appreciate their position and that doesn’t mean they’re not doing their absolute best.