Shiny Chandravel, Assistant Opinions Editor
Loss of teeth.
Swollen joints and face.
Spontaneous allergic reactions, sometimes even to your own skin.
Vomiting, nausea and dehydration.
Tumors in the mouth and gums.
If this list sounds like it’s pulled from a profile on a rare tropical bacterial disease, it’s not. In fact, it describes side effects people have experienced from a condition that’s far closer to home, with the potential to affect nearly half of Americans and people worldwide — pregnancy.
More specifically, this list is a fraction of a much larger one created by TikTok creator @Zoomie, also known as “the girl with the list.”
The list started as a moment of TikTok virality as the creator accumulated reasons not to become pregnant. She compiled stories shared on the internet of unexpected pregnancy symptoms, which include physical, mental and financial changes. The list currently has over 100 reasons and can be viewed online.
While some critique the list for spreading fear and misinformation, I find that the list has also inspired a much-needed conversation. In the face of a culture that glamorizes pregnancy, we need to ensure we’re having an honest, transparent conversation of what pregnancy actually means for a mother’s quality of life.
The media plays a large role in this culture of glamour around motherhood and pregnancy. It praises celebrities who immediately bounce back to incredible physiques postpartum. It spotlights influencers decorating their nurseries with aesthetic, monochromatic toys.
Pregnancy has been marketed as this beautiful, miraculous endeavor. However, two realities can exist at once.
While it can be a meaningful journey for some, it can also be physically traumatic. It can cause drastic hormonal changes that have the ability to trigger autoimmune conditions, exacerbate mental health issues and leave individuals under financial strain. Pretending that all pregnancy does is leave behind a “dewy pregnancy glow” is doing women a great disservice and is antithetical to what health care is supposed to look like.
Acknowledging the negative side of pregnancy interrupts how we treat mothers as a whole. While we can praise mothers for their enormous sacrifice in maintaining their postpartum health, work life and personal responsibilities — all while tending to a newborn — it just becomes a cop out.
Applauding mothers for being superhuman only excuses you from treating them as human at all.
Women’s issues aren’t seen as problems, but as an expectation meant to be met. Any side effects that come with pregnancy are brushed off as the inherent sacrifice that “good” mothers make.
The more we tell women that suffering and sacrifice are just inherent to motherhood, the more we let systems fail with little to no pushback.
We can watch the government cut funding from the research that goes directly towards their health.
We let them slip through the cracks of health care after birth — left managing new pregnancy-related complications without a proper primary care provider — despite half of maternal deaths occurring within 42 days post-birth.
We can force them to try to balance work life and postpartum recovery prematurely without any comprehensive paid maternity leave.
We can brush off the fact that our country has one of the highest maternal mortality rates of high-income countries, affecting Black women most often, with them dying more than three times more often than their white counterparts.
As the United States’s birth rate hits an all time low, falling farther from the replacement rate, pronatalist views are becoming more and more common from our economists and politicians.
Vice President J.D. Vance declared at his first address to the United States,“I want more babies in the United States of America!” But encouraging women to have more babies without the structural change to support them falls flat as empty rhetoric.
If we want healthier mothers, we have to stop selling pregnancy as some polished product to indulge in and start treating it as the complex medical event it is. We need transparent education, funding for women’s health research and a culture that views maternal suffering as an issue to solve — not some “rite of passage” to womanhood.
Drop the applause and glamor. Mothers need structural change.