Her Body is a Vessel.

Conversations around women's bodies are all wrong.

When Kate got pregnant she was working in Covid and burn ICU units at the hospital, lifting overweight patients and tending to their every need, and preparing to move. Life had to go on. Every time I asked Kate to help me with something - from washing dishes or feeding the cats - my best friend would say, “Leigh, leave her alone. Her body is a vessel.” Which was true. She meant it is as a good thing, something to protect at all costs, but what I saw blossom over the course of the pregnancy was a detachment of the person from the process.

Pregnancy and childbirth is spectacularly, mind-numbingly amazing. We both learned more about the female body by going through this process, but I was not prepared for how many people, including strangers, were eager to talk about my wife’s body. Perhaps it is the belief that pregnancy is the continuation of our species and thus a public works project. Once you plan a wedding or have a baby you will never get a moment of solitude in public again. Everyone has a suggestion to help you live your best life even as it’s layered with “…but do what’s best for your and baby.”

The current dialogue about a woman’s body is like assessing a factory of the human experience. People feel privy to information about the inner-workings whether they know what to do with that knowledge or not. The woman herself gets taken out of the equation and is boiled down to receptor, incubator, and provider. Unfortunately, the most talked-about sex education/pregnancy information/family planning surrounds the topic of abortion. Such one-topic views veers communication dangerously off-course from being constructive so new generations coming into parenthood forgo knowing about RIVF/IVF/IUI, hypnobirthing, gestational diabetes, breastfeeding, and other information not learned through the Kardashians .

Going through the pregnancy process actually did more to show the inadequacies surrounding women’s health and education not only in general conversation, but among women ourselves. Of course, we should talk more openly about the entire process in general. Kate and I try not to scare away our baby-less girlfriends from the aspect of childbirth as we talk about it but when I tell you that even we are still learning more about what happens it can be hard. Almost every detail is new and since it is happening to your body it is borderline disturbing.

People would ask all the time about what I considered intimate details of my wife’s body during pregnancy. I would try to have regular conversations and someone would ask how her lady bits upstairs and downstairs were adjusting. I’d have to blink away the confusion of the abruptness and proceed. Once her water broke people needed information on how much she had dilated. If thought through that is a direct question about how open her cervix is. I would supply answers but always felt mildly uncomfortable as if I was giving away sensitive information without her consent. A woman’s health is not considered enough in general conversation, only people’s relationship to it.

This is a call to have actual conversations that move from considering women’s bodies as part of the public space and into personal, real lives. Like a future spaceship I’m not entirely sure what that looks like, but I’ll know it when I’m in one.