Haze

On Motherhood and Anorexia

As I am writing these lines, several U.S. states have passed some of the strictest abortion restriction laws in the country. Alabama, Kentucky, Georgia…Reproductive rights are being challenged. Women are worried that they will be deprived of their right to carry a child or not.

As I am writing these lines, I have just become an aunt. Whenever I see my two-month old nephew, I marvel. I can’t express the love that I feel for this tiny child. Even before he was born, my feelings were profound. The bond is intense.

There are suddenly so many new babies and children in my life. I often feel a rush of tenderness when I’m around them. I’m one of these people who can easily gaze at baby pictures, who listens to a couple of parenting podcasts and reads the parenting section in the New York Times even though I am not a parent.

Does this mean I’m craving for a child of my own? Do I yearn for my children or only for those of others? When I started writing this piece, I was already in motherhood ambivalence mode where neither options felt fully right for me.

And then came the ultimate hit.

I learned that I will have a hard time conceiving children. Not impossible. Just complicated.

This is not simply a result of my current eating disorder which makes my body so weak that I have profound fertility problems. No, my body also doesn’t want me to be able to conceive naturally. I know very well that there other ways to have child. Yet the fact that I do not really have the choice to have a child naturally makes me question my own motherhood even more. Right now, it’s like my body is saying “you are not made for this. This is as a sign that it’s not for you.”

Do I want to become a mother? Do I have the capacity to be one? I can’t stop the questions from coming and this recent news has made motherhood even more complicated in my mind.

— —

So as I reflect on what it means to be a mother today, I question whether I am fit for it and whether I want for it for me.

Becoming a mother is regarded both as a grandiose act and something that is just a given for women.

Many women in their mid-twenties and older get asked when they will they intend to have children. Not “if” but “when”. As if they had no choice to exercise. If they hesitate, they often get told they will eventually want to become mothers, “maybe not now but soon” as I have sometime heard. The mother of three children I was babysitting in my early twenties once questioned why I was studying so hard at university considering that I would give it all up to become a mother. First, she didn’t even ask me whether or not I wanted children (it was just a given) and second, she couldn’t envision why or how I would want to have a job and be a mother at the same time. This was in 2004.

Women, more than men, are told that a child will add meaning to everything they do, that they will find their value and place in the world. As mothers, women gain a new status. As if, before having children, their lives did not have as much value. Of course children change your life, but the idea that women are somehow less because when they are not mothers is troubling.

Heti writes “Being a woman, you can’t just say you don’t want a child. You have to have some big plan or idea of what you are going to instead.” When a woman says she doesn’t want to have children, she’d better have a good reason for it. Otherwise she is selfish or there must be some kind of problem with her. She should want this naturally because she is a woman.

Not long ago, I heard a woman say on the radio, “you don’t regret becoming a parent, you only regret not becoming one.” I felt like I was being told that I was missing out on something if I decided not to become a mother.

Yet more and more women I know have made the choice not to have children. They find ways to show that not having children is also an experience. I know a few mothers who love their children but sometimes question their choice. On the podcast “Motherhood Session”, a woman spoke openly about succumbing to the pressure to become a mother. She kept telling her friends that she did not want to have a child but they insisted that she would change her mind eventually. Crying, she says on the podcast that even though she loves her baby, she still regrets succumbing to the pressure, to the social expectation. Hearing her despair broke my heart. While I am ambivalent about becoming a mother myself, the fact that this woman was put in this position deeply troubled me. Why is there always someone who will try to push this on women despite their reluctance?

Motherhood and anorexia

As someone who has anorexia, I fear motherhood.

First, there is being pregnant. I know it’s not easy. Should I ever be able to be pregnant, how will deal with the body changes and the weight gain that all people with anorexia deeply fear? How would I handle not being in control of my body considering that I am desperate for that control? What if these changes trigger a relapse? If I suddenly refuse to eat, I will put the life of my child in danger. Pregnancy after anorexia is also associated with adverse obstetric outcomes, miscarriage and prematurity. What are the risks for my future child ?

Second, there are the first months parenthood. The joy of being a new parent also comes with exhaustion and the reality is probably even harder than I can imagine. And how will I deal with the pressures society puts on women to go back to their postnatal body? Am I more prone to postpartum depression considering that I already went through depression once? Will my anxiety and my obsessive compulsive behaviors be even worse ?

One of my biggest fears is passing my eating disorder onto my children and projecting my fears onto them. Throughout my therapy, I met women whose eating disorder was in part due to their mothers’ own eating disorders. They also told me how difficult it is to have anorexia when you have children: meal times are a struggle because they could hardly sit at the table with their kids. In my family, mealtimes are moments of sharing and dialogue, especially when my brothers and I were kids. I view this a crucial to staying in touch with your children. But I also know that sitting at a table and watching people eat is hard for me. I fear that my ED will build a wall between my kids and me.

I am no closer to an answer. My decision on whether or not to become a mother is like my recovery from anorexia: this point on the horizon that I don’t know how to reach.

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