Body Talk by Kelly Jensen

Author:Kelly Jensen
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Algonquin Books
Published: 2020-07-27T15:18:02+00:00

My husband and I were the first of our high school crew to have children. We had get-togethers when people came home for the holidays, and while whipping out a boob to feed my kid in front of everyone made me hyperconscious that I was decidedly not “one of the boys” anymore, something about having let half the hospital look at my nether regions during the course of pregnancy had made me a little less self-conscious overall.

Besides, having had an emergency C-section meant I got to tell everyone about how the doctors piled all my internal organs on my chest during the surgery.

Sure, I was just lying there, but it still seemed pretty badass.

It was easier for them to understand than the challenge we’d faced to get pregnant in the first place. After years of taking precautions against the terror of getting knocked up, it was a shock to realize my body actually sucked at the task. Clinical depression had already forced me to reckon with the fact that no amount of effort or focus could force one’s brain chemicals to behave, but applying that lesson to the rest of my body was difficult. No amount of toughness will bully your ovaries into producing decent eggs. And when infertility treatments finally work and it comes time to give birth, you can’t force the baby to turn itself head down—particularly when no one notices he’s breech until you’re already dilated to ten centimeters.

“I could smell the burning flesh when they cauterized the incision,” I said, and that seemed to be a crowd-pleaser.

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