Pregnancy second thoughts
I’m thinking about what I wrote yesterday that it was maybe upsetting for women who are having difficulties getting pregnant or staying pregnant, or who would really like kids but haven’t found the right partner and don’t want to go it alone.

I ask myself guiltily if maybe I should not be writing about good experiences that I have had, because they might be upsetting to some who haven’t been so lucky. It’s like I’m waving about that I belong to this cool club of biological mothers. But that wasn’t it at all, and these thoughts didn’t cross my mind when I wrote it yesterday.

I am reminded of how alienated I used to feel sitting with a bunch of men talking about their army experiences. They had this camaraderie I could never belong to. It annoyed me, but now I see that this is much the same thing. They were just talking nostalgically about their army experiences, it wasn’t against me, or excluding me. That was all in my head.

So I don’t think I should feel bad about writing about pregnancy and childbirth just because many women (and all men) sadly cannot experience it. Still I do feel bad a bit. It’s my inherited Polish Jewish guilty complex about having to please everyone all of the time or else I’m a horrible person.

Afterthought: You will note that the last of my ancestors left Poland round about the beginning of the nineteeth century, so you can imagine how powerful this complex really is.