AMANDA SCHROEDER

R/PREGNANCY

posted by u/alscorpio90 13 hours ago

(31F) I GAVE BIRTH TO A FISH AND I THINK MY MOTHER PLANNED IT

Ok, wild title, but give me a chance to explain myself. Sorry if this isn’t the right place to discuss this, but I can’t think of anyone I know in real life who would hear me out. I guess I don’t need any advice or anything, just someone to hear my story or let me know if you have any thoughts about what happened to me.

I should start with some background on myself. I’m 31 years old and work in tech in a major US city that I’ll leave out for privacy reasons. I have a pretty cushy job and honestly not a ton of responsibilities. I’m single, but I have a lot of different guys in my life. Overall, I’m a pretty social person. Cringey or whatever, but I'm the cliche overpaid corporate millennial that spends way too much on workout classes and organic groceries and still parties like I’m in college.

Anyway, I’ve always had a complex about pregnancy, and it’s something the women in my family are aware of. It started when my mother was pregnant with my sister. I remember feeling horrified at the thought of another human growing inside someone else. I was young at the time, around 5 or 6, but I still remember the vague disgust I felt, watching my mother grow day by day and hearing her talk about her body as though it was no longer her own. I knew, from TV and the expectant faces of the adults around me, that I was meant to be excited for my new sister and mesmerized by the magic of her slowly growing in my mother’s body, but I was a kid, and I couldn’t hold in my disgust. I don’t think my mother ever really forgave me for how I acted. She takes this kind of thing to heart. My mother is the type of person to think that women exist to be mothers.

Despite my mother’s best efforts, my feelings about motherhood never changed much after that, though my sister never had the same hang-up as me. I remember playing house with her and her always wanting to be the mom. Other girls my age would roll baby dolls up and stick them under their shirts to give themselves a big round belly. The little girls around me always dreamed of being a mother, but I remained horrified at the idea.

Into adulthood, my sister got married and started having babies. She was always beautiful and glowing, and watching her start her family I almost felt an appreciation for motherhood that our mother had always tried to instill in us. But I still couldn’t get past the idea of having a child of my own, some other organism occupying my body, feeding from me, and slowly growing inside.

This was the primary reason why, when I discovered I was pregnant, I felt mostly dread. Of course, I was also unmarried, but I had always been independent and had a decent-paying job, so the idea that being a single mother didn’t scare me as much as maybe it should have. But the loss of autonomy over my own body struck me with a degree of panic I'd never felt before.

To my surprise, my mother jumped in to support me immediately. She never once scolded me for being irresponsible and getting pregnant from a random hookup, nor did she seem worried about my future as a single mother working a relatively demanding, though well-paying, job. Her support seemed to linger on excitement - she seemed way too happy for me to be pregnant considering my circumstances. She had me move back in with her, and for the first month of my pregnancy, she took me to all my appointments and held my hand as the doctor smeared sticky goo onto my stomach. She talked to my doctors on my behalf as though I was a kid again, and she was the expert. She brought me ginger ale and Pedialyte in bed when nausea kicked in. At night, she would bring me dinner and sit with me as we watched shitty game shows on TV. Despite the unnerving enthusiasm, I felt warm in her care, like I was a baby and the life inside me didn’t exist.

I knew there was something wrong when I felt the first kick. That same day, my mother invited some friends over, including my sister and her kids, and they all brought gifts. I realized, without it ever being said, that this was my baby shower. Months too early. My mother and our company were passing around yellow wrapping paper and sipping orange juice spiked with sparkling cider when I felt a tiny hammer slam into the walls of my stomach. I hunched over in pain, shocked by the power of the life inside me. Our company was thrilled, full of joy and excitement, but nothing about this felt normal. No amount of Google-ing could convince me that the force I had felt from my two or three-month-old fetus was normal.

As the weeks passed and my pregnancy progressed, I became convinced that the life inside of me was not human - a foreign and unnatural body inside my own. My mother and sister blamed these accusations on my issues with pregnancy, but the feeling of sloshing of my insides would come on so intensely, often in the dead of night, that I knew there was no way a normal baby could cause this much pain. I would rush to the bathroom, my insides falling out into the toilet. Nothing about this felt remotely normal. It felt as though a powerful tail was pushing its way inside of me. My organs felt bruised constantly, and I found myself in near-constant pain.

My mother assured me that this was normal. She’d help me back into bed and serve me fruity herbal teas to calm my nerves. I insisted that something was wrong, that we should go to a doctor immediately, but she would laugh in a way that she meant to be comforting and say this is all a part of the process every mother went through to bring life into the world.

I became increasingly incapable of caring for myself as my pregnancy progressed. It was much too early in the pregnancy for this level of discomfort to be happening to me. I knew there was something wrong, but the doctor’s appointments my mother promised me never came. Left in my mother’s care, she assured me that we would see the doctor soon. I lost track of the days and could not argue. She met my eyes so evenly and squeezed my shoulders comfortingly, I tried to convince myself everything was in my head.

When I dreamed between spells of sweeping nausea, I dreamed of a fish in murky waters. It was beautiful, its body large and multi-colored. It moved with restrained power, always in motion to keep itself still. In its wide, expressionless eyes, you could tell it was in a prison, with no reflection but a soft pink wall.

In just a few short months, I was so heavy I couldn’t stand up. My mother continued to insist it was almost time for the doctor’s appointment, but the day never came. I think my water must have broken within six months. I can tell only because it was still Summer, the heat that day surpassing 100F. Any other connection I had with the outside world and with time itself had dissipated in the days spent in a sweaty stupor. As far as I could remember, I had gone on sick leave from work, and all my friends slowly stopped reaching out as I was no longer in the city.

When I called out to my mother, she found me laying in my own fluids on the mattress I had been spending all my days on. For not one moment did she seem concerned. She led me down the stairs, my weight on her shoulder, and drove me to the hospital, all smiles the whole time. I wasn’t sure how to react, her face grinning at me in unnervingly cinematic perfection.

Despite the feeling of being split open, the baby would not come on its own. I remember them opening me up - a cesarean section. I remember the relief I felt, the feeling of finally being able to prove to them that something unnatural had been growing inside me all this time. I felt them lay my organs on the table one by one.

I can remember the panicked voices as I began to lose consciousness. I remember seeing a young nurse with thick, gluey eyelashes looking down at my body in horror. I remember the thump as the doctor dropped what he had pulled out of me onto the cold metal operating table. Far too heavy to be a baby. But most of all I remember the feeling of freedom, at last separated from my internal antagonizer.

I used the last of my strength to turn my head to see. There lay a rainbow fish, regal and shiny, its scales flickering dazzlingly, like in the children's book. Really, it was beautiful, in its own way. Its body flailed against the metal tabletop, the shocking clang the only sound filling the silenced room. Gradually and gracelessly, its thumps slowed and became weaker. The doctors, nurses, and my mother all watched in silence as it died, most of the room in horror. Its gills, gasping helplessly at the air in the operating room, came to a reluctant stop after what seemed like far too long. I watched as my baby perished on the cool metal table.

“Was it a girl or a boy?” my mother said after the room fell into total silence, her hand calmly holding my own. “We had been hoping for a boy.” She squeezed my fingers happily.

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AMANDA SCHROEDER IS A WRITER AND ARTIST FROM NORTHERN CALIFORNIA. SHE CAN BE FOUND AT HEYITSAMANDA.COM.