Delicate Condition

by Danielle Valentine

Io wished people would stop telling women they should be grateful for their suffering instead of trying to help them with it.

doctors who didn’t see the problem with a model that didn’t put enough funding into researching anything considered a “women’s issue.”

In 2020 5% of R&D funding was for women's health. Only 1% of funding was for non-cancer related women's health.

Why did everyone have to deal with something? People have been giving birth since the beginning of the human race. Shouldn’t we know how to do it by now?

Of course, that’s not what happened. But sometimes, when I wake up in the middle of the night and I can’t stop my mind from obsessing, wondering if I should have done anything differently, it’s nice to imagine that it did.

Names like Anarcha, Lucy, and Betsey, three of the enslaved women the man bought and operated on without consent, without anesthesia.

And maybe there was some truth to what they were saying, maybe there were some problems you could only solve with “Let’s wait and see.”

There was so much blood. My baby will never cry, I thought. My baby is dead or else it’s dying right now, inside of me. It’s dying and I can’t do anything. I can’t protect it.

So why the hell did I let everyone convince me that I was suddenly forgetting things, misplacing things, missing things? What kind of twisted sense did that make?

If you leave your trash outside overnight, you don’t blame the bear who comes by and rips it open, drawn by the smell. You blame yourself.

“I’ve always hated how people separate women who want kids from women who don’t, like we’re two separate species. It’s infuriating how people insist on defining cis women’s entire lives by this one choice.”

I felt my eye twitch. “The thing I can’t get over is why there is still so much confusion over really common things. People have babies all the time. It shouldn’t be this big mystery anymore; it should be biology.” I thought of Dr. Crawford telling me that doctors didn’t know why women had miscarriages, and I could feel my eyes fill. I should change the subject, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. “I don’t think it’s too much to ask that my doctor figure out why I can’t get pregnant, or why I had a miscarriage. But it’s like they’re all just guessing! It’s like I’m the first person on the planet who’s ever done this.”

There are people who will take that baby away from you.

I think these symptoms are very real…to you. Grief can be very powerful after an experience like yours.

There was a brief, tense silence. Dr. Crawford inhaled audibly. “I never said hysterical,” he said in the low, even voice of someone trying to soothe a screaming child. “What I was going to say before you got so upset is that I’d be happy to help you find a psychotherapist.

Hysterical woman! Everything must be in her head.

I should just “try not coughing” for a while.

What's with the raccoon? And the smell of meat?

More grimace than smile. “It’s like she’s trying to kick her way out of you.”

Did she really just tell me Maybe this could be a silver lining? What a thoughtless thing to say.

Bad omen, I thought

Had he told me about this? I didn’t think so.

Is Dex telling her these things and she's forgetting (unreliable narrator) or is he gas lighting her?

I felt very strange. Light-headed. My thoughts weren’t totally making sense. I knew there was a reason I was supposed to be here—it wasn’t just the pain in my ribs; it was something else. I needed to see the doctor to find out what was going on inside of my body. Being at the hospital, it was a good thing, like Dex said. Everything was going to be okay.

Oh God, I can’t go through this again.

Painful hope roller-coaster of ttc and pregnancy

none of her doctors—not one—had believed her when she’d tried to tell them how bad it was. They insisted there was nothing physically wrong with her, that she must be exaggerating. They told her to try taking a Tylenol—Tylenol!—

You can’t trust them. You can’t trust anyone.

It looked like it was taking an enormous amount of effort for him to accept this line of thinking.

I just wanted him to tell me I wasn’t being paranoid. Was it really so hard for him to be on my side about this?

ever since I’d stopped working with Emily, things had almost returned to normal.

Leafy greens were more likely to give you listeria than ham, and yet deli meat was forbidden. Who had decided kale was okay?

He took it out and frowned at the screen.

There’s no one up there, no one, everything’s fine.

How often are women told to discount their instincts?

Did Talia know Meg?

I jerked my hands away from my head and saw that there was hair woven between my fingers. Thick clumps of it. More hair than I’d ever lost at one time.

“Her younger sister had this horrible pregnancy—she was sick the entire time and, even afterward, she was never really the same.”

Who is the younger sister? Lucy?

I knew this because there was another Summer Day action figure sitting on top of the dresser. It was naked, just like the last one had been, but this one didn’t have a red X drawn over her belly. Instead, someone had pulled every last hair out of its head.

noticed, absently, that my mouth was filling with saliva.

You think this is a game? This is my life you’re messing with.

What a sick game for teenagers to play! What does this say about the direction society is heading?

The raccoon that still smelled so appetizing, no matter how much other meat I let myself eat.

Was that frustration in her expression? Resentment? Had she hated me all this time? I realized I honestly didn’t know.

Cold fear filled me. I’d walked out here on my own. I’d left the warmth of my bed and walked outside and climbed down here, into the pool, in the middle of the night, in the snow.

Years later, I would think back at that moment and marvel at the mental gymnastics I was able to perform, the sheer force of will it had taken for me to push the memory of the raccoon—of what I’d wanted to do to that raccoon—out of my head.

He never answered.

I would feel safe if I was with Dex.

Dex’s eyes lingered on me for a long moment, and then he turned to Kamal, talking to him instead of me.

I just wanted my husband to talk to me about what I’d seen.

everyone dismissing me as some hysterical woman, some hysterical pregnant woman.

My body felt foreign, like someone had switched it out with another woman’s while I was sleeping.

A sign that something was wrong with my brain instead of my body.

the worst part was that it made me doubt everything else I’d experienced.

sign that I was losing what remained of my sanity?

I stumbled back into the bedroom, wondering if a woman has ever calmed down after a man told her to.