by June Lin-Arlow, AMFT 

Over the last several months I’ve been thinking about norms and practices of silence around pregnancy and birth - pregnancy announcements, secret miscarriages, gender reveals, even the pressure to only tell people about certain positive aspects of motherhood and birth. After I found out that I was pregnant, I immediately started asking my mom friends about their experiences, and their responses were similar: “the first trimester can be hard, but you’ll love being pregnant.” 

Early in pregnancy, when my body still looked the same but felt completely different, I was convinced that something was very wrong. Something was dead inside of me but growing like a cancer. “This cancer is invading me, taking my energy,” I would say, using the exact language my patient, who is plagued by paranoid thoughts, uses in session to tell me about what famous actors are doing to her. I had violent fantasies of cutting open my abdomen to extract the grape-sized fetus, just as she wanted to dig into her body for the microchip she was convinced had been implanted inside of her uterus. There was a thin veil between delusion and consensus reality, where I could find myself stumbled into her world. 

I was forced to listen to my body for the first time, when my usual relationship with it was taking pleasure in deprivation and objectifying it to meet my uses for it. Staying up late, being busy, going long periods without food, always overcommitting. When I ate too little or too much, I was met with waves of nausea and discomfort, and the act of eating became like trying to tune a finicky instrument that would screech in protest when slightly off key. My old abandonment anxieties from my own infancy were coming up, and I was learning about all the new ways in which I was unconsciously identifying with my mother. It is strange to share a body with another person, especially someone who is so impatient and demanding. 

With all that, I am letting you know that my time as Editor-in-Chief of Impulse will come to an end when I go on leave in September. I am feeling better now, and I’m even loving this phase of pregnancy where I am watching my little one grow inside of me with pride. It is reassuring that the psychotic states were not permanent and that my more ordinary neurosis is coming back. 

I am looking for someone who’d like to be the new Editor of Impulse and join the Board of NCSPP. It’s been fun and meaningful to connect with this community, and I always enjoy hearing from people. If you are even slightly interested, please don’t be shy and reach out to me at jlarlow@ncspp.org.