Birth Unit Interviews

The was a general consensus among the people that I interviewed that there are certain things - "common courtesy," as my oldest interviewee called it and "good manners," my younger brother referred to it - that should be considered standard treatment for pregnant women. While no one came out and said that they considered pregnant women to be scared, as we discussed in class, they all agreed that at the very least, seats should be given up for them and people who are sick should be kept away. While my older friends, all girls as I couldn't get any guy to allow me to interview them, said that it was keeping the health and comfort of the mother  at it's highest standard, my little brother was the only one who considered what it would do to the actual baby.

Throughout the interview, he kept repeating that people had to be careful around pregnant women, "So the baby doesn't have problems.... So the baby doesn't come out the wrong way, like sick or diseased or hurt." Things like giving up your seat he says he learned from a friend - not from all the signs on the buses asking you to do such. He also said that he wouldn't treat a woman any differently according to her age. In fact, he went on about how he would go out of his way to make sure her baby was okay. "... tell her not to work hard or at all and I would do all her work. I don't know why.... Pick it up for them, they aren't supposed to bend down." That last piece he claims to have learned from the TV show House.

I think the biggest contrasts came in my interview with my little brother and my friends in college. While he said that birth made him want to faint, that it was scary to give birth or be pregnant because it was "... like a monster popping outta the belly, like a Lord of the Rings troll." On the other hand, most of my friends did say that they would like to have kids one day and of those three, one would want to solely adopt, one would like to do both and one would only like to have their own. One friend, Liz, says she grew up in a very church based community where most of the 'common courtesy' she learned came from always being surrounded by at least one or two women who were pregnant. She said that she thought, "... pregnancy is amazing and so are babies, especially after getting to hold my best friends' firstborn child not long ago." Her only strong fear mentioned was the fear of the pain even though she has been told by mothers, "..it's worth it. I also hear that your hormones are at work so that you're attached to the baby despite being kinda miserable"