Bun in the Oven*

At any given point in time, there are at least 5-10 women in various stages of pregnancy at the school where I do this soul-testing and occasionally spirit-crushing job called teaching. Subtle hints indicate their status: they begin taking the elevator instead of the stairs, they stop drinking coffee or heading out to the "fag cottage" for a smoke and start wearing loose fitting clothing. I do not know many women my age or older at work who don't have children or aren't trying to get knocked up. Pregnancy always starts with the ambiguous 'is she preggers or just fat stage,' and then boom! The itty-bitty baby bump emerges. Small, but its strategic location in the lower abdomen gives away the contents: a fragile, doughy, placenta-nourished bun of a baby. The women stay on at work until they are ready to pop, have a few months paid leave, and then return to school, their ovens barren and cold, waiting for the next little biscuit, or glad they got the first one out.

In Turkey, most women give birth via c-sections; they are quicker and cheaper for both the mother and the hospital. A woman with child is pampered beyond belief. I've heard that normally callous husbands wait on the mommies to be hand and foot. Turkish mothers are put on a pedestal - no prodding, poking or agitating allowed - and their offspring are no less pampered...or perhaps some would consider it coddled. Children should be spoiled and indulged, should they not? They are gifts, blessings, and the future of the family and the nation. This little fact explains quite a bit.

I have never spent so much time with pregnant women nor had friends with children up until now, and the whole watching kids grow and change before your very eyes phenomena got me thinking. I am unabashedly fascinated by the entire process, so I did what any normal single woman without the slightest chance of being pregnant at the moment but paranoid about the potential down the line (albeit the small potential and way down the line) would do: I borrowed my friend's books about pregnancy and learned everything I could. I read up on the various symptoms during each trimester and the side effects, like that my hair could get curlier or straighter, thicker or thinner. I might even feel like eating a hamburger. I might get fat. I might be an emotional basket case. I might never have to worry about it.

So yes, watching pregnant women in Turkey has made me think quite differently about baby birthing and child rearing. I don't know if American women actually feel differently about the whole situation, or if we are too modern, too egalitarian, to ready to criticize both the childless by choice woman and crazy Octo-mom for being too selfish and indulgent, too sterile a culture to admit that we like having babies for what they give us that is so hard to get from other people: unconditional love.


*bun = baby
oven=womb