Nappiness & Office Gossip

I have discovered that my sudden need for naps at work is causing a little gossip at work. When it comes over me, it's like drowning, I can barely move, and if I resist it I feel terribly sick, like the core of me is made of nauseous illness. What to do? It hits me mid-day each day. I asked a trusted coworker and she suggests I use my lunch hour like she did when she was pregnant. And that would work, because I eat late morning and after lunch anyway. So I'm going to try that.

I was angry for awhile, that there would be gossip about me and that it would be unkind. I hear during my first pregnancy there was gossip. That the moms felt I was milking it, or that I was giving pregnant women a bad name, and the non-moms felt that I seemed incapacitated and probably shouldn't even be at work. I would love to take a sabbatical, but I can't afford that kind of luxury. I was not proud of my diminished performance. I'm no dummy, I can see that I'm a little slower on the draw, a little less able to concentrate, that I would be late after a sick morning and that I would take cat naps. But my pregnancy was miserable, I hate being sick every day, all day, tired, worn out. If I didn't know I was pregnant I'd think I was really ill with something bad. As far as milking it goes, well, I can understand that others that either more carefully hid their misery for works' sake, or those that weren't as sick, would be resentful.

What really stings is the accusation that I would give pregnant women a bad name. That stings. As a feminist I want to perform well and prove that women can do the job, sure. But more and more I feel like the workplace does not leave room for much humanity. We're people, not machines. I would love to see workplaces with better family- and health-friendly policies. Regularly long days make picking up kids from day-care, or being home when school gets out, tricky. Every office should have a private room for breatfeeding moms who need to pump. There are so many issues, I could go on and on. They say not to announce your pregnancy until the 12th week when the first trimester is over, but that time is when most women are sick. So we go it alone, and hide our sickness, and seek and offer no comfort to each other during what is the roughest time of pregnancy. Don't you think that's sad?

If by a giving pregnant women a bad name, they mean that I'm a poor example of pregnanthood, well, that just hurts. I was doing the best I could. No one's perfect, least of all me. And I was kind of proud that I had survived it at all.