Illness

Illness

“Pregnancy is not an illness.”

I had this statement drilled into my head when I began serving in management roles in my thirties.  If you were interviewing a prospective employee it was and still is illegal to ask about children or pregnancy or marital status. 

But when I learned that I was pregnant in the summer between my junior and senior year of college at Miami University, I was treated as if I had contracted a fatal and highly contagious illness, more like a plague.  I was a leper.  Miami U in Oxford, Ohio likes to be known as the “Yale of the Midwest” and boasts the highest number of uniform red brick buildings in a three -mile radius in the county.  Okay, I’m not sure about that last fact.  I made that up, but if you’ve ever been to Miami U, you know that’s it’s not implausible. 

I had big plans for my senior year.  My junior year roommate and college bff were going to get an apartment off campus.  We were moving out of the dorms where we had spent the first three years.  I had landed a sweet extracurricular gig helping run the student film series at the “Res”, a student union type building which housed study rooms, an auditorium, snack bars, a book store and even a tiny bowling alley. 

I was single, 21 years old and home at my parents’ house for the summer. I was working as a server at a Pizza Hut and saving up some cash so I could help furnish our cool off campus apartment that fall.  And sometime in June or so I learned that I was pregnant.  I knew who the father was.  He wasn’t a Miami student.  And it didn’t matter.  We weren’t together.  When I told him, he offered to marry me. It was 1986, and single motherhood wasn’t anywhere near as common as today.   I considered getting married, but ultimately couldn’t do it.  I knew that if I had a miscarriage, I’d want a divorce.  A baby wasn’t enough of a reason to get married. 

The baby was due in January of 1987, and my big glamorous senior year of college was supposed to start in August of 1986.  I was already showing by that time.  I didn’t move into the off -campus apartment.  I not only didn’t run the film series, I didn’t even make it to any of the films.  Instead I lived at my parents’ house and scheduled all my classes on Tuesday and Thursday.  I worked on the off days.  I went to childbirth classes with my mom.  I was the only unmarried woman in the class. 

I went to doctor appointments at the clinic where they charged based on a sliding scale.  I was still on my parent’s insurance.  Prenatal care was not covered.  Ironically, abortions were covered, but that was never an option that I even considered.  It did get back to me that some of my classmates at Miami had questioned, “I don’t get it.  Why doesn’t she just have an abortion?” 

When I walked around campus wearing a denim maternity jumper with a pink polo shirt underneath, students stepped out of my way and stared when I walked past.  They looked at me as if they had never seen a pregnant woman before, and when I looked around campus at the hundreds of students milling around I couldn’t really blame them.  I didn’t see another pregnant woman on campus that entire semester. 

I had saved my physical science elective “Physics 101” or something like that for senior year.   I really regretted having put it off till senior year when I saw that class was in a big auditorium with tiny desks, the kind with the desk part that you flip up and then sort of fold down over your lap.  By September I couldn’t fit my big pregnant belly in the desk.  They set up a folding table for me on the floor in the front of the auditorium.  I tried in vain to get there early so I didn’t have hundreds of pairs of eyes on me as I waddled down to the front.  I was usually late.  The morning sickness was pretty relentless for the first two trimesters.  Invariably I’d have to pull over on the 45-minute drive up state route 27 and throw up.  The first time it happened I got out of the car and a police officer stopped to check on me.  He looked incredulous when I told him I was a Miami student, a senior at that.  Apparently, the good officer had never seen a pregnant Miami student either.

I didn’t look like a Miami girl.  Actually, even before I got pregnant I didn’t fit in with the beautiful preppy Miami image.  The pregnancy just made me feel like I stood out even more.  I’ve never felt more alone in a sea of people than I did that semester.  My feet got too fat for my shoes and I wore oversized loafers without socks.  My mom tried to help me feel less freakish.  She made me a beige corduroy maternity jumper.  She reasoned that it looked kind of preppy.  So, I wore the denim jumper on Tuesdays and the corduroy jumper on Thursdays. 

By the time finals rolled around I was in the final stretch of the pregnancy.  I had heard the baby’s heartbeat and gotten to see the ultra sound.  I had started to get excited about the prospect of being a mom.  It wasn’t what I had planned for my life but it was happening regardless.  I remember sitting all alone at the Res drinking milk and trying to eat something healthy for the baby.  No one talked to me.  People just stared at me and their eyes seemed to say, “What the hell are you doing here?!”   

Even people that knew me walked right on by without speaking.  Maybe they didn’t recognize me.  Maybe it just didn’t fit with their paradigm.  How could there be a pregnant student in their midst?  No one even asked when I was due or if I knew the baby’s sex.  I didn’t know for sure, but  I knew I wanted a girl.  I knew I had the same right to be there getting an education as any of them.  I knew that even though I’d have to take the next semester off because of the baby, I would finish. I would get my decree and I would be a good mom.

When no one else talked to me I talked to the baby.  I patted my belly and I’d feel her kick back.  And then I didn’t feel so alone. 

Epilogue-Alison Remembrance was born January 28.1987.  I returned to school still as a commuter in the spring of 1987 and graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in English Education from Miami University in May of 1988.