4.2 Strategies to Obtain the Ideal Pregnant Body
4.2.4 We are Pregnant: The Role of the Supportive Husband
Another important source of support for my informants is their husbands.
Rini would send her ultrasound images to her husband via short messaging system (SMS) after each visit to her gynecologist. Likewise, Diana would send those images via electronic mail (e-mail) to her husband who tends to travel abroad for work. Diana even recorded her husband‟s voice reading storybooks and would put the earphones on her belly so that “the baby could recognize the father”. Crouch
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and Manderson (1993: 101) discuss how maternity has now been framed through the “couple-related model” whereby both husband and wife are invested in the experience. This was also an expectation laid out in the maternity literature I analysed in the first chapter. My informants actively involved their husbands in their pregnancies. Nur, Shy, Salena and Diana brought their husbands to the prenatal course organized by Doula Hanani which is advertised specifically to pregnant Muslim couples:
“So I told my husband that we should go to that childbirth class because he also doesn‟t know what we should do.
Based on my brother-in-law‟s experience, he said he really didn‟t know what to do. My sister told him to just keep quiet and then he said, „I‟m the husband, I want to support my wife but the only thing she said to me was,
„keep quiet can or not?‟‟ So I thought I didn‟t want that to happen to me and Az (her husband). So I said maybe we should at least know what to do. So, we went to the class so at least he has a better idea how he can support me during labor. And then I am a bit of a coward, I‟m timid.
So if the doctor, like what the doula said, suggests an induction probably almost 90% of me would say OK. So I need someone who at least has gone to this workshop to tell the doctor, „no, I think my wife can still hang on‟. So I need that kind of voice for me.” (Diana)
Additionally, all of my informants shared all the knowledge they gathered with their husbands so that the latter would be supportive of their pregnancy, childbirth and post-partum choices. They then employed the patriarchal Islamic- Malay view of men as guardians of women‟s morality and moral choices to appoint their husbands as a buffer against unwanted incursions by others. Nur
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labels her husband as her “bodyguard”. Likewise, Diana talks about the importance of her husband protecting her embodied performance:
“My husband thinks first before he says but the way he speaks to the doctor to me can be harsh. Ya, I mean in my opinion the doctor is doing his professional duties to advise us this and that but from my husband‟s point of view is why, why must we do it? You know ah, so that kind of thing. And he wants a very clear explanation as to why you suggest that option. So if the doctor says induce, the doctor has to tell us very clearly before he is convinced. He needs a lot of convincing first before deciding. He analyses things first before deciding. So for me, I become panic very fast. So I will just say ok to anything that the doctor says. So I keep telling my husband, keep reminding him that if the doctor during the check-up says this and that, you must say no for me. You must say no and defend me.”
Correspondingly, in the previous section I discussed how Diana‟s mother had made her feel insecure about her body. Whereas her mother negates her embodied performance, her husband re-empowers her embodied conduct by placing her in the sexualized light. So, Diana would:
“tell Az (her husband) that my mother said this and that but he will always tell me you look beautiful it‟s ok. So ok, when your husband tells you that you are still beautiful even though you are round like Humpty Dumpty then ok.
I still look good.”
In the same way, Dijah tells me how her husband had tried to appease her sadness towards her stretch marks by saying that he was “the only one who is going to see” it. Islamic thought constructs an image of wives as a source of sexual gratification for the husband (Ong, 1990). It also defines husbands as custodians of women‟s sexuality (Ong, 1990). Such an image of the husband-wife
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relationship was also present in the dominant discourse on Malay maternity outlined in Chapter One. In this instance, such a construction has aided in creating a positive sense of female identity. For my informants, continuing to be seen as a sexualized object is important in the creation of an empowered, confident pregnant subjectivity. The growing body is in contradiction to the norms of emphasized femininity that stresses upon slimness. It is only through a positive affirmation by the male authority of their growing bodies as still sexual, do my informants feel comfortable to break away from the norms of emphasized femininity. Therefore, their husbands assure my informants to accept the changes in their bodies as worthwhile. Their position as good, sexual wives is firmly cemented even as they work their bodies towards becoming successful containers for the baby through the growth of their bodies. In doing so, their husbands legitimate their quest towards becoming the ideal woman who is able to maintain her role as a sexualized wife and good mother as defined by the discourse I uncovered in Chapter One.
Furthermore, as women become more involved with their pregnancies, the domestic division of labor was also reshaped. Such restructuring of the division of domestic labor stems from seeing the pregnant body as ill and weak. Hasanah, for example, utilized the medical conception of the pregnant body as ill to explain her husband doing all the housework:
“because I was very unwell throughout my pregnancy, I couldn‟t really do much so he took on everything”.
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It is interesting to take note that Hasanah is not employed. Dijah, a working woman, also talked about her husband being more sensitive to her needs as a result of his acknowledgement of her as the container for their unborn twins:
“He loves them more than he loves me. I assume because he smokes but ever since I was pregnant he would always go out and smoke because he said it is not good for the babies. He used to smoke when I am around him prior to my pregnancy. So it‟s those little sacrifices and he gives in a lot… There was one time, I had supper which was a mistake. I vomited on the bed. It was very bad. I couldn‟t even run to the toilet. He was like what happened, when he woke up, I was covered in partially digested Indian mee goreng (fried noodles) and then he was very nice, he brought me to the toilet and said, „you go and wash up.‟
Then he cleaned the bed. He woke up and he gave me a sympathetic look. I tried to explain because I felt so bad as he had to wake up the next morning and work. I said I tried to go to the toilet but he said, „it‟s fine, it‟s fine I am not upset with you‟.”
In accepting the discourse that places the pregnant body as a weak container responsible for the fetus, not only did my informants train their embodied performances to meet this demand but used the fact that they have to concentrate their energies towards this discourse to validate the restructuring of the domestic structure.