Being Pregnant & Storytelling

Here’s me. I’m currently seven months pregnant.

I’ve been thinking a lot about being pregnant and doing the work of a storyteller. It’s been a strange, difficult, and wonderful seven months – the time has passed so oddly that I’ve barely noticed it, and yet I’m now about to have a baby, and I wanted to write about what being pregnant and working freelance has been like for me, mostly because I want to know what it’s like for other people, too. I’m not sure if my experiences are completely unique to freelancing in the creative industries, but they’re certainly things that I’ve noticed and would like to talk about.

Being creative while pregnant

Pregnancy is a full body reset. The hormonal changes that I experienced, particularly in my first trimester, were enough to undo any work I’d done on managing my anxiety and mental health, and put me into a state of “survival mode”. This, coupled with nausea, actual vomiting, and ridiculous fatigue meant that for the first four months of pregnancy, I could just about honour the bookings and work that I already had in my diary, and the thought of creating anything new was insurmountably difficult. I genuinely couldn’t think straight. I had story trails to write and a play to redraft and sitting down at my laptop every day felt like fighting through layer after layer of brain fog. When I was booked for a gig, I could retell stories I already had in repertoire, but learning anything new to tell seemed impossible. 

Nothing grew during this time, apart from my waistline. I did not write. I barely picked up a book. I rewatched Brooklyn 99 over and over again, while mainlining salt and vinegar crisps, and could barely concentrate on anything else. I know my body, and brain, were busy elsewhere. This didn’t stop me from feeling terrified that I’d never return to “normal”. I’d always been able to rely on myself to do my job, the thing I’d worked so hard to be able to do. Now, it felt as though my whole being was occupied with something else – something huge – and my brain was just about able to manage the function of living day to day. I couldn’t expect anything more of it.

Being freelance meant that this time was, in some ways, harder than if I’d been in full-time employment, because I was working across so many different outputs, and couldn’t just have a quiet word with one boss. Every room I stepped into, I still needed to be able to be at my best – or, at least, I felt as if I needed to be. However, in many ways I’m so thankful that I was able to manage my workload to some extent, to work during the times of day when my nausea wasn’t so bad, to work from bed, in pyjamas, to reschedule workshops with the hope that, in a month or so, I’d be past the worst of the sickness. I don’t know how other pregnant people manage this time – people who are in full-time workplaces, teachers, doctors, anyone with a job that requires them to be on their feet all day – particularly when the received wisdom is that no one is supposed to know you’re pregnant yet.

Luckily, coming into my second trimester, I’ve found a huge burst of creative energy that, honestly, I desperately needed. I’m directing a show – Y Mabinogi with Struts & Frets – and, until recently, was in rehearsals for my first play, Huno, which ran at The Other Room in July. I can write again, and my brain isn’t a foggy, miserable place of operating on survival mode any longer. I remember being told by another storyteller that she found pregnancy to be a hugely creative time, and feeling deeply jealous of this while in my first trimester, but since then I’ve found some of what she said to be true for me, too. While I still require regular naps, regular snacks, and somewhere comfortable to plonk my ever-growing belly, I have ideas again. Lots of ideas. So many that I’m scared I won’t have time to get them all done before the baby comes.

Telling stories while pregnant

It’s weird being pregnant. For a while, you can’t tell anyone, even though most of the time you would quite like to exist with your head down a toilet. Then, shortly after that’s passed (if you’re lucky – for some people it never does), nothing that you own fits you properly, but you don’t look pregnant yet, just larger than before in the tummy area, but you feel the need to start “outing” yourself so that you can explain your need to run to the toilet every thirty minutes. Finally, you develop the bump, and suddenly everyone is staring at you (and talking to you about it: I got asked a few days ago, “Is it a baby?” Of all the questions…).

I imagine this is challenging enough when you’re in the same working environment day in, day out, but at least people get used to you being pregnant. I work in different spaces all the time, and this means constantly managing that moment of realisation: “Oh, she’s pregnant.” Enjoyably, children and young people rarely seem to notice that I’m pregnant, even now, although when they do notice they’re the first ones to ask questions about it. (In one recent storytelling session, a six-year-old boy suddenly gazed in awe at my belly and breathed delightedly, “A baby!”.) Some adults like to ask a lot of questions right off the bat, which can be overwhelming when it happens daily – when are you due/do you know what you’re having/oh love how far gone are you? I’ve had this conversation six times already today…

Then, there’s the uniqueness of being a performer. Standing up on a stage to tell stories while pregnant means negotiating a new range of emotions about being in my body, a body that’s constantly changing, in a space, being looked at by other people. I’m used to my body being a performance tool. It’s the same body that it was before, but it’s a lot rounder and my breath control isn’t what it used to be. It’s more than that, though: the visibility of being pregnant brings a new flavour to some performance spaces – telling stories about pregnancy, and birth, for example. Since being pregnant, I’ve performed my shows Changeling and Not Maid, Nor Widow, Nor Wife, both of which contain stories about women getting pregnant, giving birth and, in one case, performing a violent and ultimately fatal abortion. Telling these stories while pregnant feels very different to me now – and, I imagine, to the audience. While performing Changeling, ways of describing a character’s experience of a joyful, uncomplicated pregnancy that I’d used before now felt completely disingenuous, and it was fun to play with complaining about being pregnant while actually being pregnant. While performing Not Maid, Nor Widow, Nor Wife, a show about the women murdered by men in Victorian ballads, often because they’re pregnant, I chose not to acknowledge my pregnancy at all, as by then it was pretty obvious, and also the material we perform in the show is difficult enough without me complicating it with my own experience.

Being in a changing body as a storyteller has deepened my understanding of some of the stories I work with – stories I’ve been telling for years. It’s matured them and given me a greater appreciation for the material I work with and the wisdom it holds. I am excited for the new depths these stories will hold for me when my baby comes, and when there’s a whole new range of emotions to explore and eventually to share with story-listeners.

Working in creative spaces while pregnant

Ultimately, the arts still have a lot of catching up to do in terms of making spaces accessible. I’m mostly thinking about rehearsal rooms here. A lot of the time, when performers go into rehearsal rooms and performance spaces, we’re expected to be on it. Top of our game. Give 110%. Because, you know, there’s always someone waiting in the wings. If you’re not going to nail it, someone else will instead.

This is a deeply problematic attitude, brings out the best in no one, and at its worst is actively harmful to most people at some point, whether you have a physical disability, mental health struggles, challenges in your personal life, or – like me – are pregnant.

I’ve broadly had positive experiences working while pregnant: once bookers know I’m pregnant, they always ask me what they can do to help make things easier for me. I’ve had storytelling sessions in schools cut shorter than originally planned, to give me a bit of breathing space in between different groups. Sat in a rehearsal room doing tablework on my script for a week and a half, I was given lots of pillows and the best chair (what more can a pregnant person ask for other than the best chair in the room?!). I’m the director of the next show I’ll be working on – my last big project before maternity leave – and I’m determined to create a space where performers can work safely and creatively without needing to manufacture this “110%” thing at all times. This is as important for me as it is for them – we’ll be doing six days of rehearsals per week for three weeks before the show tours, and I’ll be eight months pregnant at the time. It’s nice to think that I’m the person in charge of that rehearsal space: I can set expectations, and the expectations I’m going to set are for a genuinely responsive, gentle, creative, supportive working environment. As well as the freedom to work from a large bouncy ball.

I’ve learned, too, that part of it is also about advocating for myself. As a freelancer, I am ultimately responsible for taking on work and putting in place what I need to make things right for myself. I’ve always been able to rely on my physical health – a privilege, I know – and I don’t have that luxury at the moment. I was too proud (and inexperienced) to think that I’d need to make any adaptations for myself during my pregnancy at the beginning, but I’ve had to reassess as the months have gone past, and I’ve got slower and more easily fatigued. I’m not camping this festival season, for example. I also probably need to stop assuming that I can waddle around a festival field carrying three instruments and a massive backpack all day. I need to be careful about how much I schedule for myself. I need to give myself lots and lots of breaks – and water – and always have biscuits on hand.

It should never all be on the individual, though. I’m only going to be pregnant for a short amount of time and – hopefully – won’t have any lasting physical issues that I’ll need to bear in mind when managing my workload going forwards. Lots of other people have to think about this every day, and advocate for adjustments for themselves constantly, in an arts environment that still seems to be operating on the assumption that everyone is 21 years old, has the energy of a Duracell bunny, and has no personal responsibilities that could affect their creativity and capacity for work. The creative industries, collectively, need to advocate for better and more inclusive spaces, where we don’t expect everybody to be able to work 15-hour days, where adjustments can be made and there’s enough time and resources to accommodate those adjustments. And I need to advocate for myself better and ask for the things that will make my experience of working while pregnant easier. I’m remarkably lucky that I’ve never had long-term physical issues or a chronic illness that has affected my working life before. Being pregnant provides a small insight into what it’s like for people working in the creative industries who do have those challenges. 

These are just my experiences. I’m interested to know other people’s, too. I’ve read some great stuff recently about people’s experiences of pregnancy and early motherhood while working professionally in the arts – as well as some absolute shockers.

That brings me onto the final thing I’ve wanted to write about.

Having a baby and being a freelance storyteller

So, there’s an adventure coming up: the next phase of life. How do I continue to work creatively with a baby? How do I juggle childcare and the demands of a freelance career that seem, always, to be rooted in being as flexible as possible? How do I balance my desire to keep working, to be creative, to write and make and tell stories, with being a mother? 

I don’t have answers to any of this at the moment. I’m going to have to discover them with time. I am really interested in other people’s experiences, particularly if they’ve been the primary caregiver post-birth. I’m really interested in creating some spaces where we can talk about all of this – as women, people who have given birth, storytellers and other creatives – and how we can support each other.

Four generations of storytelling women on the Maes of the Eisteddfod Genedlaethol, August 2022