A young East London writer’s experience with unexpected pregnancy and motherhood prompted her to write a collection of poems called Milk Fever.The book was published last month and probes uncomfortable truths about traumatic births and post-partum depression.
Gonubie resident Megan Ross, 29, who studied journalism at Rhodes University after matriculating from Hudson Park High School, said motherhood had not been part of her life plan when she and her partner Chad Goodall discovered they were going to have a baby while living in Thailand.
“I had planned not to have kids and had applied for a Fulbright scholarship and was planning to go to New York, but fell pregnant when I was 25,” said Ross.“It was hard to move from a global city like Bangkok back to East London, where there are quite conservative attitudes and a number of people were shocked I was not married.”
Ross wrote her first poem three days after her son was born. “I had quite a traumatic birth – you lose all your dignity – and the poem was a way to make sense of what had just happened to me. The collection grew from there.”Six months of debilitating post-partum depression followed, during which time the young writer battled to connect with her baby.
“I just found so much dishonesty about how young women experience motherhood and the expectations placed on mothers.“It really obliterated my sense of self and the collection was a way to reshape my identity as a young mother, artist and writer. We do all these things to women [who give birth] in hospital, then send them home with a baby and then pathologise women who react with negative emotions.”Ross said new mothers should be told that if they are feeling disconsolate, they should feel free to say so and be urged to get help. “When I told people I was not enjoying this [motherhood] there was so much stigma and shame attached to it.” As part of the Cape Town launch of Milk Fever, which is published by indie poetry publisher uHlanga Press, Ross gave a talk to UCT medical studentsHaving launched Milk Fever at Cape Town’s Book Lounge, performed a reading at Zeitz MOCAA Museum of contemporary art and led a panel at the Franschhoek Literary Festival, Ross is gearing up for the Eastern Cape part of her book tour, which will take place in Port Elizabeth, Grahamstown, East London and the Wild Coast next month.The writer – who won the Brittle Paper Award for fiction and was runner-up for the 2016 Short Story Day Africa Prize and last year’s National Arts Festival Short Sharp Stories award – is also a graphic designer and journalist.
She is represented by the Pontas Literary and Film Agency in Barcelona. Milk Fever is available at Bargain Books and on Amazon for R180. —barbarah@dispatch.co.za..