Ode to Zwangere Vrouw | Ode to pregnant women

This text was translated using AI and may contain errors. If you have suggestions or comments, please contact us at info.ode@amsterdammuseum.nl.

Dear mothers, grandmothers, great-grandmothers and all mothers before that,

As a man, what do you know about being pregnant right now? Less than you, that much is certain. Yet I, like everyone else owe my existence to an almost endless series of mothers, who for nine months carried with them a growing foetus, with - I imagine - all the hopes and expectations, fears and discomforts that come with it.

It may be called “happy anticipation,” but pregnancy and childbirth are obviously not without risks to one's own body and that of the child-to-be. In the past - without modern medical science - those risks were even greater. When Ingitta Thoveling made her will with her husband, the painter Govert Flinck, in 1646, it emphasized that she was heavily pregnant:

Govert Flinck ende Ingitta Thovelinghs sijn huisvrou, echteluijden, wonende alhier ’t Amsterdam op de Lauriergracht, mij notaris wel bekent. Gesont van lichaem ende gaende ende staende met ons op der aerden, doch Ingitta opt uuterste swanger gaende.

Healthy, but heavily pregnant. Ingitta was by no means the only woman in the seventeenth century to make her will just before giving birth. The risks were so high that before going into labor, you  better had your affairs in order. With Ingitta, things worked out well; she gave birth to a healthy boy, Nicolaes Flinck, and survived.

Despite all these risks, women were (and sometimes still are) quite forcefully expected to have children, often from religious and patriarchal ideas about women's roles. The right to abortion has only recently been acquired in some parts of the world, but is also already firmly under pressure. The pregnancy corset in the collection of the Amsterdam Museum shows that pregnancy was something you kept hidden for as long as possible.

As a father of two sons, I've experienced two pregnancies and deliveries up close and know, there's not much you can do except support and not get in the way. That last one, though, is a heartfelt piece of advice for all men: better stay out of the way.

We owe our existence to all those pregnant women, who risked their own heart and soul to give life to all the generations after them. That deserves great respect, but also respect for whatever choice women make in that. Their body, their choice.

Tom