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The Internet Still Thinks I'm Pregnant

2022-11-02 | 🔗

Amy Pittman was thrilled about her first pregnancy. She immediately downloaded a pregnancy app, and she was charmed when it showed her baby had grown from the size of a lavender bud to the size of a chocolate chip. When she miscarried, she deleted the app and the chocolate chip avatar, but the internet never caught on. Seven months later, Amy received a sample of baby formula. Although she had deleted the pregnancy app, the baby formula company didn’t know — and thought she was a new mom. She laughed — what else could she do — and loved the idea that her chocolate chip was out there, trolling the internet.

After her miscarriage, Amy had a son, Simon. We check in with Amy about life with a preschooler, the lasting impact of grief and the strangeness of an internet that won’t let you let go.

This is an unofficial transcript meant for reference. Accuracy is not guaranteed.
This. Podcast is supported by american. Express and razzie you've had a long day that isn't going to stop you, because that place you been dying to try has an opening to night and your friend you ve been dying. c is free tonight, you go. The audience is perfect. You split in appetizer, you even get dessert definitely worth the wait when you're with amex. It's not if it's going to happen, but when american express don't live life with bet. The, from the new. times, I'm Anna Martin. This is modern, love, A few months ago I got an email alert for my credit card company. It told me I spent four hundred
others at mgm grand casino in las vegas, which was impossible, because I was here at the office in new york city working on an episode of this show so called my dad freaking out and he was like a game. Someone stole your identity. Where is your credit card of nation online- and I was like I mean it's everywhere be thinking about just how much of myself my personal information is floating around on the internet, Amy pigment wrote an essay about how disconcerting it is to realize just how much of yourself shared online. It's called the internet still thinks I'm pregnant, and it's read by sam des eaux. I found out. I was pregnant the normal way I peed on a stick.
my husband and I had been trying to conceive for a long time and during a difficult year so I held off looking at the stick for as long as I could to give it plenty of time to think about its answer I was showering viewed of. magenta plus sign materialised, like many twentysomethings I haven't up for just about the important thing in my life. I have a health tracker that I ignore a budget tracker that I ignore and up to pay my bills that I try to ignore and a period tracker that I'm obsessed with Every week I will literally tracked my mood on the period tracker, along with my core temperature, the viscosity of various fluids. How often we were having sex?
I have had more intimate knowledge of my reproductive behavior than my husband or any doctor on the day of my positive pregnancy test. I logged into my period tracker to share the good news when I did. It suggest the pregnancy up. I downloaded it immediately. I could see how big my babies hands were look. I had to see what new and weird things my body would do in the coming weeks. All it asked of me was some basic personal information, a mail address age and date of my last point yet I typed in all that in full without a second thought, according my my He was the size of lavender bud tiny perfect and mine, I must carried a month later
It happened around two, a m on december, twenty seventh, two days after our christmas day, announcement to families that we were expecting. I have the perfect miscarriage, I'm not saying that the doctor used those exact words while she had her hand between my legs, he winced with empathy and confirmed that it was unlikely that they could have saved the pregnancy. Then she asked me if, husband knew? Where I was? I didn't blame her for her concern, my hair. as unwashed and I was swimming in my husband's dirty sweats, already made a three. I am walmart run for feminine products and spend hours rotating. tween my room, the couch in the bathroom trying to ease my europe haines. While I waited for the clinic to open at ten a m
ass. I was fine, I told the doktor again after the doktor laughed. The nurse asked me if I was okay. I assured her was fine, which was true, the most seemingly real thing about my pregnancy oddly enough had been the law under bud avatar and my pregnancy app that had grown to the size of a chocolate chip before dying. When I got home, from the clinic I opened the app and terminated my virtual pregnancy. The up immediately responded with consoling email and cleared my data. It was then, when the chocolate chip avatar disappear that I finally let go and cried. I spent the next few weeks assuring people. I was fine, one in three first pregnancies and in miscarriage, I would say- or I never really felt pregnant.
But, as the months passed, I felt less and less fine about the miscarriage. I found myself crying at unexpected moments. responding to defensively when someone asked if my husband and I were going to try to have children, meanwhile? All those milestones I had been anticipating came and went. First ultra sound fingernail development, reveal as each non milestone. Tact by I lay awake at night, imagining the little chocolate chip growing to the size of a walnut and then a pizza. Sadness descended upon me. I hadn't realised that when I entered my
mason into the pregnancy app. The company would then share it with companies targeting new mothers. Although I logged my miscarriage into the arab and stop using it that change in status apparently wasn't passed along seven months after my miscarriage mere weeks before my due date, I came home from work to find a package on my welcome that it was a box of baby formula bearing the note we may all do it differently, but the joy of parenthood is something we all share. I took the box inside and read the congratulatory card that gently urged soon to be mothers toward formula feeding snapped a picture and texted it to my best friend. Well, the internet still thinks I'm pregnant. I wrote maybe the male man now too then I laughed, because what
could I do it And ludicrous that the only remaining evidence of my pregnancy was an erroneous lease sent product I'd now were intended to use from people. I hadn't ever told and accompany I'd, never heard of. The internet had no idea that our baby had died. part of me liked the idea that a data hungry entity like the internet, which is so intimately involved in every trivial aspect of our lives, had completely missed most important news of all. I also liked them. Baby remained a piece of living data to someone as far as the intern It is concerned my pregnancy proceeded normally and I gave birth and became a mother. Last month, too years from now, it will probably assume I'm dealing with party training and send me samples of training pants and in
Five years it might come calling for offers of school supplies. For my kindergarten, students my little chocolate chip long since deleted Indeed out there somewhere drifting. around in cyberspace, endlessly trolling, the internet after the break I talk to any about what it was like to get pregnant again. Once the last I'm u freely connected with someone on a day in harmony. Wants you to discover what real connection feels like they know that data.
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just a little bit of me, so it sounds fantastic vaughn vreeland give us your. Take. I've tried every single one of genitive pies for this year and let me tell you that caramel apple pie, it's so delicious, like a candy bar, I had to buy. It's got this shortbread like crust, so you don't have to roll out pie, dough so Turkey geared to argue pay your drive rind. When will it be possible? Tat, love asked about very folks, no matter, what kind of thanksgiving you're cooking you can find the recipes you needed and whitey cooking dot com, slash thanksgiving, the Hello amy How are you I'm great so how many
do you have now? I have my two stepson and my son Simon, but they're all mine. We have them all full time, wow, three voice. What simon like he's so smart, He just turned four. He told me the other day. You know we were looking at videos about animals and one popped up. He goes. Oh, that's a giant isopods and I was like how do you know that he's a In that way, I don't even know about is what is that it's like a rowley polio that lives in the water my god, Simon he's, a future biologist insect studier he wants to work was sharks. He says he wants to be assured.
Scientists- and I am sure he will end and you got pregnant with Simon after your miscarriage brain, exactly yeah. Tell me more about that. We started trying a few months after the knocker pregnant for two years, two years almost to the day, so my very first due date was august, fair and my son's due date was august. while the day that salmon was born. Were you also think about you're, miss care. which was that somewhere in your consciousness. That day I mean it's. Always it's always a little present I mean we, we had a beautiful baby boy, but he doesn't replace the baby. That's lost he's just an additional baby. So
I must step mom to two awesome boys and I'm a mom to two babies, one I got to hold and one I never got to hm. Did you know any one else who'd been through what you'd been through it in my mom is carried her first baby figures before I was I knew that ms carried was a likelihood because we know we grew up with it. My brothers and I used to imagine if it girl or a boy, and I think we settled on the name David at one point, but that child was always kind of like a part of our family narrative. You know she would just tell us been trying to have a baby before and the baby died before it was born, and then we got to have you as you got older. Did your mom continue to talk about her miscarriage? No, it was something that was pretty exclusive to childhood. I dont think we talked
in depth. Until I miscarried and then ass, the years went on really it was. How did you grieve? How did you move on? When did winded? You decide to start trying for a baby again, and you know I asked her in a fairly recently as she was decide about it, and she said yes and I think what I was looking for was. Is there an end to the grief. And I don't think there is- and I think it's ok in. I think that you morning as you need to end it doesn't change with time. The grief gets less or less potent, maybe but there's always there's always kind of her. A wondering, there's always are
Like a longing, a longing for what so the way that the way that I can you think about, it is my first pregnancy that child be six this year, it's almost like the grief ages with you, because, with every passing year, there's a past there's a milestone, that's missed! There's a birthday, you don't get to celebrate, and so you grieve something very abstract. You know. I think there might be people who would say that it's not a real loss because it such an abstract thought, but because the grief is so potent you have to honour the grief I went to my parents in march, and I had made them an embroidery. Hope said: I'm this big with a little trouble. embroidered in the middle and I thought
and while I was at their house and is the first time I had seen it for six years- and I was very sad very unexpectedly so I wrote you know I mean journal that day. You know. I am sad today. I feel, like all the healed places in my heart have been shaken. And then, the next day I was laughing you know, because my four year old knows what a giant ice What is you, you, never know. What's gonna change your day, our lives are so dynamic, so I'm sorry, I'm sad and sometimes I think about this alternate reality where my first baby is a data point. Trolling the internet- and it makes me laugh because that would be my baby. Maybe he would be the baby that's out their causing just enough mischief to make her mom laugh
amy. Thank you so much for letting us in I saw appreciated your time. Of course, and the next modern love a man with a on illness proposes a plan to his sister, a very long bike trip He had gone on a big chip from new york to florida. Third seem like let's go from floor, California- and it didn't seem at all crazy, other men, that he was sick. How area? daikon is pushed through for the people he loved next week, a modern love,
Modern love is produced by Julia Botero, christina Josiah, illicit dudley and HANS buteux, its edited by Sarah saracens. this episode was mixed by dan Powell, who also created the modern, loveday music digital production. By making much nl globally, an especial thanks to Anna diamond at item, The modern love column is edited by Daniel jones meals, is that it or of modern love projects, I'm gonna, Martin, thanks for listening.
Transcript generated on 2022-11-12.