NaNoWriMo Expert: Pregnant characters in fiction

A NaNoer on the forums was asking about how to write about a young first time mother, during her pragnancy, if you have never been pregnant yourself.

Here is the answer I gave:

I wish NaNo had the 2006 archives up now. Last year for my NaNo my MC was a teenager pregnant with her first baby (a result of rape), and I had started a thread asking the same question as you. In about 4 days that thread got over 200 responses, and it helped me greatly in writing my NANoNovel last year. If they had the archive up I'd send you to that thread cause the advice was just amazing on it.

My story lasted for about a 15 month period, from just before the rape, to about 3 months after the birth when the baby dead. (The baby died in the end, which was totally not what I had planned when I started writing). The story focused on her dealing with her parents just having gotten a divorce, at the same time this happened to her, so her parents were to busy fighting with each other to really bother with her or what had happened to her. She started thinking that everything was her fault: her parents divorce, her being raped... she became really depressed. To make matters worse, my story was set in the 1600's when divorce was taboo, and unwed teenage mothers were considered to be witches. She was living in a small but very religious community, so she also had to hide her pregnancy from the villagers.

When I took on the project I thought it's be simple. Than when NaNo started and I started writing I realized, I had no idea what she was going through mental or physically because I've never had any kids yet (hopefully someday). That’s how I ended up on the NaNo forums in a panic asking for anyone who had been there/done that and could tell me what I should be having her feeling and thinking and doing.

I can't remember all the advice that they gave me, but I do remember that one of the most common responses was that it was common for a first time mother to start having scary nightmares about her baby. Stuff like it was born a monster or deformed or died or was Satan. So many people responded to say that they couldn’t stand the nightmares that I ended up including that fact in my story. I had my girl waking up screaming at night, because she was having dreams that her baby was a dragon and eat her right after it was born. Each time she had the dream I kept having it get worse and worse. And than it terrified her so bad that she didn't dare to leave her room anymore, afraid that demons were waiting outside her door. (A common belief in the 1600's was that demons were sent by Satan to cause bad dreams)

When she started to "show" I had her panicking and trying to hid it.

A lot of the responses also mentioned morning sickness... they said that the first few months they were so sick that they couldn't eat and vomited all day long. So I had my girl getting really sick as well, but she made out like she had a cold because she was hiding her pregnancy from people.


Another common response was that breastfeeding is really hard on the first time mother, and often painful and in some young mothers can make them resent their babies. I wrote this into my story as well, and ended up having her scared of her baby, believing that it really was the baby from her nightmares and really was trying to kill her, so she stopped taking care of it.


I think writing that story was the most emotional experience I've ever had writing any story. I don't know if it was because I got so caught up in writing her emotions or if it was the rush to get 50,000 words down before the end of the 30 days.

I don't know if any of this is any help or not, but that's what I did last year.



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Copper Cockeral
Need To Publish Your NaNoNovel?
So You Want To Play Vampires?



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