'Expecting Amy' on HBO Max: Amy Schumer breaks down as she tries juggling between her career and pregnancy
Popular culture portrays pregnancy as a wonderful period in a woman's life. It has been glorified and celebrated by showing the expecting mothers attending Lamaze classes with their partners and not to mention the glowing skin. But very rarely do we get to see the true, unfiltered, raw side of pregnancy. Nobody talks about the morning sickness, nausea, and the major changes that the body undergoes during this time. In 'Expecting Amy, a three-part docuseries which documents Amy Schumer's complicated pregnancy, we get an up-close shot of the joys and pains that come alongside being pregnant.
If you know anything about Amy Schumer's brand of comedy, you would know that she is over-the-top and never holds back. So, when she found out in 2018 that she was pregnant with her husband Chris Fischer, she decided to document the entire journey. When she discovered her pregnancy, she had little time to soak in all the joy because she was on a comedy tour. The 'Inside Amy Schumer' star not only finished her tour across several cities in the country but also managed to make her way to the Kavanaugh protests that were happening at that time.
We hear Amy saying that although she knew that while she was attending the protests she was at a very crucial period of her pregnancy (9-weeks), and could potentially be putting her pregnancy at risk, she, however, couldn't stay back because she wanted to tell her child that she did everything in her power to stop Kavanaugh. Thankfully the protests went smoothly, and Amy was safe and sound. While on the surface it looks like the comedian is able to effortlessly juggle between her work, activism and pregnancy, it is far from the truth.
We see Amy frequently throwing up ever since she got pregnant and complaining of nausea. But she insisted on powering through it and going to shows and performing. Her producer was so impressed with one of her sets at a performance that he wondered if she wanted to shoot a special based on it. Amy excitedly hops onto his idea, and immediately shoots a mail to Netflix with a proposal for her standup special. Voila! before you know it, Amy gets the green light from Netflix for the special. So she begins preparing herself for the taping. She scouts for a locating with her team and then gets notes on her performance, etc.
As she continued preparing for her special, her vomiting worsened. On the day of her taping, she threw up for five hours straight, She was immediately rushed to the ER, where the doctors diagnosed her with hyperemesis gravidarum. Hyperemesis gravidarum is a severe form of nausea and vomiting that affects pregnant women. We later see Amy breaking down as she expresses her anger at the people who glorified pregnancy and made it seem like everything was fine. She cries about how she is struggling to strike a balance between caring for herself and managing her career.
Despite her complicated pregnancy, Amy continued working and fulfilled her work commitments while finding a way to take care of herself. In May 2019, she gave birth to a baby boy named Gene. The docuseries captures all the crucial moments in her pregnancy that led up to Gene's birth. 'Expecting Amy' is certainly a great watch to understand the struggles of complicated pregnancy and debunk everything that popular culture has fed us about pregnancy.
'Expecting Amy' is available for streaming on HBO Max.
