Anne's pregnancy and its discontents....

As the comments about the strip wherein Annie talks about how unsure she is about being pregnant again remind us, a lot of women are fairly worried about how the child will turn out. Worrying that the new life coming into the world might not be a healthy, happy one is something that Annie shares with most mothers of the world; it's in this light that her self-castigation about the youngest having six fingers on each hand might be profitably be re-examined. As you will recall, she'd originally thought that a genetic fluke that nobody else cared about was a sign that her efforts were not enough; it took some time but she got over it by the subtle masterstroke of ascribing her fears to the delusion that she could control the world around her. Let's contrast her fear for her children's future with the next pregnancy we end up seeing: the one in which April came into the picture. As I recall, Elly spent exactly five seconds pointing out the potential for birth defects; the rest of the time was spent pointing out how much she'd be inconvenienced.