When you tell other women you’re pregnant, their faces light
up with joy for you. They might even hug you or scream YAAAAAAAAY!!! and jump up and down. Then if they’ve been blessed
with such an experience themselves, they will start doling out the words of
wisdom. It usually starts like this:
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| Alcohol-free champagne tastes about as good as it sounds. "Mi-faux-sa," anyone? (Faux-mosa?) Yeah, I didn't think so. |
“Enjoy every minute of it! … Pregnancy is great! … You’re
going to love it! … It’s so amazing what your body can do.”
Their words are true… but they’re not true all the time. What
they don’t tell you is that being pregnant also really sucks. A lot. Most of
the time.
It’s not something people say publically very often. It’s a
truth that good friends only admit in whispers to each other and then sigh with
relief that someone else feels the same way.
I feel guilty saying it, especially when so many
women struggle to get pregnant and cannot. And it’s not like either of my
pregnancies have been difficult. I got a little nauseous, but never once threw
up. I was never put on bed rest. I never experienced any complications or
high-risk situations. Pregnancy doesn’t get much easier than mine. So you might
think I have no right to feel this way, and you’re probably correct.
Yes, there are some parts of pregnancy I do enjoy, like feeling
those little flutters and kicks. But those flutters and kicks quickly turn into
your pancreas being shoved up your throat.
And how’s this for a bit of TMI? When you’re pregnant, you
can’t poop. Yeah. I’m talking about poop, people, because to quote my first
O.B., “poop is important.” Yet no one tells you that once you pee on that
stick, you won’t poop again for nine months.
Also, your hips get super loose in preparation for birth. My
hips got disjointed and rotated early in my first pregnancy and never fully
recovered. Now that I’m pregnant again, the pain is sometimes unbearable. I’m
usually a pretty tough cookie when it comes to pain, and it’s got to be
excruciating before I will even pop an Advil. But this pain brings tears to my eyes
several times a week. It hurts to stand, sit or lie down. If I sit on the
floor, sometimes it takes a while for me to get up. Yes, I’m the old lady from the
“I’ve fallen and I can’t get up!” commercial and I’m only 34!
Last week, I hobbled into the family room,
and Hubs looked up with concern.
CONCERNED HUSBAND: Are you okay, sweetie?
ME: I just took two Tylenol with a MiraLAX chaser.
HORRIFIED HUSBAND: Um… sorry, baby. Good luck with that.
Pregnancy also means a drastic change in diet, at least for
me. I want to eat fish without consulting my handy chart. I want to drink wine and Red Bull and Diet Pepsi. (Okay, so I still have a little bit of Diet Pepsi,
but I feel really guilty about it! I want to savor every sip without wondering who’s looking and judging.) I want to eat turkey sandwiches without
worrying about sinister bacteria. I want to have a beer with the Hubs on a hot
summer day. I want to stop calculating milligrams of caffeine. I want to eat
cookie dough and brownie batter, raw eggs be damned!
Scrutinizing everything you put in your mouth is a huge pain
in the ass, and it’s a main reason why most weight-loss diets fail. Except this
isn’t a weight-loss diet. It’s a “if you’re a good mom, you’ll do this for your
baby diet,” which comes with way more guilt, judgment and anxiety.
And is it so bad that I just want my body back? Yes, I know
I didn’t gain a lot of weight when I was preggers for Q, but when I do the
math, I realize I did gain over 20% of my body weight. That’s a HUGE size increase. And I’m on track to gain more the second time around. At nineteen
weeks (roughly four months) preggers, I’m as big as I was at six months last
time. Not fab for the ol’ ego, no matter what the scale says.
Now that some of you are shocked and appalled by my distain
for being pregnant, let me assure you that I love this baby. I love knowing
that Baby Dragon is safe and sound inside my belly and with me wherever I go. I
love that we’re adding another child to our family. I just don’t love being
pregnant about 90% of the time.
I’m not a bad mom, but I’m an honest one. Is it October yet?
