It happened. I'm pregnant. I'm extremely excited to meet my baby. We're not finding out the gender because I don't think it matters.
I'm in my last stretch now, and it has not been as glamorous as Hilary Duff makes it seem. To be honest, I never thought much about pregnancy despite wanting children. I thought a lot about giving birth and having a child, but I guess my mind skipped over pregnancy for the past 25 years. I feel like not much is said about pregnancy except about the "pregnancy glow" and how "beautiful" it is. I can confidently say, none of that is accurate. Being pregnant is not fun.
My mother-in-law talks a lot about how beautiful she felt when she was pregnant and is always talking about the "glow" I have, but I don't see it. I've also read online a lot about pregnant women never feeling more beautiful, and I have no idea what these people are talking about. It's been awful.
At first, I felt really guilty about it. All I wanted was to be pregnant, and then it happened, and now I hate pregnancy. I just felt like I was being ungrateful, but with the help of my therapist, I reevaluated that frame of mind. I'm allowed to acknowledge that pregnancy sucks and still want a baby. I've compiled a list of things that I wish people talked about more so I was more informed about what I was getting myself into.
The First Trimester
1. The Excessive Spit
Saliva everywhere. Constantly. It's called Ptyalism. Apparently, it's common to develop more spit because of your hormones and nausea. It's disgusting. You'll spend more time spitting than talking in the first trimester. When I wasn't vomiting, I was spitting.
2. Morning Sickness Is Constant
It's not just in the morning, and it's not just once or twice a day. I was vomiting six to seven times a day. In the morning, in the afternoon, in the evening. I had to keep barf bags near me constantly.
The Second Trimester
3. The Swelling
I mean we all saw Kim Kardashian pregnant, but I didn't think it was common or that it would happen to me. The swelling was so bad I couldn't wear shoes. I'm not sure if it was just because of the summer heat or the traveling back and forth from province to province, but it only lasted my second trimester. It made it very hard to move around.
4. Body Image Issues
Or in my case, body regression. You know you're growing a baby, and you know you're going to get bigger; you're growing an entire human, but I just wasn't expecting to feel so awful about myself. I'm not sure if it was because I've struggled so much with my weight in the past or if it's just something normal that happens to a lot of pregnant women. It doesn't help that everyone is constantly commenting on your body. I'm still told that I don't look big which kind of makes me worry about my baby not being big enough. It also makes me feel worse because I've gained double the amount that I'm supposed to in my pregnancy. So, if the weights not going to my belly, where is it going?
5. Heartburn
Once the nausea and excessive spit stopped, the heartburn began and it only got worse the further along I got in my pregnancy. Even if I hadn't eaten in hours, I would wake up with the worst heartburn. I don't normally get heartburn so I'm not sure what is a normal level of pain, but some nights it would make me feel so sick I couldn't sleep for hours. The heartburn follows into the third trimester too, it doesn't just magically go away. Tums has really been my best friend throughout this pregnancy.
Third Trimester
6. Hip & Back Pain
I read about this being a pregnancy symptom. I expected the back pain, but the hip pain really caught me off guard. I wasn't expecting to wake up every night with some sort of pain in my leg and/or hip and have to walk around for a half-hour in the middle of the night to be capable of lying down again. The hip pain, in my opinion, is worse than the back pain. The back pain for me is constant, but when that hip pain comes, it's always with a vengeance.
7. Exhaustion & Insomnia
At the same time. I'm either sleeping for 12 hours straight or not sleeping at all. Don't even ask me why, it could be all the body pains, or the heartburn, or the anxiety. Who knows.
All Trimesters
8. The Isolation
I wasn't kidding about Tums being my best friend, the loneliness is real. I'm not sure if it's just being pregnant in a pandemic or if this is common among most pregnant women, but it's incredibly isolating. It really feels like you're going through it on your own even if you have a great support system. The third trimester has been the worst for this, it might just be the excessive influx of hormones I've been getting. It could also be the disconnect I feel from everyone, or maybe it could be because I no longer feel like myself. I really don't know.
I think we should normalize hating pregnancy, but still loving our baby's. There are good things about pregnancy, like feeling the baby move around. It's wild. There's a whole person inside of me just waiting to come out. What a miracle.
