There are many wonderful aspects of being a woman. It's amazing to get free drinks just for wearing a low-cut top, and the potential for getting out of speeding tickets by crying is always nice. It's also great to be an intelligent woman who is able to prove herself and shock the hell out of anyone who thinks women are the lesser sex. I am incredibly proud to be a woman and love many of the things that come with the territory. That being said, I gotta say... being pregnant kind of blows.
I was always really excited to be pregnant. I facetiously (but semi-seriously) begged my husband for a long time to just "knock me up" so that I could have 9 months escape from mind-numbing cramps and could have an excuse to eat whatever and however much I want. Also, I wanted an excuse to buy baby clothes, and God knows my sister's daughters don't need anymore dresses. Auntie spoils them. Unfortunately, pregnancy has not turned out to be all I wished for.
When I actually found out I was pregnant it was the day after Thanksgiving. It was a very unexpected surprise, but I was elated. I cried for about 15 minutes, called my husband to tell him, and then called my sister to confirm that the 3 beers I had drank the night before weren't going to make my baby grow up stupid. This euphoria lasted for about two weeks, and amid a bit of other drama where my doctor thought I might have miscarried (everything turned out to be fine, they just misjudged how far along I was), the symptoms started.
I first thought I might have been pregnant because I was getting dizzy all the time. After it was confirmed, the nausea started. I have to say, both my sisters experienced morning sickness with their pregnancies and I always sympathized, but secretly thought that it wouldn't happen to me or that I could handle it if it did. Uh, no. I called in to work several times and when I did make it in I frequently had to just sit with my head down on my desk. The only food I could tolerate was Ginger Ale and Smuckers Uncrustables. I threw up every morning and then spent the rest of the day with such horrifying nausea that I could barely function.
The worst part? MOST people only experience this crap the first trimester. Three months is definitely long enough of a punishment, but mine goes beyond that. The nausea eventually tapered off around week 15, but I still continued to barf in the sink every morning until my third trimester. That is roughly 6 months of barf. Now that I'm in my 7th month, I puke maybe once a week or so. I can handle it, but when I have to hear stories from my mother and mother-in-law about how they were never sick a day of any pregnancy, I have to control my rage. Seriously, my mother had four kids and my mother-in-law had SEVEN, and neither of them had ANY morning sickness? That's just not fair. If I didn't love them, I would hate them.
Speaking of rage, the pregnancy hormones have basically made me a psycho. I live on a soapbox in my normal every day life, but I usually don't approach strangers with these thoughts. Pregnancy hormones take you to a whole new level where you no longer care about hurting people's feelings, because they are doing something stupid to endanger your child. I've told a stranger that he "parked like an asshat" for almost hitting my car in a parking lot. I've confronted a guy at work who was tailgating me on the freeway at 80 mph and told him to "stop driving like a piece of crap". I recited California law to some girls who were smoking in front of a restaurant and called them out for being rude, stinky, jerks. It's been kind of liberating, but honestly feeling angry all the time is mentally exhausting. I miss being passive and quietly cynical.
The other aspects of pregnancy that I've experienced have been equally pleasant. You don't think anything could be worse than throwing up every single day until you pee your pants while you do it. Seriously. I am not someone who has a great history of bladder control (stories for another time), so it just seems cruel that pregnancy would naturally lower my ability even further. I've peed my pants because of puking, laughing, sneezing, and bending, and I totally almost crapped my pants in the car on the way home one time because the baby was doing a dance on my intestines. It is so NOT RIGHT.
You also fart a lot more, and at unexpected times. I sneezed at work and it totally made me fart at the same time, and I was hardly even embarrassed by it because I was so tired. Because babies make you tired. Even though you could just be sitting there, doing nothing, you're growing a frickin' person inside of you and it is exhausting. Oh, and the eating whatever I want? No. Not quite. When everything, including water, gives you heartburn and gut rot, there really is no pleasure in eating, and chances are it will just make you smelly and cranky. Why my husband still wants to sleep with me is a mystery at this point.
Now, don't get me wrong. I am fully appreciative of the miracle of life going on inside my body, and feeling the baby move is pretty much the coolest (and weirdest) thing I've ever experienced... until she punches me in the bladder and makes me pee on my couch. But I just feel really betrayed by how many people I know who have been pregnant and didn't make stronger attempts at conveying the difficulty of the whole process.
I'm not even a mom yet and I'm mentally exhausted. When I'm not being kept awake by back pain and "practice contractions", I'm worrying about whether my baby is going to be born disfigured or with a shitty attitude. The idea of the birth itself absolutely terrifies me, too. As if pushing a human being the size of a watermelon out your vagina isn't already a horrifying thought, you also have the delightful possibility of pooping on the delivery table in front of a room full of people, and developing hemmorhoids the size of golf balls. The pain involved is the least of my worries, strangely enough.
Point being that this is no cake walk. More complaints to come later. I still have two months left, after all.
No comments:
Post a Comment