So…I Hate Being Pregnant

This pregnancy (check out this post if you missed my announcement) was planned (potentially over-planned). We knew when we got married that we wanted kids. We started trying after being married for a little while and I cried for several months when it was just not happening. Those 14 days of waiting each month were torture. I even drafted this post about the mommy club in frustration before we conceived, then decided to publish it anyways. So I was more then a little surprised when the test finally came back positive and my response in the bathroom was “Oh @#$%.”

You see, I was supposed to be excited about this, obviously. It wasn’t a surprise pregnancy. We had been planning for months so things were financially on track. I had also been taking prenatal vitamins for months. But I didn’t feel excited. In fact my first thought was, are we ready for this?, even though we had discussed this exact question months before.

What I did feel for the first trimester was sick, exhausted, and emotionally conflicted. I didn’t expect to hate being pregnant. I will add that even though I’m not a fan of being pregnant, we are still incredibly grateful to be blessed with a healthy baby and know how lucky we are to have had a relatively short journey to becoming pregnant.

Here are the top ten reasons I hate being pregnant:

1. Everyone expects you to be excited. There is a version of pregnancy that I expected and most other people expect: you will be glowing and deliriously happy about the new life growing inside you. I didn’t feel that way. In fact it was hard to tell other people about the pregnancy because I felt like everyone else was happier about it then I was. And everyone expected me to be thrilled as well. While admitting that you aren’t feeling well physically is okay, it seems taboo to express feelings of being conflicted and confused during pregnancy. I didn’t want to feel judged for feeling like I hate being pregnant, so I kept my feelings mostly to myself during the first trimester.
2. My business is everyone else’s business. Pregnancy is an incredibly public experience that I would love to be a private one. Once you tell people (and especially when you are showing and even strangers know) people feel the need to poke at you. People criticize what you are eating and what you are doing. People ask invasive questions. People give ridiculous advice. You want to punch most of them in the face. I can’t wait (not!) until I get to the obvious baby bump stage, then people will be losing their hands if they come near me. I’m a pretty private person (which may be an odd thing for a blogger to say), which means I tend to deflect any questions and or comments that make me feel uncomfortable. And I have a definite personal space issue, which means I don’t like most people touching me, especially people that I don’t know. So while some pregnant women love people asking questions and fawning over them, I am definitely not one of them.
3. Everyone one feels the need to share their horror stories. I don’t want to hear how I’m going to be miserable because my due date is in August or how your vagina has never been the same after giving birth. Do women experience amnesia after pregnancy? That seems to be the only explanation for why you would feel the need to share the exact same things you didn’t want to hear while you were pregnant.
4. You feel like crap. My digestive system started it’s rebellion long before the positive test. The last time I went to bed so early probably was when I was 7. Now that I am in the second trimester my hip joints and back are in pain a lot, even though I am back to going to the chiropractor regularly. And I am back to feeling exhausted again.
5. You lose control of your body. I would say it feels like you have lost control, except you really have lost control. From that aforementioned digestive system to the way that your body now looks, it is all changing rapidly.
6. You lose control of your emotions. My poor husband has definitely felt the brunt of this one. And since I already suffer from depression and anxiety, the hormonal changes that occur with pregnancy have been even more intense for me. In the first trimester I felt angry a lot, for no reason. Now as my due date creeps closer I am experiencing more anxiety.
7. Everyone wants to give their advice. When you are pregnant everyone seems to want to weigh in on pregnancy, childbirth, and parenting. And the truth is that most of people’s advice is either bs or upsetting in some way. If I want your advice, I will ask for it, so please don’t volunteer it.
8. It’s bizarre to have another human being growing in you. Especially at the stage where you know it’s there, but it doesn’t really seem like it is. It can feel like you have been hijacked. And while it is cool to now be able to feel the baby moving around in there, it is also a bit weird as well.
9. I don’t believe pregnancy or birth is beautiful. Yes, the baby you get in the end is beautiful and creating life is a beautiful concept. I’m on board for believing that pregnancy shouldn’t be treated like a disease, but rather a natural process. But I’m simply not buying that it is a beautiful experience. It’s painful and gross and wacky and distressing at times. I think that and I haven’t even given birth yet.
10. On a similar note: birth videos suck. I don’t want to see someone else’s vagina with a head coming out of it. I don’t want to see a woman on all fours who then looks like she gives birth out of her butt. I don’t want to see placenta. I simply don’t see the point in these videos other then freaking women out. And the fact that they are prefaced with the “birth is natural and beautiful” is even more ironic. I will not be having an out of body experience during birth that will result in me seeing it from below me, so I don’t need to see it from that angle now.

Did you or do you hate being pregnant?