What’s it really like to be pregnant?
Everyone around me is happy for me. Everyone around me is congratulating me. And I don’t want to complain about something I believe is life’s ultimate privilege, but pregnancy is not glamorous. And it still feels like we aren’t supposed to talk about that part. We’re expected to be happy at every stage of the process, and for the most part I am beyond happy. But there is only so much grace I can show as I waddle my way through my daily routines, as my hormones make me feel more and more foreign to myself.
I’d like to make the behind-the-scenes moments more visible, so I can be honest without shame. I can be grateful and resentful. I can be happy and annoyed. I can be excited and exhausted. Because ten months is a long time to ask someone to be in a perpetual state of bliss as they grow a human.
I’m supposed to feel beautiful. But I feel like an orangutan. I groan every time I bend over. I groan every time I shift my butt on my chair. I groan for absolutely no reason at all. I always feel as though I appear dramatic even when I’m doing my best to tone it down. I feel sick all the time. The nausea is under control now, but when I don’t have heartburn I have a headache. When I don’t have a headache I have indigestion. My son’s daycare germs hit me harder than they hit him. Sometimes I feel like it’s everything at once and a cherry of ungovernable hormones…
