for as long as I can remember, every woman in my life has always talked about pregnancy like it’s this 24/7 magical, beautiful, enlightening experience. It wasn’t until my coworker at Disney got pregnant that I heard someone talk about pregnancy in a way that felt real, authentic, and validating for the first time. At the end of the day, I’ve realized an incredibly important truth: it’s ok to not enjoy being pregnant. Remembering my motto of two things can be true, you can be excited for what pregnancy will give you and dislike or even hate the process of getting there. That is 100% me. Looking at this experience as a whole, I have genuinely not enjoyed it. Sure, there are some cool things like feeling him move, but for me, the challenges outweigh the joyful moments by a landslide and THAT’S OK. What we ALL need to remember is that just because someone doesn’t have the same experience as you doesn’t mean they aren’t happy about the outcome. Hating being pregnant does NOT equate to hating your baby. I’ve had a lot of women look at me with concern and this weird disappointment when I talk about how badly I do not want to be pregnant anymore. I love the ever-living hell out my son and I haven’t even met him yet. I am also so fucking done being pregnant with him. Two things that are both true. One does not negate the other. 

Where does this judgement even come from? Why is it seen as so off putting and extreme for a woman to say she hasn’t enjoyed pregnancy? This answer for me lies in the simple fact that as women, we are conditioned from such a young age to not only hide parts of ourselves that have anything to do with bodily functions, genitals/ private parts, or anything that may be seen as “gross,” but also because we’re conditioned to endure pain. Think about it; period cramps, endometriosis, childbirth, IUD insertion/ removal, post-partum recovery, pregnancy, even wearing high heels for god’s sake – these are all things that hurt (often like hell) and we just go on about our day adjusting to pain, masking it with medication or hiding/ downplaying the truth. When we DO bring up the pain from any of these things, it’s often met with awkward discomfort from the person on the listening end or remarks like “well maybe you shouldn’t have made whatever choice that put you in this position.” It sucks that a lot of the judgement I’ve felt so far around not enjoying pregnancy has been from other women. Every person is different and we should never expect everyone to feel the same way we do about literally anything. Pregnancy is a time to support each other, lift each other up, and NEVER downplay someone else’s pain or experience. What may have been a joyful and beautiful experience for one woman may be a living nightmare for another. Both are valid. Both are perfectly normal. Both should be accepted and embraced with the same empathy and love. 

Every week of pregnancy that goes by, I find myself getting more discontent with being pregnant. I can’t breathe normally, especially when I sit down. I’m constantly leaking and can’t leave the house without a liner on. The pressure from the baby on my lower abdominal organs has sent my hemorrhoids into the “uncontrollable and intensely painful prolapsed” realm forcing me to carry medication, wipes, and extra liners with me wherever I go (not to mention switching from seamless thongs to the most god-awful granny panties because they’re the only thing I can wear with a pad.) I’m no longer sleeping which has me exhausted and stressed. The round ligament pain has gotten so intense it will wake me up in the middle of the night when I DO manage to get to sleep, has given me a strained groin muscle, and causes me so much discomfort throughout the day. My diet is fucking WEIRD. Not only am I not eating the deli meat and raw fish that made up a good portion of my weekly diet before pregnancy, but having constant, debilitating indigestion now has made food so difficult to navigate by the hour. I hurt when I walk, I hurt when I sit or lie down, and if I’m not actively in pain, I’m at the bare minimum – very uncomfortable. I don’t know how anyone in their right mind would go through all of this and say “this is amazing. I love this.” But hey – there ARE people who feel that way or don’t have this same experience and THAT’S OK! It’s just not my experience. I feel no remorse in saying I hate ALMOST every bit of being pregnant.

I don’t feel beautiful. I don’t feel powerful. I don’t feel magical. I feel gigantic, uncomfortable, frustrated, ugly, and overwhelmed (I am trying my damndest though, to remind myself daily that I AM beautiful, powerful, and magical in this phase of my life. I can ALWAYS count on my Fiancé to remind me on both the days I remember and forget to give myself the pep talk and that support is wildly important and so helpful.) I’m so done being pregnant. I want to be in the phase where I’m adjusting to the new way of life with a baby. I can’t wait to say “ok. Now we heal and SLOWLY get back into a routine that feels a little more like me.” I know the “old me” is dead and gone, but once he’s out, I can at least have some sort of semblance of a routine back. I can’t WAIT to be able to eat Poke or sushi or deli meat whenever I want. I can’t wait to go back to the gym and start rehabbing my pelvic floor, my core, and start working towards getting my muscles back into peak ability. I’m ok with taking everything slow during that phase, but I just want to be THERE – working towards it. I have 8 more weeks to go (I’m REALLY hoping for a Halloween arrival for little boy which would put me at 6 more weeks to go, but we’ll see.) 8 weeks of getting bigger, becoming more uncomfortable, enduring more pain, and persevering through the hardest part of this journey. THEN we have minimum of 6 weeks of recovery and who knows how long after that before I can safely get back to a level comparable with where I’d like to be one day.

All this to be said – I can’t wait to meet my son earthside. I can’t wait to hold his little hands and feet and look into his eyes and see this pocket sized version of my best friend staring back at me. I can’t wait for my exhaustion to come from the lack of sleep that’s due to tending to this little dude day and night and not because my belly is so big and in the way and causing all kinds of other issues that I can’t sleep. I can’t wait for this part of the journey to parenthood to be DONE so I can move onto the next. People say “oh well, you should enjoy being pregnant because once he’s here, you’ll wish he was back in there!” BULL SHIT. I don’t believe that for a second. The hellscapes of parenting – especially to a newborn – will be a welcomed type of chaos compared to my experience being pregnant. I’m happy to be his physical home, life line, and source of survival in utero for the time being, but I am SO looking forward to the day we are two individual bodies. I’d much rather be cuddling him than getting kicked in the ribs from the inside by his long ass little legs.   

At my appointment today after I said I was struggling, my doctor sympathetically said “it’s really hard to share our bodies” and BOY that hit the nail right on the head. Because that’s exactly what we’re doing! We’re sharing our entire body with a new little human who is taking everything they’re getting – from us. It’s a miracle and beautiful, but it’s also extremely difficult to lose a lot of our autonomy for another person. I’m SO used to my body belonging to ME. Now, it belongs to me and my son. Even after I give birth, so much of my body will still belong to him and that’s a very foreign concept for me. Worth it? 100%. But hard. REALLY hard. It’s one of the first sacrifices we make for our children; we give our bodies and everything we knew about them away for that little life to come into ours. So yes, pregnancy IS beautiful, magical, and such a wonderful miracle, but that miracle isn’t a joyful experience for everyone. Every experience in pregnancy is valid and worthy of shedding light on because no pregnancy is the same! How can we expect to normalize every part of pregnancy if we only ever praise and speak of the experiences that are all love and light? 

Let me be very clear – I understand there is an entire population of people who would legitimately give their life to be pregnant. Fertility challenges are SO real and far more common than the general population realizes. People try for years, sometimes decades to have children. People face loss after loss, letdown, hopelessness, and fear around pregnancy and that is such a tragic reality. In my experience of not enjoying pregnancy, I only hope to bring light to EVERY experience and remind everyone that ALL experiences are valid. One person’s loss, struggle to conceive, or carry to term isn’t any less tragic when another person doesn’t enjoy an ounce of being pregnant. Each are individual experiences. I’m not a believer in the phrase “you should feel lucky. I’d kill to have your life.” That’s a whole lot of projected guilt that doesn’t help anyone. The fact is we never know the ins and outs of someone else’s life. There are nuances, differences, and circumstances we will never fully understand in other people’s lives which means there is no room for such judgement. My heart breaks for anyone who has suffered early loss, miscarriage, still birth, SIDS, or any other complication during family planning, their baby’s time in utero or infancy. When I started bleeding at 4 weeks, I was convinced (and even got to a point of accepting) that I had probably experienced early loss. Those several days without confirmation of whether or not my baby was still alive were some of the hardest days I’ve ever experienced. I can’t imagine how difficult it is to experience loss and then see people carry to term with healthy babies. While I sympathize with the gut reaction of feeling anger towards anyone who doesn’t enjoy pregnancy after you may have experienced loss, I’ll encourage anyone in those shoes to remember that just as unique and individual as YOUR experience is, so is everyone else’s and more importantly – their discontentment will NEVER even come close to comparing to your experience because that’s not their life. Your tragedy isn’t defined by another person’s circumstances and you are entitled to every emotion that comes with that territory just as they are with their own experience.     

If you’re pregnant and find yourself relating a little more with me on the general feeling of being pregnant, know you’re not alone. There’s TONS of us out there, but so many feel unable to speak their truth from fear of judgement and being seen in a negative light. If you are one of the people who DO feel pregnancy is more wonderful than anything, we need your help and support more than anyone in the world. If we can look each other in the eye, hear how another’s experience differs from our own, and empathize regardless of those differences, that’s a huge step for the collective feminine as a whole (or in humanity as a whole.) Uterus owning individuals are the only humans who have the honor of bringing life into this world. We should be doing nothing but offering unyielding support to each other during this scary, life changing process. I happily empathize with those of you who are disliking pregnancy just as much as me and I offer just as much love and support in celebration to those of you who find yourself feeling overwhelming joy and elation while being pregnant. Regardless, we are ALL in this beautiful shit storm together.