I do not like being pregnant

Some women really love it. I’ve had a couple different acquaintances tell me they loved being pregnant with their own kids SO MUCH they considered becoming a SURROGATE. Anything beyond an acknowledgement of the basic insanity of this statement is a topic for another newsletter. But seriously, I cannot comprehend this position. Being pregnant is zero fun and it’s only worth it because duh, motherhood.

Before anyone accuses me of hypocrisy, I love having a baby. During pregnancy and beyond. It’s an incredible gift. Inasmuch as pregnancy involves a special kind of intimacy with said baby, pregnancy is awesome.

But just plain pregnancy? The state of being itself? What is there to love about this?

Uh, absolutely nothing. The thing that makes pregnancy great, makes all the discomfort worth it, is bearing your child. Did these women I know really have such a blissful and transcendent experience of pregnancy that they would be willing to do it again WITHOUT the promise of a child? That’s delusional.

I’m deep in it now. 39 weeks in. And I am unrecognizable.

Every morning I wake up and have to coerce myself out of bed, after tossing and turning all night like a gas station hot dog, trying not to groan too loudly in agony lest I wake up my detestably hard-sleeping husband. I feel like I haven’t slept at all in three weeks. Every time I sit down I might as well be digging my own grave. Every time I have to stand up I want to say a bunch of cusses.

I’m so enormous I get in my own way. Washing the dishes is like trying to play Operation with claw grabbers. If I talk for more than three seconds I’m out of breath. And God forbid I have to wipe a mess off the floor. It takes all my willpower not to just lie down and die when my kids drop their Cheerios under the dining room table.

And that’s just the third trimester fun. Before that it’s all tummy aches and nausea and insatiable hunger.

To be fair, second trimester is usually not too horrific of an experience. You get to do the fun things like see your baby on an ultrasound and feel him kick for the first time. But sandwiched in between the digestive nightmare that is first trimester and the massively increased gravity of third trimester, it feels like a five minute break on a 24 hour shift at one of those toddler arcades.

Think I’m being a little dramatic? I am. Because that’s another thing. My emotions are currently nothing but a sack of mandarin oranges that’s been used as a punching bag. My toddler bonked his head into my face the other day and I just sat there and cried. My mom made me a second grilled cheese when I visited her house at lunchtime yesterday and I could’ve cried again just out of pure gratitude. I saw a baby in church Sunday. I don’t even need to say it, do I?

Overall, having done it four times at this point, I can say with confidence that the experience of pregnancy stinks. It’s hard. It’s exhausting. It makes me hate all my clothes. I do not like it.

And I’m fine with that, because pregnancy isn’t the ultimate goal here. Getting to be this baby’s mom is where the magic really is, and I was more than willing to put myself through this gauntlet in order to nurture his tiny life. Nothing else could induce me to seek out this torment.

If you can’t tell, at this point I’m really done with this part of the process. Here’s hoping the next time you hear from me, the new baby will be terrorizing me from the outside. Until then, God bless us all.

This was me at around 36 weeks. Probably the last time I smiled.