Author's note: I started writing this post a few months ago but never ended up posting it because I had decided it was too whiny. Maybe it is, but I'm going to share it with you anyway, along with some new content. Please, bear with me through the first part because I really want you to get to the end. Anywho, here goes...
Finally, I can make this post that I have been wanting to make for a few months now! I have been eagerly awaiting our Facebook announcement that my husband and I are expecting our first baby in February, mostly because I am terrible at keeping secrets and it has been driving me crazy needing to watch what I say until we were ready to announce. In fact, I have written half of this post already in anticipation of the big day. So now that things are finally out in the open, I am free to discuss what I am experiencing with other people who have already gone through it before, and that has been a real lifesaver, because...
Pregnancy is really hard yo. No, really. I am only now just over three months along and there have been many times where I have sat myself down and wondered if this was really the wisest choice for me to make. I have had some pretty awful, miserable, wan to give up on the world kind of days. It's not that I really expect pregnancy to be easy per se, I just really had no idea how challenging it actually would be in the early stages. I have SO much more respect for moms now, especially those who are on their second or third pregnancies and are therefore experiencing this stuff while they already have a little child running around requiring all of their available attention. Because here's the thing (for all of you who haven't been through it before):
1) It feels like all of the life has been sucked right out of you
There have been some times where I thought I was tired before, you know, after a long workout or a few days where I didn't sleep very well. The first few months were like that times about ten, and that's with doing nothing more than trying to drag myself around the house doing little things like cooking dinner or having my morning shower. Work seemed ridiculously hard to stay awake at. Forget housework or getting the weeds out of the garden, suddenly just getting out of bed in the morning seemed like a monumental task. I had read the books, I knew that I would be tired, but I was not ready for how quickly and fiercely it would take hold (Pretty much from 2 weeks until 12 weeks). Believe me fellow ladies, if I knew how much this stage of pregnancy sucked, I would have been over at your house plenty of times in those first couple of months just to do your dishes or sweep your floor. I understand now that even those small gestures likely would have evoked tears of gratitude.
2) It feels like your body is completely out of control
Why is it that you can feel so great one second and then the next be worried you're going to puke your brains out? I consider myself actually pretty lucky in this regard though, so far I haven't actually had any actual puking, but I have had many a session of sitting in the bathroom breathing heavily and convincing my brain that throwing up is not the route we want to take. The weirdest thing is that, to end these sessions, the best thing to do tends to be to eat. Have you ever tried to cram food in your mouth when it seems like all your body wants to do is bring everything back up? It's not easy. Never mind all the other crazy things your body wants to do while your pregnant. I have had worse skin than when I was 16, I will look like I have a full-on baby belly when I go to bed and wake up the next morning with hardly anything, and don't even get me started on the crazy boob things.
3) It feels like your mind has checked out on a permanent vacation
I think I've actually handled the moodswings quite well, but if you ask the people around me they might tell you a whole different story. It is SO hard knowing that what you are feeling in a given moment is likely completely irrational but at the same time you are so helpless to the feeling, you can not do anything but act on it. I have had times where I have cried for no real reason (Alberta tourism commercial anyone?), times I have been overly angry for no real reason (especially work related things!), and times where I have been so overwhelmingly sad for myself that I just have to go and sit down alone for a while. I have never really been a depressed person before, so those moments of depression have been the hardest for me. I'll be honest, in those moments there have been some times where all I wanted was to feel like myself again, have my normal body back, have my normal life back. I now try to remind myself every day what I am doing this all for, how lucky I am to have the life I do, and assure myself that I can keep moving forward. The payback is yet to come. Oh, and my memory is already shot. 3 months in and I have a mean case of baby brain, so by the time I am 9 months I will be lucky if I can even remember where I live.
4) It feels like people are already judging you
It actually doesn't take very long at all for people to start giving you all of their opinions on how you should raise your future child, or even how you should be handling your pregnancy. Unsolicited advice is one of my biggest pet peeves at the moment. Granted, there is a lot that I, as a first time mother, do not know. There's a lot of stuff that I may know a bit about but haven't really figured out which route I want to go with yet. I'm typically a really big planner, but I find with a lot of this pregnancy and child-rearing stuff I am taking a lot more of a "figure it out when I get there" approach. I am not sure how I am supposed to know how long I am going to breast-feed for when I don't even know yet if I will successfully be able to do it in the first place. Is it so wrong that I want my "birth plan" to just be that someway, somehow, this baby gets out of me in the end and is happy and healthy? The details of how that happens are not really all that important to me, because I know that in the moment the "plan" would just go out the window in favor of whatever feels right at the time anyway.
OK, Flash forward now to the new content. I am now just over 19 weeks and feeling a lot more balanced. Let me be perfectly honest here: the depression I dealt with in the first trimester was a lot worse than I let on. I pretty much (not all the time, but a fairly decent portion of the time), hated being pregnant. I hated not being able to do all of the things I used to be able to. I was annoyed that I was so tired, felt so crappy, broke out in so many zits, felt fat all the time, and just overall wasn't myself. There were a few times where I second guessed why this had seemed like a good idea in the first place. Basically, I was a miserable wreck. And I felt so guilty about it because nobody told me that these were perfectly normal feelings to feel. Everybody just assumes that you must be so thrilled to be pregnant and life must be so joyful. Which really just makes everything worse because then you just start loathing yourself for having these miserable thoughts and it's a sneaky spiral of just feeling more and more terrible about things. So: what changed?
A few things, in rapid succession:
I found an online community of women who were all in the same stage of pregnancy as me, and I realized that a large number of us were having the same kind of thoughts. I realized that mourning the person I once was was not only a bad thing, but necessary. I will never be that same person again. I realized that this new person that I was gradually becoming was not something to be scared of, and learned to start to embrace it. I'm still working on it. I stopped loathing myself. I started focusing on the things that I have to appreciate.
I actually started feeling a lot better physically as well, ironically more like my "normal" self. I still know that I have limitations, and I still get frustrated, but it's nice to not have to balance all of that with just trying to keep from vomiting. I'm in a fitness class. We're starting to do aqua-size. Just being active has made a big difference.
I realized that there was a purpose to all of this, there is actually a baby in there. I know, this sounds stupid. But in all that misery it is like I forgot why all of it was happening. Then I started to feel little movements. Subtle at first, but increasingly stronger week by week. I started feeling things really early (like earlier than 12 weeks early), and it's almost because somehow this baby knew that I needed to know it was there. Then we had our first ultrasound, and I saw that it was real. Really, as soon as that ultrasonographer said "I see one baby moving around in there!", that's when I changed. I had been feeling the baby move before that, but could talk myself into thinking maybe it was just gas. But now there was no more denying it - there was actually a living thing inside of me. I hate showing emotions in front of strangers, but I teared up a little. It's the moment I actually fell in love with this little alien thing that, to that point, had seemed like nothing but misery. I really think it was at that moment that I truly became a mother. (I am aware that probably sounds corny, but I'm hormonal, OK?)
Since then there have been so many moments that have made me fall further and further in love. We heard the heartbeat for the first time. I started feeling more definite movements (and now often ones that can't be ignored). We found out we're having a little girl. Now I am so thankful for this little being that it is hard for me to remember the time that I really wasn't. That's why I decided to post this afterall. I think it's important to put it out there - pregnancy really is hard. Nobody ever really tells you that. But it's quickly becoming the most amazing thing I have ever experienced. I feel so lucky to be able to experience it myself, knowing that there are so many people out there who will never be able to. I am so excited about the future now. The next milestone I am eager for? Having my husband feel the kicks for the first time. I'm so excited to have him better experience this life that we have created. It really is an amazing thing. I really am now truly thankful.
Amanda
