Pregnancy is far from what wonderfully airbrushed images on Instagram portray
After my own individual experience with pregnancy, I must admit that a recurring thought was that anyone who decides to put themselves through pregnancy more than once is a straight-up looney. How on earth could one possibly go through the misery of nausea, depression, fatigue, constipation, and a slew of other symptoms that pregnancy often comes with, and still decide to want to do it all over again? Some even 22 times, like the woman from ‘Britain’s Biggest Family’!
I never had any expectations going in, as I often don’t really bother to do much research about experiences unless I am passing through them— with the exception of some experiences of course — but I never in a million years thought my experience would be anything close to what it became. I just never understood what it was I had possibly done so terribly wrong that my karma involved such a host of unpleasant episodes. And let’s not get started on the fact that people eating exactly what they want during pregnancy and still remaining as radiant as ever, just like in the movies, is far from true.
Your body no longer belongs to you
I had to learn the hard way that the baby would take up so much of the space in my womb that having any space for food at all was a pure miracle. On those days where I did succumb to cravings, I was punished with indescribable discomfort, along with the terrible need to throw up but not being able to. I even learned there was such a thing as dysgeusia; a metallic-like aftertaste created by a sea of ever-changing hormones during pregnancy. Imagine your mouth feeling the way it does in the morning throughout an entire day and, no matter what you do, or eat, not being able to change that. Yeap, that was my experience for several months. The joy!
I found myself constantly complaining about all the symptoms I was experiencing and how I missed my body just belonging to me rather than housing a whole other human being. On these occasions, I would be reminded that I was doing something that required great strength and that it would not be an easy journey. Whenever I expressed that I didn’t think I could go through it again, I would be told by family members that my second pregnancy probably might not be as bad. But who in their right mind would be willing to gamble getting pregnant a second time just to ‘see’ if things would be better? What if things became far worse than the first time around?
While some foods would help ease the metallic taste, others would just make the symptom worse after consuming them. The only things I felt were remotely soothing during these times were popsicles (Ice lollies). They became my best friend, and whenever I could feel my nausea arising, I would ask my husband to please run to the store to get me some popsicles.
No two pregnancies are the same
Every woman’s pregnancy is different, of course, so I am not going to discredit those who experienced a smooth sailing through theirs and most probably looked like goddesses without a single spec or spot on their faces. That just wasn’t the case for me, unfortunately. Luckily, I didn’t experience hanging my head over a toilet and vomiting my insides out for a large part of each day, as some other women I knew had experienced. And I never had really major cravings, save for at the very beginning of my pregnancy, where all I could think of was seafood and wine for some odd reason. The fact that my doctor had given me strict dietary restrictions may have spiked those cravings even more. I suddenly felt like a prisoner in my own body and resorted to watching people eat the foods I couldn’t online to satisfy some of my cravings. Yes, very strange!
Food binge-watching craze!
I spent hours binge-watching food videos, as one would go through Netflix movies, and living vicariously through the many mukbangers whose videos I would come across. I imagined wolfing down plates of various African dishes, South-American dishes, Asian dishes, Seafood dishes, chocolate, cakes, pancakes, until I decided that I was doing myself a huge disservice and that I was probably becoming a little bit obsessed, so I stopped.
Her reality might not be yours
Instagram photos of happy pregnant women only account for a brief moment of their day. The second the photo shutter goes off, whatever goes on behind the scenes comes to light. Only the women in those images, smiling down at their bump or staring happily up at their partner who is standing behind them and embracing their bump, truly know what they are really experiencing.
Sometimes, we mistake a fragment of someone’s day to be a representation of their entire day or even life. Just because someone smiles at you, or laughs for a few moments, doesn’t mean they are not fighting their own inner battle, or that everything is all well and dandy behind closed doors. Society has become such a place that people feel that performing is much better than being real because, of course, nobody wants to appear weak, burdened, tired, or anything that can be perceived as remotely negative by the larger public.
I am choosing to be real about my experience with pregnancy so that people who do decide that they want to become mothers know to expect that the road might not be so easy for them, or it might. But the key is to be prepared for anything.
While I sit here and type my midnight thoughts, I am well aware that I am blessed to be a mother and that this is something not a lot of women have the opportunity to be — even though some of those who do want it spend years trying. This doesn’t take away from the fact that complaining about one’s struggles is completely normal, and that one should not feel ashamed for doing so. Pregnancy in its entirety is a wonderful thing, but even when a book has a happy ending, there are those pages in between that need to be read too.
