Pregnancy is always seen through such rose colored glasses. People say things like it’s a blessing and it’s the greatest gift, and while that might be true, the real fact is that pregnancy sometimes just sucks.
People also say that morning sickness will go away after the first trimester. But guess what, that isn’t always true. Also not true? That it’s MORNING sickness. It’s all the live long fucking day sickness. I’ve always hated toothpaste, for as long as I can remember, so during pregnancy, every single teeth brushing was a gag festival.
And then there’s your new taste in food. You suddenly hate all the things you used to like and only want stupid shit like coconut ice cream with frozen raspberries and Royal Farms egg, cheese, and bacon wraps. Vegetables became like my kryptonite (that’s apparently Superman’s nemesis, I just had to google that), as did any meat that I had to cook myself. The grossest. Ew. I remember how that felt to just HATE a food all of the sudden and it’s weird. And real annoying. I went from cooking all the meals in our house to cooking basically just pasta and sauce for several months.
And then comes the scary pregnancy shit. Some people have good pregnancies where you go to the appointments and see the heart beat and it’s exciting and everything is fine. Our pregnancy appointments were never like that. During our first ultrasound they couldn’t find some of Isaac’s organs. Soon after they did find his organs but discovered that he had bright bowels and a thickened back of his neck, both signs of something very wrong. Many tests later, inconclusive. Then they found he had clubfoot on both feet. At this point they suggested we do an amnio.
If you don’t know what an amnio is, it’s when they stick a giant needle through your belly into your uterus to collect amniotic fluid. With no anesthesia. I literally asked them if they’d punch me in the face to knock me out. Strangely they declined. It honestly wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. The nurse did try to hold my hand and I told her to get away from me, and then she told me my amniotic fluid looked good and did I want to see it?!?! NO YOU WEIRDO!! And after all that, again the results were inconclusive.
I say all this because pregnancies are very much so a happy and exciting thing, but they can also be scary and terrifying experiences. We basically lived in fear for months that our doctors would tell us they found something that was going to end up in us having to terminate our pregnancy. We have a 1 in 4 chance that our next pregnancy will end up that way. I say this to spread awareness that when you ask someone who’s pregnant how they’re feeling, how they’re doing, it should be acceptable for them to say that EVERYTHING FUCKING SUCKS. Pregnancy can be hard and awful, and that’s ok to be honest about.
AmySchoedel 