What if you love and hate pregnancy all at the same time?
This pregnancy feels so much harder than my others. My blood pressure is low and some days even basic tasks feel like a real struggle. Walking up the one flight of stairs to our front door makes me feel like I need to lie down for a nap. If I get up too fast from sitting I often see stars. Once I’ve done an hour or so of anything, I’m pretty much spent for the rest of the day. Even social activities tire me out super fast. It’s almost like I have no energy left for anything other than growing this baby. Unfortunately though, life doesn’t stop just because you’re pregnant (especially life with two very active boys).
I often hear myself saying ‘ugh this is so hard. I can’t wait for this to be over’ and then quickly try and take it back as fast as I can in fear the universe might somehow hear me and make this happen.
This is a pregnancy that I’ve wanted for so long. A pregnancy that I’ve spent so much time imagining and visualising and trying to make happen, and yet now that it’s here I have to remind myself daily not to wish it away.
I feel guilty that I’m not enjoying this pregnancy as I thought I would. Shouldn’t I be estatically happy? Shouldn’t I be embracing every change? My ever-growing belly, the desire to sleep and eat all the time, the insomnia… all of these things that are signs of a healthy pregnancy?
Instead I feel heavy and awkward. I often feel so uncomfortable in my own body that I would crawl out of my own skin if I could.
Of course I don’t always feel like this. I do absolutely relish feeling our baby moving and wriggling around inside me. I love that my boys have already created their own relationship with their brother, kissing my belly hello and goodbye whenever they see me.
For some reason I feel like I’m not allowed to feel and express the negative. Like somehow, because this pregnancy was so desperately wanted, because of the losses we’ve experienced before this one, that I’m somehow not allowed to have complaints about it now.
I also feel guilty when I complain because I’ve been on the other side too. I’ve been the woman who isn’t pregnant but desperately wants to be and feels absolute rage when she hears a pregnant woman complaining about how f-ing lucky she is to be carrying a healthy baby.
Which is crazy, right?
Just like everything in life, it’s not black and white.
You don’t have to feel the same way about everything all the time. You’re allowed to change your mind (multiple times and back again). You’re allowed to do everything you can to make something happen and then not enjoy the entire process once you’re there.
I’m allowed to love and hate pregnancy from one minute to the next, or even at the same time.
I’m allowed to feel so so so so grateful to be carrying this healthy baby and also be really looking forward to the whole thing being over.
I’m allowed to be both amazed at my changing body and at times disgusted that it just won’t do what I want it to do.
It’s ok to say that I cannot wait to have this baby and at other times feel a little apprehensive about what having three children is going to be like.
It’s ok to absolutely love my body when it’s pregnant and at the same time feel like I really can’t wait to not be pregnant anymore.
It doesn’t make me a hypocrite and it doesn’t make me ungrateful. I think it just makes me human.