Some of us hate being pregnant. For me it's the lack of control over my body, the loss of my body. I also seem to get pretty much every symptom to a certain extent. If you don't know, pregnancy affects every organ in your body pretty much. And I feel it. I try to remember that this is probably because I am in tune with my body.
My symptoms aren't severe, and so far I've had about 1.6 pregnancies without any complication. I would be a wreak if something were to come up. I'm not good with medical things to begin with, then to have your baby's life be in the hands of it, of some pregnancy illness taking you over, I know I would go insane for a bit before any coping skills would get clicked on.
I couldn't sleep tonight because of all over itchy skin, which is a fairly common thing to happen to us pregnant women. I also have a bit of an exacerbation of my slight manic symptoms I get sometimes. Though I don't believe I have a diagnosable disorder, nor does it interfere badly with my life, but sometimes sleep doesn't come and I feel great staying up a long long time. Long as in 20 hours, not 72 or anything nuts like that. Like I said, mild.
And soon there will be less of me and more of the pregnancy. I'm not one to see myself as getting fat, I see myself as being taken over by a blob of pregnant that grows until it explodes out of me.
And most migraine sufferers seen an improvement in their migraines, I see an incredible increase in headaches during the middle bit of pregnancy. Luckily it's not the entire way through, but they were bad enough that I took narcotics (and a couple other meds too), to varying degrees of success, and prayed for a study showing Immitrex was safe. But no, apparently Immitrex is not safe.
I was actually feeling pretty good about my pregnancy the last couple weeks, until tonight, with the itching and sleeplessness. If one thing goes away, another will crop up. There are good little moments here and there, even a good week will creep in, nothing is black and white, but over all we see pregnancy as a big pain.
Oh and did I mention I gain much more weight than the "recommended weight gain?" According to the recommendations I could stop gaining weight now. That's not going to happen. I'm lucky that for both pregnancies I had care providers that weren't so stuck on the weight issue. Luckily I lost it all post partum and then some more.
So, yeah, we women who hate pregnancy do *try* to enjoy it. We do, we want to, but pregnancy lets us down. And yes, we realize that after the baby comes we'll have a whole new set of problems. And I think most of us who really hate it, would welcome any change.
I had a terrible post partum time with my first child, felt really depressed, incredibly anxious, and could barely make the simplest decision. But the one thing I kept thinking was, "at least I'm not pregnant!" I held on to that. It was a reminder of how far I had come, how there is no way in the world I would have put him back in again. I loved getting my body back and free from pregnancy so much that it over shadowed the horrible post partum hormones.
And I could also hand the baby to my husband, which I could not do while pregnant.
Some of us do not enjoy it while it lasts, some of us don't wish we had cherished the moments we had while pregnant. Some of us just coped with it and were glad when it was finally all over. Some of us felt like we had contracted some horrible alien virus that changed everything about us for 9 months and we just wanted to feel like ourselves again.
When some of us say we hate pregnancy, we really mean it, don't tell us to enjoy it. Don't try to claim it's harder after baby comes. It's different after baby comes. For some of us giving up our bodies is actually a really huge deal, and we don't enjoy most of it. And for some women, they are on bed rest for months, or are puking through the whole pregnancy, or live in on-going fear of premature labor or some other complication. Some women have MUCH harder pregnancies than I.
"It sucks, and it will end someday," is a better line. But don't tell me how to feel about it. Amidst all my depression and anxiety there was intense joy, the deepest joy I had even felt in my life. Joy I never felt while pregnant. The rush of happy hormones after birth was one of the greatest experiences I have ever had. And breastfeeding ended up being the most amazing, reward-filled accomplishment of my life to date. And becoming a mom changed me for the better, it took a while, but I'm a better person for it. This is why I put up with both pregnancies. They are a necessary evil for me. And that's OK!
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