On pregnancy

The other night my husband asked me, “What’s it like to be pregnant?”

If you think that’s a bit of an odd query, given that this is now my third pregnancy, I wouldn’t disagree with you. However, I choose to take the positive route and view such a question as sustained interest in my pregnant state, and me in general. “Seven year itch my left foot! He loves me! He really loves me!”

Then, after the question, came an interesting request: “Can you write a blog about it?”

“You want me to tell you what it’s like to be pregnant via my blog?”

“Yeah.”

“Weird. Really weird. But okay.”

So here we are. By the way, I also choose to look at the blog request positively – that he wants me to communicate with him in writing rather than in person. He thinks I’m just such a fantastic written communicator that blogging is the best way to convey this info to him. Let us not consider the flip side of this.

Before I get to the whole point of this post, a statement: every pregnancy is different. An annoying (for the frequency with which it is invoked), but true maxim. It’s not really an enlightening point, given that every person on the face of the earth – including preggos – is different, but worth mentioning here since my account of what it’s like to be pregnant will certainly differ from those of other pregnant folk. Anyway, I will write what I know and, most importantly of course, fulfill my husband’s request.

What it’s like for me to be pregnant:

1. For the most part, relatively comfortable.
I have never had morning sickness; I have yet to get any lasting aches and pains; I can eat, drink and smell anything I like. No aversions. In the last couple of months things get stretched, physical activity is more difficult and I get even more easily tired but nothing debilitating or earth-shattering in its impact.

2. Weird because once things really start changing, it all happens without any prompting from me.
The baby grows, my body grows, my hair gets a little curlier (for real), and when labour starts there is nothing I do to start it and nothing I could do that would stop it until that baby gets out. This is obvious stuff but also more than a little bizarre to experience, even for a non-control freak like me.

3. Pleasant and interesting, but not something to rant and rave about.
There’s a real live baby growing inside of me and that’s pretty cool. Feeling the baby move (which has just started) is an odd but encouraging and affirming sensation. But I am not one of those women who love being pregnant more than being in any other state. They’re out there and I don’t get it. For the record I am very happy to be pregnant because I am excited to have another person coming into our family. It’s being pregnant that doesn’t necessarily send me to the moon.

4. Sometimes a little socially painful.
In case you somehow missed this little tidbit about me, I’m an introvert. By definition I do not like attention flung onto me for very long. Well, pregnancy is one long attention-getting state. Not that pregnant women want the attention, it just happens that you get it, period. My husband and I gave the job of telling the world of my pregnancy to our four year old. She did a great job of blurting out the news at every gathering over the Christmas holidays and I was completely satisfied that way. I do not like telling people that I am pregnant. I don’t like finding the opportunity, saying the words, or handling the aftermath of the announcement. I’d rather hide under a blanket. Or blog about it.

So, that’s a little insight into what it’s like for me to be pregnant. There’s more, to be sure, but the part I left out of the conversation with my husband earlier was my first answer to his request for a blog on the topic.

“No. No one really cares what it’s like to be pregnant.”

“I do.”

Well, that was reason enough to get me writing – a little bit, anyway – on it.