In The Beginning...

"I knew I loved you before I met you."

I have heard many variations of the above quote, referring to unborn children.

Ah pregnancy, that blessed state of tranquility that comes from knowing you are nurturing a living creature inside you. You walk on clouds of peace and serenity, and glow with the light of a thousand twinkling fairies...

Or not.

Anybody that knows me can tell you that pregnancy was not my favorite thing.
I was not peaceful and serene, I did not fall asleep every night on a bed made of clouds and wishes, and most disappointingly, I was not aglow with the light of a million fairies.

Instead, for the first trimester, I was sick. Constantly. Morning sickness is like being perpetually hungover. .I found it ironic that I was living the healthiest lifestyle I ever had, and yet felt like I was dying of some tropical disease that gradually sapped away my energy and will to live. It was awesome.

The second trimester highlights included headaches, insomnia, dizzy spells, heartburn, (I didn't even know what heartburn was before pregnancy, I seriously thought my stomach acid was trying to drown me the first time it happened.) and of course, random and untimely bouts of crying, usually about something vitally important like the cat sitting in my seat, or the cookies not having enough chocolate chips in them....
Also, this was about the time that the novelty of pregnancy wore off and I discovered that I did not like sharing my body.

And the third trimester. It is disturbing enough being eight times your original body mass, without having complete strangers feel that since you are pregnant, they have every right to publicly grope your huge stomach.
Sleeping is a joke, as there is no possible way to lie comfortably when you are the size of a small planet, and if you do happen to catch a few minutes sleep, it's only to wake up for the eleventy-billionth time to go to the bathroom, because your bladder has been squished down to virtually nonexistent. And if I hear one more person say: "It's to help prepare you for when the baby comes, and you have to get up during the night" I will poke them in the eye. It prepares you in the same way getting nipped by a crab prepares you to be eaten by a shark - not at all. It's just annoying.

Speaking of which - have you ever noticed how annoying other people are when you're pregnant? They say stupid things, and think stupid things, and do stupid things. It's like they've been hiding their idiotic ways for all the years that you've known them, waiting for you to be at your most vulnerable, and then POW! They spew forth their annoyingness in a great sea of irritation that you slowly drown in every day.

And they wonder why you're so moody. "It's the pregnancy hormones." you see them whisper knowingly behind their hands, after you justifiably made the idiot who just ate the last cookie cry.
And you have to respond, because for some reason people believe that now that you are pregnant, you can't hear them when they are sitting two meters away gossiping about you, and you need to let them know that it's just not true. So you open your mouth to kindly tell them that deafness is not one of your symptoms, and what falls out instead is:

"No actually, it's not the pregnancy hormones, it's because I'm not a fan of drowning slowly in an endless supply of your stupidness,"

Hmmm, maybe just a teny bit of pregnancy hormones....

It did not help that all the other pregnant people I saw seemed completely in love with their pregnancies and unborn children, while I was still waiting to feel 'at one' with my miraculous miracle, and failing miserably.

I didn't bond "properly" during my pregnancies. I wanted a baby, I was hopeful, I was excited, but I didn't feel the great and powerful love that seemed to smack everyone else in the face as soon as they conceived. This worried me for a while - I was obviously going to be a pretty sucky parent if I couldn't even love my fetus - until I actually sat down and considered my beliefs regarding love. Then it made perfect sense:

First, I believe that all love is the same. We play various roles within love; romantic, friendship, family ect, but it is the relationships that we attach to love that are different. Love in essence is all the same.
Secondly, I believe that you have to know someone to love them. You don't have to meet them, in fact, it's probably better if you don't - that takes out all the compatibility, and 'how they make you feel about yourself' junk, and lets you just see the person. (Yes, stalking is completely acceptable in this scenario.) If you love someone, it should be for who they are, and since a persons core self very rarely changes, it should also be forever, regardless of what they do, or whether or not you are still in their life.

And now back to my original point:

I didn't know my pre-natal children. The fact that they were a part of me at the time was irrelevant - I didn't know them any better than I knew my kidneys or my liver. I couldn't fall in love with the idea of who they were, when who they actually were would probably be completely different.

While figuring this out was a relief (maybe I wasn't going to suck at parenting, yay!) It also meant that I had to wait until I met my baby before I could experience any awesomeness.

Hmmm, waiting. I don't like waiting.

And pregnancy is looooooooooooooooooong. By the time you have hit 30 weeks, you feel like you've been pregnant forever. Seriously, you start saying things like "Remember back when...." and "There was this one time, back in the day...." like you're a nostalgic old man reminiscing about his childhood.

I actually started hunting for information on the longest known pregnancy, and found a woman who had been pregnant for three years. Now that I am sane again, I realise that that was most likely uber-crap, but at the time it seemed completely plausible.

All people that say things like "No one is pregnant forever you know." And "As soon as it's born you'll be dying to be pregnant again." Should be kept out of arms reach of the pregnant person they are speaking to. Do you know why heavily pregnant woman are not famous for murder? It is because they can't run fast enough to catch and slaughter stupid people. That is the only reason.

During my last month of pregnancy with Connah, a friend asked how I was feeling, and I told her. A woman who overheard us felt that it was her responsibility to inform me that some people can't even have babies, so I should just be grateful and not complain about a little discomfort. (Yes, she did walk away from this encounter with all her limbs still attached. Just.)

I know some people can't have children. I know some people lose their babies during pregnancy. I know some babies die. I know.
But me smiling and telling people I feel great when I don't, does not change any of that.

I was miserable while I was pregnant. But I wasn't miserable about being pregnant, I was ecstatic to be pregnant, I just wished I didn't feel like crap the whole time.

I get a lot of people saying: "It can't have been that bad, because you decided to have a second child."

Yes. Yes it was that bad. Worse probably, because it was four years ago and now I have brand new sparkling memories to fill up my brain, so have trouble remembering the horror.

But yes, I did purposely put myself through that horror again, because the child you get out of the deal is totally worth it. Worth it a thousand times over. Worth being pregnant for the rest of my life for - though I'm sincerely grateful that that is not necessary. Because I would go crazy.



xox