A friend of mine just found out that she’s pregnant. My first reaction was to send her the pregnancy books that I absolutely loved reading during both of my pregnancies. They detailed every day of development and had a lot of good information. I’ll include the link to one of them at the bottom.
But, really, there are so very many things that we experience during pregnancy that those pregnancy books never warn you about.
Here are 10 things that those books don’t tell you about being pregnant.
1. You’ll become that worry wart parent in t-minus 20 seconds
When you’re trying to get pregnant, you envision that moment where you see the line on that little stick and you’ll jump up and down with glee, call all your friends, and glow with happiness for the next 9 months. But in most cases, it’s a little less poetic than that.
If you managed to get pregnant without trying, you’re quite lucky. If you’re like most, you’ve just spent months charting your cycles, doing the deed at very precise times, and peeing on countless sticks. There you are, testing four days earlier than you probably should, and you’re squinting at that stick trying to figure out if you’re imagining the faintest of lines. Your heart jumps. You see a line! But is it an indent? Is it for real? You pee on another one. Uh oh, is that one lighter?
Day after day, you pee on sticks, hoping to see that line get darker until finally, you’re convinced. You’re pregnant (YES!). But will it stick? Is the baby ok in there? Should I be drinking this morning cup of decaffeinated coffee? Can I go on that plane trip I was planning? Will I jostle the baby loose when I run?
Welcome to parenthood. This is just the start of worrying about threats that may be real but mostly are not. You think, “if I just get to the point where my baby is born, I’ll be good to go”, but then you’ll find yourself staring at your baby all night long, as though your attention can make him/her keep breathing. You’ll wonder things like, “Did my baby just eat that lego on the floor?” or “Uh oh, did I forget to wipe the cart with the handiwipe?” and on and on for the rest of your life.
2. It’s like someone has glued magnets to your belly and your hand.
From the moment you find out you’re pregnant, your hand goes to your nonexistent bump. You can’t stop it. In fact, this is how I realized my friend was pregnant. She walked up to me with a pale face (more on that later), and a hand where the bump will be. She didn’t even know she was doing it, but I knew what was up right away. It’s basically the equivalent of the “mom arm”, when your arm instinctively shoots out and stops your kid from hurtling to his/her death. Those mommy hormones are kicking in, and you’ve already got those protective instincts.
For the next 9 months, you’ll find yourself touching the bump, rubbing the bump, and cradling the bump in your sleep. Welcome to mommyhood. You’ve already drunk the Koolaid.
3. Morning sickness is a crazy weird thing.
We tend to envision morning sickness as just that – you puke in the morning. Oooh no. It couldn’t be that simple, could it? Sure, you’re more likely to be sicker in the morning. We think that’s because progesterone and estrogen levels are highest then. They relax the intestinal and stomach muscles causing reflux that ultimately make you nauseous.
But for 80% of women that experience morning sickness, it lasts all day. For others, it happens at completely random times. For both my pregnancies, I was generally fine most of the day, but would suddenly projectile vomit wherever I was standing with no notice.
Then some don’t have it at all. You’d think that would make those women lucky. But then those women end up worrying about why they don’t have it, and alternate between feeling lucky and regretting just a bit that they’re missing out on this iconic part of pregnancy.
In addition to that, it isn’t only vomiting. You might get bouts of dizziness. You might get hot flashes. You might be absolutely and totally E-X-H-A-U-S-T-E-D. Take heart in this – studies show that women who experience morning sickness are more likely to carry their babies to term. So stock up on the saltines and ginger tea, prop up your pillow at night to prevent reflux, and sit your weary butt down for the ride. It should all be over by about 12 weeks of pregnancy.
4. There is such a thing as belly bump envy.
You’re pregnant. You are a generator of life. There is a tiny thing magically growing right there inside of you. But your body still looks exactly the same! The weeks go by. Is your waistband a little tighter? Meh, a little. You start to wonder – when will I look pregnant already??
Then you see someone who’s a week ahead of you with a nice cute basketball belly. You’re over there wondering why you can’t have that basketball belly while the women with the belly is admiring your nice flat one, worrying about how fast she is expanding.
When you’re pregnant, there’s an insane amount of obsession over this belly. Pregnancy books tell you to expect your bump to emerge at about 12-16 weeks, and they’ll show you a picture of a woman with the most perfect round little belly. But what they don’t tell you is that there’s a huge amount of variation in pregnancy bellies. There are even people who have such small bellies that they don’t know they’re pregnant until the baby shoots out! Some women have develop an enormous baby belly. Some carry high. Some carry low.
Rest assured, you will love your baby belly. In all likelihood, there will be a good sized bump there to rub and cradle by the end of the second trimester. Then when you hit the third and you haven’t seen your toes for months, you’ll start wondering why you were in such a hurry to get to this point!
5. People will suddenly boldly start commenting on your body.
Pregnancy books don’t tell you how your pregnancy will affect the behavior of other people. Here are some of my favorite statements I was lucky enough to encounter when my bump really started showing:
And the most telling response is the completely reactive “Gasp!” when a person sees you for the first time in a little while.
6. You’ll get to experience the lovely glucose test.
At about 26 weeks, you’ll be scheduled for a glucose test. You’ll basically have to chug a smallish amount of disgustingly sweet liquid and then get your blood drawn an hour later to test your glucose level. Not so bad. Most websites and pregnancy books tell you that you don’t even have to change your diet for this initial screening. My doc told me to avoid really sweet things for a day or so beforehand, to reduce the chances of a false positive.
When someone tells a ravenous pregnant woman to avoid any type of food for 24h, they’re asking for trouble. The day before my glucose test, my brain dialogue went something like “Don’t eat that cake or it’ll mess with your glucose test. Don’t eat that cake or it’ll mess with your glucose test. Don’t eat that…” I ate the cake. I failed the test.
If you fail, you have to go for a more involved glucose test. You have to fast beforehand, drink a larger volume of more concentrated sugar solution, and get your blood drawn every hour for 3 hours. If you didn’t get to experience the lovely nausea during the early months, you’ll certainly get to experience it after drinking that drink. I was wishing that they would just let me eat 5 Dunkin Donuts instead! It certainly would have been more pleasant. Luckily, for me, it turned out the 1st test was a false positive.
The moral of the story? Don’t eat the cake.
7. You no longer have control over your brain.
The pregnancy books might tell you to experience difficulty concentrating as you progress through your pregnancy, but they rarely capture the extent of the brain fog you experience. Starting in the second trimester, a combination of the pregnancy hormone progesterone and the baby’s own fetal cells start to program your brain. You’ll start to experience memory lapses and difficulty concentrating. Several times a day I would find myself telling someone about…oh what was it called…that thing that does…you know, it allows you to…you know the blue thing! (Or some version of that).
Your emotional centers will also become hyperactivated at completely random times. You’ll be happily existing and then someone will say something that makes you laugh really hard, until suddenly for whatever reason it makes you cry, and by the time you wipe your eyes, you can’t remember what made you start laughing OR crying in the first place! This is only the beginning. Just you wait for those postpartum mood swings.
8. You’ll feel like you’re Ellen Ripley – there’s an alien moving around in your belly!
You’ll wait and wait and wait to feel those first little flutters that tell you baby’s moving in there. Pregnancy books tell you that you’ll feel them between 16 and 25 weeks, but they don’t detail how crazy and weird those movements feel. The first ones feel like just that – a flutter, or a funny tickly feeling that’s almost like the feeling you get when you have water in your ear, but it’s in your belly instead. You think “Aww…isn’t that sweet? Baby’s active!”.
Fast forward a couple of months. When baby moves, you can watch your whole belly shift to the side, like the Titanic tipping into the ocean. A minute later, it’ll tip back upright. You can even see particular body parts! More than once, I could see a round butt poking out of my belly, and feel a foot or two wedging under my ribs. You’ll be standing there talking to someone, and suddenly “ooh! There’s an elbow!”.
Babycenter has a great post detailing the latest ultrasound tech available. Check out this super cool scan of a baby moving in the womb!
Then there are the hiccups. Fetuses often get hiccups during the second and third trimesters. Doctors think that these help exercise the breathing muscles to prepare them for when the baby needs to breathe after birth. Now THAT’S a funny feeling. Your whole belly will pulsate rhythmically, sometimes in the middle of the night. You’ll find yourself wondering if it’s okay that your fetus hiccups THIS much (it is).
9. That nesting instinct is seriously strong!
Pregnancy books will warn you about nesting instincts, but they rarely tell you how strong and surprising those instincts will be. You’ll suddenly become this whirlwind of cleanliness, the queen of home projects, and that baby nursery suddenly becomes the most important thing on your mind. In my experience, you know you’re getting ready to pop when you’ve painted three pieces of furniture (against doctor’s orders) and washed and folded all those brand new baby clothes three or four times.
10. Suddenly all women with kids will want to tell you their birth horror stories
Women love to share their birth stories. But when they’re talking to a pregnant person, not only do they tend to share every sordid detail, no matter how personal, it’s almost like these women are purposely out to horrify you.
You’ll hear things like “My epidural didn’t work and it felt like he was splitting me in half”, and “When I had my csection, I could feel them moving my organs around.” Rarely will someone say anything like “Awww…it wasn’t that bad”.
Well here’s the deal. You’re pushing (or cutting) a baby the size of a watermelon out of your body. There will be some pain and discomfort. But many times, when people look back on experiences, they don’t really remember the parts that were just “meh”, while the parts that are either really good or really bad stand out.
A lot of the childbirth process is made up of “meh” and even really good moments. There may be some memorable difficult things here and there, but at the end, there is a really amazing positive one of holding this little being in your arms. No matter what you end up going through along the way, I can almost guarantee that you’ll feel that it’s entirely worth it.
What’s the Take-Home?
Well, there you have it – some of the REAL experiences of pregnancy that will never be covered in a classic pregnancy book. Pregnancy can be hard and wonderful and frustrating and exciting. No matter what the experience is, your hormones will probably leave you in a state of bliss, swooning over even the ugliest of babies, and wanting to do it all over again. It’s a wild ride, but it’s one of the most memorable and magical things you can experience.
For a great guide through every day of your pregnancy, here is the incredible of the pregnancy books that I was completely addicted to through both of my pregnancies:
Pregnancy Day By Day: An Illustrated Daily Countdown to Motherhood, from Conception to Childbirth
Note: As an Amazon affiliate, I may stand to profit from purchases made from this link.
Wishing you a happy and healthy pregnancy!
