Pregnancy suits you? It’s a lottery

Getting pregnant is a lottery.  You spend your youth paranoid that you might fall pregnant when it would make your life difficult and then you realise one day that coming off contraception is not like an automatic “opt-in” guaranteeing you a child.  Some are up the duff in a snap, then have tremendous issues with second children while others are told they will never conceive and suddenly find themselves surprised to be parents.  Personally i think falling pregnant has a lot to do with probabilities and perhaps that is why there is so much “unexplained” infertility.  Perhaps the gods of statistics just aren’t favouring certain individuals when really there is no biological reason that it shouldn’t happen.  I have to confess that it irks me a bit when couples are self-congratulatory about being easily up the duff, as if it took any work on their part… as if it proved their superiority in some way.  Just looking about you you can see that who ends up having kids has nothing to do with merit, just luck.  If you ask me, the same can be said for the kind of pregnant woman you are and the pregnancy you have.

Each child, birth and pregnancy is different.  Every woman is different.  I have skinny friends who got depressed and had terribly tricky births, friends who hardly hit a bump and carried on as normal. And then there are people like me who puts on 20-30kgs every pregnancy, had terrible varicose veins, gritty, frizzy hair and even severe acne.  It was an eye-opener to witness that as I morphed from an attractive clear-skinned size 10 person into a 95kg behemoth that couldn’t shoe-horn herself into H&M Mama’s XXL denim skirt measuring a metre across when laid out flat, people treated me differently.  With spite and aversion even.  That is what I found hardest.  People I met in pregnancy yoga and I had lunch with every week, whose babies I then held, literally had no idea who I was 18 months down the line when I bumped into them in a shop in my more established iteration of myself.  That is why feeling not like myself mattered.  When not reproducing I am at peace with myself but anywhere inside a 2 year radius of pregnancy I am a physical and emotional mess.  It is like going through the ungracious stage of puberty all over again, getting to know a new body and new moods and new tastes.    For the record, I don’t buy into the negative, anti-feminist declaration that you never “get back” to your pre-baby self.  Of course you can, or within the realms of normal aging you can.  I got there twice before and am slowly getting there now for the third time, with no personal trainer, regular exercise or dieting.  It just takes an AGE without those elements in my infrastructure and I frankly couldn’t care if I remain an inch or two wider in the hip and sport a few more wrinkles, as long as my MOJO returns and I can fit back into 75% of my old clothes.  I have low blood pressure which during pregnancy dips even lower.  This, combined with morning sickness and then two other children night-waking, just requires super-human strength and motivation to do any kind of activity beyond general childcare.  After each and every  pregnancy 10 kgs dropped off in my first postpartum week, due to water retention.  There was nothing I could do about that.  Contrary to what people might think, I did not eat cream cakes and jumbo bags of Kettle Chips the duration of my pregnancy.  I just put on weight because THAT IS WHAT MY BODY DOES WHEN PREGNANT and so it was with my mother and hers too.   I don’t believe in the basic premise of calories in and calories out of weight maintenance as my morning sickness meant I ate less than normal and the only way of me avoiding this kind of  weight gain would have been for me to have eaten significantly less than when I am not pregnant.  My metabolism literally drops, my body is in “life-preservation” mode, storing for famine and other life-threatening eventualities and there is nothing I can do without making myself miserable and even less energetic.  I hate naps as a rule when unpregnant as I wake up feeling groggy, disorientated and slightly anxious time has moved on without me.  I also normally take my four flights of stairs at home at a bounding sprint most days, without panting.  This same “me” can barely do one flight without wheezing when with child and has to nap once a week to normalise blood pressure.  I refuse to embark on a diet right at this time of dramatic physical change to fit some kind of norm set by the outsiders I mingle with, or society at large.  I may not be the most beautiful pregnant woman but I am proud of the kids I have produced.  All where born at term with great long legs and at heavy weights and with crania in the 90th centile and above.  All of these are crucial indicators to improved mortality rates.  My doc told me that there is a direct correlation between IQ and head size so I take comfort in a painful birth by assuaging it with a long term view for their welfare.  They hit all milestones early, have curious active little minds and are beautiful to look at.  I’d rather have this and put up with certain levels of discomfort and unattractiveness and be sure that my kids are strapping pictures of health than obsess over my litheness.  Your physical state is relatively plastic and “fixable” once you’re done with breastfeeding and have enough energy and time to focus on yourself fully once more.  I really felt hurt by some of the stupid, insensitive comments I got from people during my pregnancies before I had regained my best physical self.  I was just astounded they dared be so rude and idiotically insensitive, but then again people baffle me daily.  I often rouse this rudeness in people because I am so heart-on-sleeve and forthright, so I think they assume I have the emotional armour of an armadillo and that no censorship is required.  Enjoy these jem-of-a-comments that I actually received:

• “I can tell you are having a girl because she has stolen all your beauty”  – courtesy of a friend of my parents
• “How many weeks do you have left, not long now, eh?” – when I was just tipping into my second trimester
• “You look like you are having triplets!” – second trimester

I felt like hitting those people, I realised they were both rude and ignorant, a potentially riot-causing combo of insensitivity.

The following pictures are of me taken 10  months apart.  Yeah, I know.  Pre-kids and then pregnant, 10 days before I gave birth.  Thankfully I have binned that pink monstrosity but I kept the picture because I can’t bear vanity and don’t like re-writing history so it appears all airbrushed.  Also, I thought it could be a morale boost for my daughter one day, so can see how I was at my worst and not feel bad about herself if she follows in my footsteps!