Things I didn’t know about pregnancy

treasured-panda
Treasured panda doesn’t want to go to the toilet again. Treasured panda just wants to sleep.

People talk about ‘glowing’ and feeling invincible when they’re up the duff.

This makes me laugh in a slightly bitter way because I do not feel this way. I feel vulnerable and smelly. I have body odour for the first time in my life, a development that leaves me sniffing my armpits and feeling quietly appalled.

Add this to my boundless capacity for peppermint tea-proof heartburn, napping and peeing and that’s me done for the day.

My stomach muscles have weakened, I have a pale brown stripe (linea nigra) down my belly and my boobs look like a vascular road map.

One of my very wise friends said that, numerologically speaking, 2016 is a year of endings (it’s a 9 year). Next year is a year of beginnings (a 1 year).

This is very accurate for me.

Pregnancy has forced me to shed my old skin. No more drinking or partying. No more travelling. No more chances to run away and change direction. For the first time in my life, my destination is fixed: motherhood and the grounded aspects of that experience.

And it requires patience. You can’t speed it up. It’s like being on a long haul flight with a kid kicking the back of your seat the whole time.

And yet I love Baby Castle. I am an ‘us’ now. And that is probably the biggest change of all: going from singular to plural.

There is something kinda cool about growing a person, even if it does mean you have to give up your old life and grow a tougher new skin.

Have you ever been pregnant or hatched a baby? What was it like for you?

 

 

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