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I am the kind of pregnant lady that other women love to hate. My three major symptoms for each of my pregnancies were bigger boobs, glowing skin, and thicker hair. Besides being a bit more tired and bumping into things with my growing belly, I went about my normal life while pregnant — no significant morning sickness, no swollen ankles, no dramatic mood swings, no gestational diabetes, no need for bed rest, and no scary ultrasounds or test results.
My pregnancies also didn’t end too soon or drag on too long. Without being induced, I delivered within two weeks of each of my due dates. I never experienced that really uncomfortable stage of pregnancy where you’re desperate to get your baby out, nor did I have the immense worries that come from delivering prematurely.
To top it off, my labors and deliveries were just as noneventful as my pregnancies. I was in active labor for about four hours each time and pushed for 30 minutes with my first and 15 minutes with my second. No drugs required during labor and no stitches needed after I delivered healthy babies.
I’ll pause here so you can finish rolling your eyes.
I was very, very lucky to have such easy pregnancies, but that’s really all it was — luck. I don’t have some secret way to make your pregnancy go just as smoothly. I didn’t do something right, and you didn’t do something wrong. While some women might point to their daily prenatal yoga practice or their regimen of prenatal dietary supplements as the key to their dreamy pregnancies, I’m telling you that I didn’t do anything special.
I listened to the standard advice to avoid certain foods and to not drink alcohol (I still had some sips from time to time). I occasionally completed a prenatal workout DVD, and that was about it. The truth is that we have much less control over our bodies during pregnancy than we might like, which is something that becomes painfully obvious once we start trying to conceive and is made abundantly clear once we’re actually gestating a baby.
Motherhood brings a million new reasons for us to worry and it’s natural to blame ourselves when something doesn’t go as planned, but chances are, when it comes to pregnancy, it was going to go that way no matter what you did. Make good choices whenever you can, but don’t beat yourself up if you end up actually hating the experience or being disappointed by it. No one else can know exactly how you feel.
And because the universe craves balance, my postpartum days were not nearly as easy as my prenatal ones. Breastfeeding was a nightmare and my postpartum baby blues were way more intense than I expected. Earning the title of Mother is never really easy, after all.
