Wow, bodies are weird.
IT CAN CRY WHILE IT’S STILL IN THERE??
D-:
You can totally have that glass of wine, babies seem resilient.
No I get it. That one time I held my baby nephew for an hour was really trying.
Well at least those overnight pads seem really comfy.
What do you mean, you crave hot dogs but can’t eat hot dogs? What sick torture is this?
Oh noooooo hahahahahahahha
I do not think I’d enjoy a child mass pressing into my organs like that, no sir, so you’re very brave for enduring it.
But what if you need to sit up quickly? No? Okay then.
[rummages around bag for birth control]
You are a warrior and I am worthless. You are staring pain and hormones and care of another human life straight in the face and I am changing out of heels into flats because I have a teensy blister. You are magic and I am nothing.
I never want to do this.
Your boobs look great though.
Pretty much. My best friend is pregnant right now, and everything she tells me just makes me think she is a superhero and so badass.
COUNTERPOINTS:
It is stylish to wear tight shirts to accentuate your bulging stomach, which is extremely refreshing
Elastic waistbands 4 lyfe
Ready-made excuse not to wear high heels
Ready-made excuse to leave boring company Christmas parties before they devolve into boring drunk company Christmas parties
Opportunity to feel badass about doing hard work you don’t really have to exert any willpower to complete
Hmm all of my counterpoints involve being a lazy antisocial slob, I wonder if I should work on that.
those were pretty much my main selling points of pregnancy, too. Then the baby was born into a blizzardy winter and I had this awesome excuse to stay inside. “Oh, heavens, I’m so HEARTILY SORRY I cannot make it to your social event, it is snowing relentlessly outside so I guess I’ll just stay home with the BAAAABY, siiiiiiiiigh, nothing like staying warm and dry with the new love of my life while avoiding all anxiety-provoking social interaction, oh well!”
Capsule wardrobe! Pregnancy was probably the best dressed I’ve been in years,since I had the excuse to replace EVERYTHING.
No, this is basically the best list of reasons to have baby I have ever read. Now if you will excuse me, imma follow Jaya’s lead and rummage about for birth control, just in case dirtbag Zeus gets an ideas while I am at work.
Unfortunately, actually having a baby seems like the sort of thing which would make it really hard to be lazy. For this reason (and many others) I will be steering clear.
Yep. The things I look forward to about having being pregnant/having a baby (grow a big stomach and not feel self-conscious! avoid social interactions! get some time off from work!) do not actually involve said baby.
Tangent: the taqueria by my office is building up a small library of books for kids to read while they’re there (two Edward Gorey books!). Their heavily-sanitized book of Greek myths, while telling the story of Io, said that Zeus “loved to come down to earth to marry mortal girls. The more wives he had, the more children he would have, and all the better for Greece!”
I really need to share this with as many people as possible.
http://www.amazon.com/Daulaires-Greek-Myths-Ingri…
Is it this one? I swear I just read that to my 8 year old and laughed internally for the rest of the page.
That’s the one! All the better for Greece, indeed.
Yes to ALL of these. Pregnancy is the only time of my life when I’ve felt 100% confident that leaving the house in leggings is the right thing to do.
Literally the only time I’ve felt comfortable emphasizing my stomach and wearing miniskirts.
Maxidresses are appropriate for everything.
People will usually give you their seat if they’re not total wastes of space.
Pretty cool to watch some stomach alien do flips when you lie down.
Fetus punches the cat.
Maternity wear is the best clothing in the world, I don’t know how I’ll go back to regular pants when this fetus makes the transition into baby-hood. Maybe I’ll just pretend to still be pregnant or something.
Currently my only complaint about pregnancy is that I can’t take any medication at all for this cold and as a result I cannot sleep due to coughing. But to offset that is the fact that I get a lot more sympathy for having the common cold than I ever would otherwise, so …
The cat is rather wary of my belly and I hadn’t put two and two together but it may indeed be because there have been some tremendous kicks aimed in the cat’s direction when she tries to snuggle up to me.
Ok, no “fetus punches the cat” is the best reason to have a baby. My cats are assholes.
Fetus punches the cat! Cat plants his foot directly in my navel! It’s a battle royale up in here.
Soft, stretchy clothes
No sucking in your gut
Get to slack off at the gym
Can always rationalize whatever you’ve eaten or want to eat
Husband doesn’t get to make fun of you for crying about stupid things
Ok, who is naming their band Fetus Punches the Cat? Because someone has to.
Is Foetus the band (er, one-man-band) still making records?
One of my fetuses once kicked the laptop right off of my stomach.
My grandmother had a grumpy old schnauzer who never forgave my mum after he settled down on her while she was heavily pregnant with me and got kicked right in the head.
Someone make me a cross-stitch sampler of “Fetus punches the cat,” please, so I can hang it on my wall with no context.
I don’t have to drink my husband’s gross, green beer today! Every year he gets so excited and every year I have to have a glass to get in the spirit, but this year i have an excuse!
Yes! I’m pretty much like, “Nope, I don’t want to do that because I’m tired,” and then no one can argue with me because I’m pregnant.
PREGNANCY PANTS ARE THE BEST. I wore them at like twenty weeks and I never wanted to take them off. Baby is 8.5 months old and I haven’t yet.
I am literally wearing a maternity dress (and non-maternity leggings) to work right now. My baby is FIVE. YEARS. OLD.
#lifegoals
This is my future.
It is so, so beautiful here. And spaciously comfy.
I have a maternity shirt I wear fairly often. My baby is pushing 10. (eek, I should go back to weight watchers)
I still wear my maternity yoga pants, and my oldest is turning six in a couple of weeks. Those yoga pants are THE BOMB.
I bought a pair of maternity shorts once as a definitely nonpregnant person, and I have never regretted that decision.
One of my favorite dresses is a maternity dress and I have never been pregnant.
#MaternitywearDontCare
One of my favourite dresses is a sundress my mother wore while pregnant with me. And my triplet brother and sister. I try not to think about what this says about me.
MaternitywearDontCare should be the motto for a line of maternity-style dresses marketed to women who are no longer or have never been pregnant. I would shop at that store for pretty much all of my clothes.
I would buy from this.
Samsies!
My maternity dress doesn’t even look like a maternity dress on me though, because my tatas are overly large even without having been pregnant.
And less-busty Toasties: please don’t think I’m trying to humblebrag. I’m sitting over here looking at your plunging V-necks and stylishly baggy shirts and turning green with envy. (When I wear those styles, I look like a harlot in a sack. 🙁 )
This about covers it. Though I gave up on high heels several years ago.
I got my IUD put in Tuesday, and as such my cramps are especially lousy this month, so this made me feel much better. Thank you.
Congratulations on your highly-effective Long-Acting Reversible Contraception!
My IUD is one of the best investments I have ever made. I am more comfortable proselytizing about the IUD than I am about Jesus and I am gonna be a minister. That is saying something.
The other day my sister made some off hand remark about maybe, sort of, someday, thinking about possibly looking into getting an IUD.
I vaulted across the couch and got in her face like, “HAVE YOU HEARD THE GOOD NEWS!?”
Word up. All the way up. Love my IUD so much.
I am definitely and IUD evangelist. My boss just got one and we had a possibly not appropriate for work discussion about the cramps and things to watch out for when getting an insertion for the first time. I have been known to vault across rooms when I head those three little letters in order to gush about how amazing they are.
I’m nine months pregnant with number 3, aka Mommy’s Little Accident. I’m getting an IUD put in as soon as humanly possible. Talk to me. Copper vs. Mirena?
I have only had copper. They can stay in longer (an additional 5 years, I think) and have no hormones (which I found to be a pro rather than a con after being an emotional nutjob on the pill). Cons: I get bad cramps and fairly bloody periods. Insertion was also awkward as fuck (I dry heaved for like two hours after it) but maybe it’s easier when you’ve already had a baby?
OMG, the periods. The IUD periods. They are forces of nature.
https://media.giphy.com/media/IwYXRW8IXRftS/giphy…
Huge, huge fan of the Mirena, especially because it basically nixes periods, and I didn’t think the insertion was that bad. If you’ve had trouble with hormonal birth control before, then it might not be the right choice, but I’ve loved it.
I had previously had some troubles with hormonal contraception BUT the Mirena is truly amazing and the best. No periods for 4.5 years so far and the hormone dose is much much smaller than in oral contraceptives because it doesn’t have to make it’s way through your digestive system.
PRO-TIP for anyone taking birth control for PCOS (polycystic ovarian syndrome): DON’T rely on the Mirena as hormonal therapy. My sister tried this, and her PCOS symptoms came back with a vengeance.
Everyone already has it covered. Mirena; mostly it’s hormones with a chance of no periods vs. Copper; no hormones with periods still but lasts longer. I think they’re comparably effective.
I had to get Skyla (smaller dose of hormones but also smaller size) because the Mirena wouldn’t fit through my cervix. If you’ve done a vaginal birth though, you may not have that problem and you can pick any you like!
I have Mirena, and I only use like 2 or 3 lite tampons per period now. It is a godsend.
I have had both! The cramping and periods are worse with copper, but if you have adverse reactions to BC hormones, it is the way to go. (Mirena has pretty low hormone levels, but they’re still there. Also: I was told my period would go away and it most definitely did not; it went from seven/eight days to five/six.) If your periods have never been very bad to begin with, you can probably go either way without too much trouble.
Final thing to consider: Depending on your health history and that of your family members, you might want to go hormone-free. (E.g., certain types of breast cancer.)
Copper alllll the way for me. Hormones make me feel terrible and the copper IUD lasts for like 10 years. I didn’t have a terrible insertion – it felt about as bad as getting my nipple pierced, I popped a couple of T3s and went back to work after half an hour. My cramps were much worse for the first six months but it settled down and seemed to have the side effect of making my periods much more regular. Being baby proof is pretty awesome!
I WAS an IUD evangelist (copper Paraguard) until I got pregnant just over a year after having it inserted. The IUD ended up in my cervix, and according to my gynecologist–who was not the person who performed the insertion, I had moved in the interval–said there were 3 possibilities:
1) it was never correctly placed, which you can control for by getting an ultrasound a month after insertion
2) The insertion was fine but my uterus flushed it out, (way to go uterus, I guess??) and thus I got pregnant
3) Something about getting pregnant dislodged the IUD
So, yeah. Sometimes IUDs fail and it sucks.
I have only had Mirena, so filter my advice through that knowledge.
I think Mirena is the better way to go. Efficacy-wise, Mirena is very slightly better at preventing pregnancy (Mirena is 99.9%, Paragard is 99.5%), though both are high enough that many consider the difference negligible. Side-effects wise, Paragard almost always causes heavier bleeding and more cramps. For this reason, I am so glad I went with Mirena, because my Mirena actually increased my cramps a little bit, so I can’t imagine how unhappy I might have been with Paragard. Paragard IS hormone-free, but Mirena’s hormone levels are so low that most people don’t notice any hormone-related side effects (I did not). And because Mirena uses hormones, it has the advantage of possibly stopping or at least lightening your periods (so far, mine hasn’t, but I’m hopeful that I’ll make it there someday). Paragard DOES have the advantage of being able to last 10 years compared to Mirena’s 5. But ultimately I’m glad I went with Mirena (mostly because of the aforementioned cramping issue).
Either way, though, you get highly-effective, long-lasting, easily reversed, discreet, and easy to use birth control, so yay!
My IUD was, easily, one of the absolute best decisions I ever made.
IUD high-five! I got mine Friday and was so very very nervous and it was really not nearly as bad as I expected, and I’m super-excited about the decision.
Heh, I’m 34 weeks and my reactions are STILL somewhat similar to yours except too late for birth control that ship has sailed.
My work makes people from my archive department introduce films on our YouTube channel of one of our film collections sometimes, and the one I had to do today was about an Irish woman in 1950 who gave birth to a 17lb 3oz baby, and I haven’t seen the rushes of my intro yet, but pretty sure a face has never been so terrified.
Also I didn’t know you weren’t supposed to eat hot dogs.
My professional opinion is that it is impossible to give birth to a 17lb 3oz baby (7796g!!!!) and that if a 17lb 3oz baby grows in your body, it is just going to STAND UP OUT OF YOUR BELLY one day when you lie down. Like, you lie down, utterly oppressed by the weight of your gravid abdomen and the knowledge that you have wrought something terrible from your organs of generation, and while you are lying there helpless, a fucking toddler just STANDS UP and shrugs the rest of you off like an old coat from the Goodwill.
Also it’s my professional opinion that hot dogs are fine, but you have to boil them first.
I’ll post the link to the YouTube vid up once it’s finished. They show the baby – he is a bruiser. The mum seems pretty hardy – the narrator mentions that this is her fifth baby and the first four daughters each weighed 14lb. Your description of him shrugging the mum off like an old coat made me laugh and also then think about the film again and feel sick again.
CAN’T WAIT, also have already reminded myself three times that the video is not going to show the actual birth, id est the egress from the maternal vagina, and that is too bad, because I have all kinds of inside-baseball-type questions about the accoucheur’s hand motions during delivery and whatnot.
I will say that given that this was Ireland in the 1950s, mom was almost certainly sedated for aaalllllll the births!
Oh my gosh, definitely please post this.
I have a tiny friend (like, 4′ 9″) who is about to give birth any day now, and she has been expressing anxiety about getting her perfectly proportionally sized fetus out of her body. On the one hand, I feel like I should inform her of this story to say, see, this is perfectly doable! but then, I’m afraid that the very concept of a fetus that is 20% of her normal weight would just make her faint.
The fear is real. My mother is 4’10 and 90 lbs… my baby sister was 8 lbs 10 oz. The OB said it was the equivalent of a 13 lb baby on a normal sized woman. My mother had all the drugs, and, uh, her tailbone popped out of place during delivery, but everything was a-ok! after that
NB: years later my mother worried to the pediatrician that we weren’t _on_ the growth chart; he looked at her and said dryly, “You don’t get a Mack truck out of a Volkswagen.”
That little detail about the tailbone popping made me gasp out loud and shudder at my desk. I’m 36 now, only 10ish years until menopause? Hurry up infertility!
From what I understand, her baby is a reasonable size for someone of her stature (and her husband’s–they’re both small), but yeah, I think I’m just going to keep my mouth shut.
My mom was 5’3″ and 105 before she got preggers with me. I was three weeks late and 8lb6oz. I was a c-section!
WHAT I DID NOT KNOW THAT COULD HAPPEN oh god
My husband is sixteen inches taller than me. I spent most of my pregnancy telling the fetus to stay average-sized until birth, and then it could grow as much as it wanted.
At birth baby was slightly larger than average, but well within normal variation. At eight months, the baby is in the 99th percentile for height and weight and is basically the size of a 1.5 year old. So, uh, baby listened.
My husband is about 14″ taller than me – I’m glad to hear at least some fetuses will listen to a request to stay average-sized until birth. Then again, I was a larger baby than he was, so I’m probably screwed either way.
Babies generally grow to the size of their mothers’ capabilities. I’m about my mom’s height and my baby was about a pound heavier than either of her pregnancies. My MIL is several inches taller than me and had at least two ten pound babies.
That’s reassuring, even after hearing about a 17lb baby!
I have several petite friends who never really thought through their decision to marry a giant man until they got pregnant. As a tall woman, I’ve been annoyed for years at my shortie friends dating/marrying all the tall dudes before I could, so I’ve felt a wee bit of schadenfreude at their panic. Just a bit.
Oh god, I’m 5’2″, and my first serious boyfriend was 6’3″, and his mom told me he was eleven pounds even. I thought to myself, welp, I’d just schedule a c-section I think. (I have not had any babies so it ended up not mattering.)
When I was pregnant I met a obstetrician who had trained and worked in Burma and therefore had a, ah, robust approach to managing the risks of childbirth. He said he wanted to see women for their first labour and their fifth labour. Assuming #1 had gone alright, #2, #3 and #4 were probably going to be fine, but by the time you got to #5 things were starting to get a little worn out and it was best if there was a doctor around.
(NB. this was just general conversation because I work with doctors, he wasn’t actually my obstetrician.)
That is a mental image that I know is going to stay with me through labor. Thanks for that!
I’m p. sure hot dogs are fine if they’re actually hot. You just don’t want to eat them off those rolly things under the heat lamp at the 7-11.
My friend’s baby stretched her legs out mid-birth, when her head was already out, and as there was no amniotic fluid left my friend saw her baby’s feet and legs perfectly clearly, inside of her. The horror.
I kept dreaming I would see baby limbs bulge out during pregnancy, so when it actually happened my husband didn’t believe me — until he witnessed it a few weeks later.
Iiiii have been told by a few sources (I am 20 weeks) that the risk of eating hot dogs and/or lunch meat while pregnant is really just the same as it is when non-pregnant. So if you think eating hot dogs is OK non-pregnant (I DO I AM SORRY I KNOW THEY ARE GROSS BUT SO DELICIOUS) then you might as well eat when pregnant.
(blah blah I’m not a doctor so make your own decisions)
~~~Actually~~~ your risk of catching listeriosis is the same whether you are pregnant or not, but even a subclinical listeria infection (meaning you get the bugs, but you don’t actually feel sick) can actually result in the sudden death of the fetus.
I am a super-crunchy midwife and I am all about, e.g., the occasional glass of wine in pregnancy, eat whatever kind of damn cheese you want to eat (unless it’s like the lunch-meat version of cheese, that pre-sliced stuff behind the deli counter where you get your questionable sandwiches), basically You Do You, but I am a total stickler for the lunch meat thing with my patients. I mean, I don’t POLICE them or anything. But when they ask “What should I not eat?” my answer is always and only, “raw fish and lunch meat.”
Still: you want to eat a hot dog, that’s fine. Boil your hot dog, put whatever you want on it, and go right ahead.
(boilerplate warning that my commenting on my lunch break does not replace your health care provider’s actual advice to you as an actual individual person. )
Not being able to eat sushi while pregnant is one of my biggest pregnancy-related fears. ;(
respectfully, I must disagree! listeria infection is associated with cold cuts, hot dogs, and most often, sadly, soft cheeses. people with immunocompromised systems are more vulnerable to listeria infection–obvi this includes pregnant women since our immune systems are depressed in favor of the fetus. pregnant women are about 10 times more likely than general population to get listeria infection since they can’t mount as effective of an immune response (cite: http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm6222a4… ) it’s a dangerous disease for the woman and can cause fetal loss, preterm labor, or illness in the newborn. so I’m not sure I could arrive at the conclusion that risk remains the same for a non-pregnant individual since the risk of developing the disease is elevated while pregnant and, once developed, poses elevated risk to the fetus.
I hold a totally different epidemiological position on drinking while pregnant 🙂
[edited to fix my link :)]
I had read that the risk is higher when pregnant- on the other hand, I think that risk is still roughly equivalent to the likelihood of my being in a fatal car accident (people suck at driving in my state). I’m taking seatbelt precautions with listeria during pregnancy, not “never drive again” precautions- that’s a level of risk I’m comfortable with. It’s been helpful for me to frame things this way- I’m better off moderating as I get rebellious with abstaining, even if I’m the one making all the decisions.
Why not eat the vegetarian ones? Some of them taste pretty dang close to Oscar Meyer, especially when you’ve put on all the toppings.
“IT CAN CRY WHILE IT’S STILL IN THERE??”
LITERALLY THE CREEPIEST THING.
Or would laughing while it’s still in there be the creepiest thing?
Rubbing hands together and side-eying everything while laughing extremely silently
My husband was cracking jokes at my 10 week ultrasound and we could see the fetus get jostled as I laughed, which was already pretty weird- laughter going the other direction would be extremely creepy.
^this. Also. How does the carrier know?
Baby freaked out when I saw Avengers 2 around 7 months — I could feel it moving in response to the sound.
Yeah, moving I get, but crying? How do you know? Or do you just infer?
The fetal tears emerge through your own eyes. But they’re not salty. They’re sweet. That’s how your know they’re not yours.
O_o
idk if this is real or not but i am not googling because i believe and i don’t want anyone to ruin this glorious magic for me.
No one should read my answer, yours is too perfect.
I’m a pretty highly-educated woman and I really have no idea whatsoever if you just made this up or not. Like this could be true or laughably fictional, I just don’t know. The vast ocean of things nobody teaches us is humbling.
I actually don’t know about crying, but mine was moving in startlement in reaction to loud noises. But it’s not like they have tears in the amniotic fluid.
Answers! http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC17219…
And also video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qi-01eITZaU
Spoiler: basically the fetal movement shown in an ultrasound looks like crying and happens in response to unpleasant stimuli, so they assume it’s crying.
Both my sister’s kids got hiccups in the womb frequently. It was scary/hilarious to watch her stomach twitch with every little *hic*.
This was me, my kiddo was such a hiccupper whilst in residence! And she still gets hiccups all the time, it’s all very bizarre
I’m 21 weeks right now and I like to occasionally stomp around the house with my arms over my head intoning, “I CONTAIN TWO BEATING HUMAN HEARTS. PROSTRATE YOURSELF BEFORE ME.”
Embracing grandiosity makes up for at least some of the discomfort/lack of dignity/crummy digestive functions.
(Ed to add, nobody actually listens when I do this.)
MORE ORGANS MEANS MORE HUMAN! /Zim /36weeks
i made it almost all the way through this pregnancy without having some kind of embarrassing bodily substance incident, until today when I had to run home at lunch to shower. -_- But “Enjoy every minute of your pregnancy!”
sigh.
I will just be happy to sleep on my back and be able to move my hands properly again. 😐
We had our 20-week scan yesterday, and I definitely found myself saying “such a healthy child; such plentiful organs.”
I cannot give this enough thumbs-up
<3
I told my husband’s bro-y bachelor friend that I had 50% more blood than usual. I think I’ve seen him once in the three years since. Oops. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I’ve been bragging about how much blood I have, too.
And I maaay have said something about being a Time Lord once or twice.
Okay, but I’m 8 weeks, and it already has a heartbeat? We saw it on the ultrasound and everything. Except it has neither a heart nor a brain at this point, just a spasming aorta, and it’s kinda freaking me out.
That said, “I’m pregnant” has become my go-to excuse for absolutely everything. I bought a whole cake just for me the other day because I wanted to and it was glorious.
The heart is the first organ to develop!!!! On the one hand that is so amazing. On the other hand, anti-choicers tie a lot of symbolic meaning into the “heartbeat” and a lot of my abortion patients ask me “does it have a heartbeat yet???” and I very calmly explain “yes but it doesn’t have a head yet, so there’s that.”
Yeah, but it’s not, like, a full heart until the second trimester, right? Just a couple of chambers that will eventually be a functioning heart?
Correct. Still: it beats! If you want to put a lot of symbolic weight on SOMETHING, a beating heart is pretty hard to, um, beat.
Yeah and heart muscle cells will contract by themselves so there’s also that. I don’t know if that would help your patients at all.
Hearts are some crazy shit.
Completely off topic, but your post implies you do some work related to providing abortions, so…
-salutes-
I buy a whole cake just for me about once a fortnight. I am not, have never been, and am never planning to be pregnant, I just like cake and don’t care who knows it.
#cakeheredontcare.
Exactly! Even if you do NOTHING AT ALL during the day and lie PERFECTLY still in a darkened room…you’re still GROWING A PERSON. We ALWAYS WIN!!!
My SIL bought me a pair of Time Lord socks because I had two heartbeats.
Oh my god, you’re a Timelord!
WHY did I not do this when I had the chance?!
I declared myself Pregatron and ruled with a firm, yet gentle hand. Then I had to level up to Momtron and all I want now is just a nice, long nap.
A friend of mine had a colleague who was pregnant with twin boys. Before giving a presentation to a bunch of really bro-y dudes (with whom it was apparently tradition to give talks while standing and pacing), she announced that she had more dicks in her than anyone else in the room and so she was going to sit down to give the talk, thank you very much.
If the world was fair and just, those bros would have given her a standing ovation.
Our microwave broke while I was pregnant with my son. I told my husband I’d try the breaker switch to fix it and it would work because “I have a penis now!”
I didn’t get enough mileage out of that. I should have asked for a raise too.
For whatever reason I was super into the two spines. “I feel like shit but I do have two spines right now so” “did you know on average women have more spines than men”
that sort of thing
I grew up in a super conservative town and then went to a catholic university so for a looong time I was fed a lot of “all women have children, those who don’t are bad/sad/weird.” It sounds strange but the day I realized I actually never had to go through pregnancy was such a great day. I still remember the feeling of relief vividly.
SmrtCookie plus Mirena = True Luv 4Eva
Your comment reminds me of a short story I read yesterday: A Stroke of Good Fortune by Flannery O’Connor. If you’re interested, here is a link to a PDF of the story (http://www.boyd.k12.ky.us/userfiles/447/Classes/28660/A%20Good%20Man%20Is%20Hard%20To%20Find.pdf ; story starts on page 84).
A lot of the reviews I have read of the story mention how “comical” and “lighthearted” it is, but I was completely horrified on the main character’s behalf.
Praise the Lord for female-controlled birth control, is all I can say.
Pregnancy is one long Giger-esque body horror show, as far as I’m concerned.
It really is.
My reaction is always “ohhhhh now you’re always going to be too busy to drink with me”.
I am about to graduate after 6 years of my MDiv. I will have money. I will have time to myself. And my husband is like ” I’ve been waiting forever to become a dad I don’t want to be old dad.” And I’m like “YOU CAN WAIT A LITTLE LONGER PERSON WHO WILL NOT BE GESTATING A PERSON INSIDE THEM.”
I’ve noticed that, contrary to stereotype, guys are generally way more stoked about having kids than women are. Probably because they don’t have to deal with the worst of it – physically and socially.
THIS.
I definitely feel like this is the case. My boyfriend finds the idea of having children vaguely appealing; I am absolutely certain I do not want them. I feel like if he knew he would be the one to go through pregnancy and childbirth, and be most likely to be the primary carer, he would find it more offputting.
Same. I’m considering adopotion (if I DO want a kid) and my bf was like “why pay for a baby when we can have one for free?” and I was like”……………you can carry it then.”
Also…for free? Is he planning on there being no pregnancy-related medical care? Cause depending on where you live and what kind of medical concerns your pregnancy brings, pregnancy can be just as expensive as adoption.
It wasn’t that long ago I had the realization that people need doctors to tell them the sex of the baby and if everything is coming along ok because the call is coming from inside the house but you don’t know a damn thing about it.
That and the first ultrasound picture I actually took the time to look at have made pregnancies and fetuses a mild phobia of mine.
And their cells enter your blood and hang around in your body for the rest of your life, probably giving you autoimmune disease.
Honestly, I would probably think pregnancy was really cool if there wasn’t a chance it could happen to me. Like if it was a process I could study in bees or something.
Happened to my stepdaughter. Got a lovely baby and lupus.
I have half a feeling this is why so many men are weirdly obsessed with women’s reproductive systems. So fascinating, and all the downsides are none of their concern…
This is why Rosemary’s Baby is a totally insightful movie.
PS yes Jaya they hiccup ALL THE TIME and it feels hilarious.
My husband freaked out every time our newborn got the hiccups and I was like, “Dude, she did it all the time in my uterus. She’s fine!”
My mom told me I used to hiccup all the time and I still can’t get over it. But I was inside of you?????? IN fluid??????????????
It’s how the baby strengthens his/her diaphragm muscle before being born … part of getting ready to breathe. But it is ALSO totally like having an alien in your body.
Both of my sister’s babies hiccupped in the womb a lot– I used to watch her stomach twitch twitch with horrified delight.
I could hear-from across the room-my friend’s baby hiccuping while it was still inside of her and all I could think was “SHE HAS AN ALIEN IN SIDE OF HER BODY!” It was…upsetting. But, yes, also bad-ass.
My daughter hiccuped all the time in utero, and I thought she was just kicking in rhythm. No one tells you these things.
I learned the medical term for “constantly feeling like you have to poop” from a doctor friend when chatting with him and a mutual friend in her 37th week, because that’s what was going on with her that week, and then PROMPTLY FORGOT IT, and I’m so mad because I feel like that’s a great term to have in your back pocket.
(yes, I know I can google it, I’m just pouting)
Google it and get back to us because I don’t want “constantly feeling like you have to poop” to be saved in my search history on my work computer, but I want to knooooowwww.
TENESMUS.
(Although I think tenesmus doesn’t really apply to pregnancy, because in late pregnancy the poop-feelings come partly from prostaglandins (also responsible for early labor symptoms of all stripes, and garden-variety menstrual cramps) and partly from pressure of the fetal head that tricks your body into thinking there’s poop back there.)
Any gastroenterologists in the house want to weigh in?
Future doctor here:
Tenesmus describes the sudden urge to poop. It’s like when you get a sudden GI bug and you are just going about your day and BAM UH OH FIND A TOILET ASAP. It’s common in Crohn’s disease, too.
Constantly feeling like you have to poop could be described as “rectal fullness.” The urge to poop is your body scanning the rectum and saying “yes, solid matter in here, time to get it out.” When women deliver babies, we suggest that they push like they’re pooping, because the baby is down compressing the rectum and it’s a confusingly similar feeling. You do the same kind of pushing, basically, but a lot of people are terrified that they’ll actually poop in front of everyone. The truth is–you might, but the baby is so big that your rectum can’t really open much anyway! So, poop that baby out and don’t look back!!
This is so informative and yet scream inducing for this never to have a child lady. “Poop that baby out and don’t look back” is killing me.
Every time someone asks me if I am going to have children (which, MYOB), I make the Tina Belcher ehhhhhhhhnhhhh noise, which probably tells me all I need to know about that.
People asking about my reproductive plans always have the vague sound to me of someone asking if they can have the last donut left over from the breakfast meeting. “Hey, you, uh, you gonna use that vagina or can I?”
I called my husband out at a party last weekend for asking a friend about her child-having plans (we’re not planning on kids either; he should know better!), so I think I leveled up that friendship.
I also did the calling out in clear earshot of a different friend who is the WORST offender in trying to convince me that I should be a mom. So, I got two birds with one stone! (If she gets the hint and stops talking to me about it.)
THANK YOU, my boobs DO look great.
#20weeks
I’m at 20 weeks today and mine look amazing in a shirt for the first time in my life. I’ve always had tiny boobs and now they are full and luxurious.
That’s all from me.
Yeah, I think I may have to stick to adoption when I decide to have kids because the temptation to breastfeed (despite all the unpleasantness that goes with that) them until they’re thirty may be too high if I get pregnant and have great boobs as a result. Knowing how sensitive I am to EVERYTHING, I’d hesitate to put anything unnatural in my body, but if milk’s keeping them big, I might be tempted to extend breastfeeding. 😀
“You are a warrior and I am worthless. You are staring pain and hormones and care of another human life straight in the face and I am changing out of heels into flats because I have a teensy blister. You are magic and I am nothing.”
Um… thanks for deriding women like me who don’t want to have children?
Can we please, PLEASE stop categorizing women who choose not to have children, or who CAN’T have children, as “worthless”? This happens far too often in society and I’m really over it. Women are worth more than their wombs. I do believe that’s one of the many points we’ve all been slugging to make the rest of the world see since the inception of the suffrage movement.
I also don’t want to have children! This is just a very specific reactions to realizing that part of it is because I do not like pain and discomfort!
I could tell you don’t want to have children from your reactions. 🙂 (Good choice, by the way, from my perspective!)
I’m sorry to come across so touchy–I’ve just had it up to my eyeballs with people telling me and other women who don’t reproduce, for whatever reason (or who might be somewhere in the process of reproduction but have to consider an abortion) that they are worthless and/or nothing. I’ve been denied badly-needed social aid at some dark-ass times in my life because I didn’t have children (how did I know it was because I didn’t have children? ‘Cause other women I knew who *had* children but made significantly more money than I did, tens of thousands more, got heaps and heaps of those same aids that I was denied: healthcare, tuition, housing assistance, food. There is nothing that says “You’re worthless and nothing because you don’t have children” louder or clearer than being forced into homelessness because there is no aid available to you while your SIL who makes $40K a year gets to go to college for free and gets to take advantage of low-income housing and food stamps because she has a kid.)
Plus, I was raised in a culture (Mormonism) that told me from the cradle that as a female, I was literally worthless, in this life and the next, unless I had babies.
So… your very specific reactions, and my very specific reactions. 🙂
I love your articles on The Toast! Keep up the awesome work.
I feel weird about describing women who have children as heroic (or similar; I know you did not use this word, Jaya!), because while pregnancy, childbirth and childrearing definitely all sound really hard and full of pain and discomfort, I also feel like just doing something unpleasant doesn’t make a person a hero; it also depends on what it actually is that they’re doing. And I feel like having children is a value-neutral thing, not in itself making a person better than anyone else choosing to do an equivalently hard thing (or not). (Not value-neutral in that caring for a child is no better objectively than neglecting it; obviously all children need to be cared for! Just the choice to have a child is neutral. I realise that this presupposes access to contraception and abortion, and not all people choose to have a child.) So, yes, people gestating and raising children are doing something really hard! But so are loads of people, at other things, and all those things could be good or bad or neither.
ALTHOUGH I realise that traditionally it’s stuff outside the domestic sphere that is seen as most worthy of recognition and the things that are typically women’s work have been ignored and are deserving of more praise, so who even knows.
Agreed – this is a funny piece and I get where this line is coming from. People making people! It’s like science fiction. But one person doing something freaky/cool doesn’t make the others nothing.
I hope to hell Jaya doesn’t ACTUALLY feel less-than for her choice not to reproduce. I hope it was just hyperbole for the sake of humor. I know it’s probably just the ghost of my Mormonism haunting me (WooOOOooOOoooo! *spooky ghost hands*) but I feel there are women a-plenty who actually do feel like lesser beings because they can’t have babies or really don’t want to.
(Thanks so, SO much, Mormon upbringing. The rich and never-ending wellspring of all my anxieties and rages.)
I’m taking your last sentence and replacing “Mormon” with “Catholic” because that pretty much sums mine up too. 😉
Baptist, but SAME.
I hope it was just hyperbole for the sake of humor.
I mean, that probably describes about half the pieces on this site, at least!
I feel certain she was joking/over awed by the physical commitment of the thing.
*shout out to my fellow sufferers from haunting by ghosts of Mormonism past! The struggle is real. +20 points to anyone else who told their seminary classmates that they’d rather be a mere ministering angel than end up in some posthumous polygamous eternity marriage endlessly producing “spirit babies”. 😀 Ahhh.
Oh shit, that is the most hardcore thing ever. In your face, seminary!!
I have pregnancy body horror and my BFF is pregnant. Funnily enough her stories don’t bug me because it’s not me!
I did not know the term pregnancy body horror but now I do, I am pretty sure I have it and it was the main reason for deciding not to sprog. When my BFF was pregnant it horrified me even though it wasn’t me!
I may adopt small people in the end, but between my faily genetics and my absolute terror of being enceinte, not happening nope nope I said no I would not.
I would have adopted with my ex had he been open to it as NO WAY NO HOW was I doing it myself, but I think I’d have been a decent parent – it was purely the actual process of becoming one that I was noping out of. However it was a dealbreaker for him, so deal was broke.
I have pregnancy body horror too and now I have a kid because I ended up partnered with a woman – specifically, a woman who wanted kids. It’s pretty cool. I mean, I also have issues with the time/energy suck of kids and the resulting mental health strain, but because we had to (and continue to have to) seriously negotiate this, I generally get what I need and also have this little human who literally thinks I’m the second best person in the world (occasionally, even the best.)
Ohhh I should be pregnant but I had a very early miscarriage five weeks ago and hopefully it will not be too long until I am pregnant again because I LOVED being pregnant and was very good at it and fingers crossed fingers crossed fingers crossed.
I’m very sorry for your loss. Sending lots of golden energy and good wishes your way. I hope it happens soon!
Fingers crossed for you! Love to you.
I’m so sorry. I hope you get your wish very soon!
I am so very sorry! Fingers crossed fingers crossed fingers crossed!
I wish it for you, too. Be gentle with yourself.
I’m sorry for your loss, and best of luck getting knocked up again!
Ohhh man, I’ve had two babies, and no lie it is super weird being pregnant, but also awesome. I have always had a bit of a tummy, less boobage than I might like, and fine hair, so I have never felt more gloriously beautiful than the second trimester of each pregnancy. I dressed to flaunt the belly instead of hide it, my boobs were just amazing, and my hair was thick and shiny and YOU GUYS I MISS IT STILL. (In the third trimester of both my blood pressure shot up and I got stuck on bedrest and as the weeks went by and my muscles melted into jelly and I laid there like a human incubator the glamour kinda wore off.)
Side note, I too did not know the baby could cry in utero, though I *do* know from experience that they can get hiccups in there, because mine did. All the time. Felt like a tiny muscle spasm and was just the most annoying thing. DRINK SOMETHING, BABY, SHEEEEEEESH
Yes, but in fairness, those back-of-the-heel blisters from high heels are the worst!
(And flats and basically any shoe that decides that I looked at it wrong. One of the blessings of winter is that I can lace up my boots and never once wonder how far I’ll be able to walk in them before worrying about a blister starting.)
No word of a lie, I would go through labour again before I’d wear a particularly beautiful pair of shoes I own for more than an hour. It’s the people wearing the 6″ stiletto heels with no signs of difficulty who are the real heroes!
I’m at a little over 20 weeks and have been surprisingly calm and content in the face of all the body changes. Until I noticed that my navel is disappearing. That well and truly freaks me out, and I can’t even explain why. #omphaloskepsis
Another midwife I know told me when I was about 24 weeks, “one of the benefits of pregnancy no one talks about is that you are going to be able to truly clean your belly button for the first time in your ENTIRE LIFE.”
Yes! It’s never been so clean! But it still creeps me out that it’s going to pop out any minute like a poultry thermometer.
Also, totally off topic, but I have to ask whether your username is from a Norwegian fairy tale? My partner uses a very similar name online, although I am fairly sure you and she are not the same person, and it brings me up short whenever I see it.
IT IS! It is from a Norwegian fairy tale, I mean. Good heavens! I am definitely not the same person as your partner (I know because my partner does not read the Toast), but I have been using variations on this user name since…. 1996?
My actual name is an unusual spelling of a common name, and when I come across other people with my same spelling I always start to worry “but how will people tell us apart??” as if sharing-a-name-with-another-human-being were not a normal part of being a person.
Her username isn’t exactly the same spelling, but it’s definitely from the same story. How funny!
We’ve been having a lot of conversations about how-common-is-too-common for names. We had a (pretty unusual) girl’s name picked out before we even started trying, but now we’re scrambling to name this little guy.
Similarly, my wife and I had our girl name picked out YEARS before we started trying, and went back and forth and all around for boy names throughout the pregnancy. We chose not to find out the sex until birth, and we didn’t have our boy name really set until a few days before I went into labor. And then I had a boy! So all our hard work and deep discussions and intense self-examinations were WORTH IT.
Welcome to the Two Mom Family club, btw!
Yay, thank you! Always nice to meet others!
We’re down to a couple of names, both of which feel potentially right (and one of which is vastly more common than the other). At this point, we may wait til we see his little face in person and then decide.
YAY two mum families, can I play too?
We were convinced we were going to have a boy, which I think we mostly because we were slightly more trepidatious about raising a boy in a somewhat misandrist two-femme household, so we spent much more time focussing on “what it might be like to parent a boy”. (Plus, I was amused to note, when I envisioned myself as the parent of a boy, I saw him as a series of mild stereotypes: seven years old and rowdy! Fifteen with long hair and a guitar! Eleven and bookish! Nine and singing in a choir! When I tried to imagine being the parent of a girl, my brain went, “Don’t be silly! Women are complex three-dimensional characters who cannot be reduced to simple stereotypes!” I cannot work out if that is because the stereotypes for girls are more restrictive or because I’m a true misandrist at heart.)
Despite expecting a boy, we had a perfect girls’ name picked t, and hadn’t managed to get anywhere better than top ten boys’ names.
Anyway, when my daughter was finally born (I was pregnant), I assumed that my partner would know the sex to be assigned before I did, but she had her legs crossed as they passed her my body and so it was me looking up who was the first to see her genitals. I exclaimed, “oh my god, a vagina! I mean vulva!”
I am definitely not the same person as your partner (I know because my partner does not read the Toast)
I mean, probably if your partner is not 20 weeks pregnant, that would also be a clue?
Well I only have Vera Knoop’s WORD that she is 20w pregnant. But I KNOW my partner does not Toast 🙂
True! I could be a pregnancy catfish!
Mine never did, and I was convinced that that would be the sign SteelyKid (the older one) was finally ready to come out, exactly like the poultry thermometer! So it’s not a guarantee.
Mine has been getting more and more shallow over the last couple of weeks, so I think it’s going to happen. I can’t help imagining it with sound effects.
Yeah, but the week after I had my baby, I lost 20lbs (goddamn water weight) and my boobs grew three sizes. Internally I was a disaster, but I looked FREAKING GREAT.
Me too! I have fond memories of going braless to the pediatrician’s office because my boobs were perfectly round and firm, like cantaloupes. (I mean, then there came the leaking, and the sobbing in the doctor’s office during which the doctor wiped my nose for me because my arms were full of baby, but hey.)
I’m 2 days overdue and right now, if I walk towards you you’d be like, oh, why is that large woman waddling? And then I turn sideways and you’d be all ‘HOLY SHIT THAT’S A BABY’.
The transformation is amazing.
Hurry it up, IronFawn!
Ohhh, my second baby was a week overdue. You have my deepest sympathies! My parents came from out of town to help out, and the baby kept not coming and not coming and not coming, and finally I got to the point where I was like, “People need to stop asking if i am having contractions!”
Pretty much every time a friend is pregnant I learn a new and horrifying thing about pregnancy and I am so glad I have decided to opt out of that because it is the definition of body horror. (props to all you who have done it because GOOD LORD.)
Restless legs!
your pelvis literally CRACKS OPEN
shudder</>
…WHAT?!
D:
I was a G cup BEFORE I got pregnant; my boobs ALREADY looked great!
Anyway I ate a giant platter of sushi last weekend and it was amazing. American pregnancy guidelines are bullshit.
“American pregnancy guidelines are bullshit”
PREACH. Canadian ones too.
I mean, once you’ve pooped on a table in front of complete strangers, your perspective on things just changes.
I’m a triplet, and when my mom was in the hospital to give birth to us, there were a lot of medical students who were verrry interested in this excellent learning opportunity.
I’m trying to imagine flashing groups of strangers for Science! and I’m not sure I am that charitable a spirit.
The best thing about pregnancy is the constant (joking) guilt-trip I get to give my husband. “Oh, you want me to take out the garbage? You want your nine months pregnant wife to lug a bag of trash outside in the cold? You know that I’m actively gestating your third son at this very moment, right?”
I picture this in the G.O.B. Bluth “$4,000 suit” voice. C’mon!
“I’m sorry sweetie, I couldn’t hear you over the sound of all of the creating a human being I’m busy with.”
I am literally sitting on my hands and typing with my nose in order to not launch into my insane labour story, so I will definitely take any and all descriptions of any stage of pregnancy as superheroic ALWAYS. It’s damn tough.
I fucking LOVE hearing people’s insane labor stories, since I don’t have one (scheduled c-section, went smoothly, easy peasy [though let’s not talk about the recovery after]). Do share!
Have not had a baby yet, but have my own birth story memorized (it is recited on my birthday every year for obvious reasons).
Opening, Day 0: I am 2 weeks late, in the height of late summer/early fall temperatures during record-breaking temps. Mom is exceedingly ready to be done with this.
Mom and Grandmom decide extensive walking and a family roadtrip is just the thing to encourage me to appear, because goodness knows why.
Becoming lost ensues, because pregnancy brain.
Day 1: Labor Begins
Mom and Grandmom arrive at family home, too late for dinner.
Mom spends time diffusing family tension over impending baby.
Labor starts, shortly before midnight.
Mom drives back, while in labor, during early hours of the morning. Takes several hours.
Mom and Grandmom arrive at hospital. Mom insists on epidural. Epidural is put in badly, does not work, must be redone.
Labor continues.
Labor continues. Doctors become exceedingly tired.
Day 2: Ow
Labor continues. Possibly accompanied by swearing and a different set of doctors, Mom is not super clear about this point.
Labor continues.
49 hours after labor began, I appear. There is much rejoicing.
My existence on this earth definitely qualifies my mother as a superhero (also: she remains the only person I have ever seen successfully organize and run a family reunion while on both steroids for an infection and painkillers for a broken bone. You could barely tell!). Superman has nothing on her.
first pregnancy: A+. Afternoon naps throughout the first trimester; all the chocolate-covered almonds; new maternity wardrobe handed down from stylish pals.
second pregnancy (currently only 8 weeks in): B-. Toddler with a pretty aggressive, full-body cuddle style clambering over my nauseated midsection every morning; stylish pals now also pregnant so will have to actually pay for a new temporary wardrobe.
I was only pregnant for less than one trimester and one of my best friends (drunkenly, haphazardly, “to fix the relationship”ly) knocked up his girlfriend almost the same week my boyfriend and I, uh, zigged when we should have zagged.
I tell you, I never want to go through that again, ever, and I’m so happy about my abortion and that I got to write about it for the Toast! But now my friend’s baby is kicking and I’m like “omg that would be ME RIGHT NOW if I hadn’t aborted!!”
The swollen booby thing was horrifying. They ached! Also they were huge-er and it kicked my dysphoric ass into realizing I probably should medically transition already.
My skin looked great though.
I started having contractions on Thursday afternoon—mild, easy-peasy contractions—and was like, “this is it! This baby is being born today! ”
A full 24 hours go by. I’m reading the New Yorker and doing my birth affirmations. We’re timing them: ten minutes apart. Breathing through them.
No baby.
Another 24 hours go by. We’re listening to David Bowie and I’m sweating hard. My husband is saying things like”let it gooooo” every time I contract. Call the midwives. 3 centimeters dilated like a FUCKING CHUMP.
No baby.
More hours. Contractions five and a half minutes apart. I am barfing, and my lips are chapped and bleeding from doing my horse breathing. Birth affirmations out the window. My husband is squeezing my hips so hard he’s leaving handprints. Nothing helps.
No baby.
Monday morning. Midwives tell me to come into their clinic for a stress test. I am DEFINITELY STRESSED, midwives. Contractions triggered every time I stand up, sit down, pee, roll over, change position, and also every five minutes. Throw up on the street. Six centimeters dilated. Go to the Birth Centre.
No baby.
Climb into the Birth Centre’s hge tub. Nearly drown during a contraction. Legs are cramping. Get out and sit on the birth stool. Bellow, “I hate this fucking birth stool,” at the midwives. Barf some more.
No baby.
Get transferred to the hospital for pitocin, and blessedly, an epidural. It takes the doctors three tries to thread the epidural needle correctly. I am so zoned on pain that I nod off during their last attempt.
No baby.
Monday evening, the OBGYN comes in, perky as can be, and informs me that the baby’s heart rate is dropping after every contraction and also he has pooped in my womb. Time for a c-section.
During the c-section, the epidural medicine is everywhere, not just my lower half, which freezes me up to my jaw. Inform the anesthesiologist I feel fucked up. He tells me that this is because my uterus is outside my body and upside down. I hate him until the end of days.
Finally, FINALLY, FUCKING FINALLY: there is a baby. He is amazing.
But: he may not have any siblings.
You. Are. A. Fucking. CHAMP. Fun fact: apparently they always yank the whole uterus out during the section! I guess it’s easier to put back together that way? So, while neither my husband nor I ever saw it (they had the curtain up for me, and he squeamishly avoided the whole cut-open part like the plague), I can know in my heart that my whole uterus was just out chillin in the breeze for a while. SCIENCE!
It was a fun science fact that I did not especially need to learn in exactly that context, y’heard?