Pregnancy is a whole-body condition
I’ve always been fascinated with stories of women who didn’t know they were pregnant. One day they trotted off to hospital with a tricky case of indigestion, and the next day they came home with an infant.
How is it physically possible to not notice the whole extra person inside your body? Even if you’re lucky enough to escape the nausea, the heartburn, the fatigue and ravenous hunger, how do you explain the uppercuts to the diaphragm when your pregnancy is nearing full term and your child is desperate to get out? How do you rationalise the taser strikes to the cervix? And, more importantly, how do I get one of those pregnancies? Because they sound infinitely more pleasurable than the kind I got, which were … quite noticeable.
Although, to be fair, having an unexpected baby would actually be god-awful. I know a woman who didn’t discover she was pregnant until she was nearly 30 weeks gone. I was jealous until I realised she was spectacularly short-changed. Pregnant women need the full 40 weeks to wrap their minds around the fact that their lives are about to change, irrevocably and forever.
So perhaps we should be grateful that, for most of us, pregnancy will make itself known. Really, really known. Like, you probably won’t be wandering around at 36 weeks and forgetting you’ve got an extra body inside yours.
Here are a few things you need to know up-front:
• Pregnancy isn’t something that happens to just your belly. (Ha! Wouldn’t that be fun?) No. Pregnancy happens to your WHOLE body. All of the bits. There will be moments you’ll feel pregnant in your earlobes. It’s quite involved.
• It can affect ANYTHING. Literally anything that is new, baffling or weird over the next nine months could be pregnancy related.
• It’s all weird. Your Google search history is about to get lit.
• There’s no way you’re leaving this situation unscathed. I’m so sorry if you thought you’d be some sort of mythical creature who’d snap back to what she was before, with a little bit of effort and the right food. Lady, this is going to leave a mark.
Imagine, for example, you took a balloon, blew it up to its full size and then deflated it.
Or you took a piece of paper, scrunched it into a tiny ball and then tried to flatten it out again.
Or you took a watermelon, scooped out the insides, mixed those insides with half a bottle of vodka, froze it, blended it, put it back in the watermelon skin with a bunch of other fruit and then ran over the watermelon with your car.
A little bit like that.
It might not be traumatic or dramatic. It might not even be noticeable to the outside world, but there will be a few bits and pieces that’ll never make it back to where they used to be.
Pregnancy is also a moving feast. It evolves and transforms from one month to the next so just as you settle in to one stage, things will change and you’ll be thrown into a whole new hit-list of weirdness. Here’s a rough timeline of what to expect:
Feeling like garbage. Bloated, tired, chubby, greasy-haired, nauseous porky town. No one knows you’re pregnant so you have to deal with raised eyebrows and whispers as you reach for another packet of chips and undo one more button on your groaning pants. No one told you you’d just look bloated for months.
Pregnancy glory. You’ve ‘popped’ so you finally look pregnant and it’s exactly like all the magazines told you it would be—you’re in your cute tight dress, showing off your adorable little bump and your delightful new set of boobs. You are a goddess, and everyone treats you as such. Take many photos.
Chunky ankles, fat arse, huge boobs and pudgy arms. You’re not just pregnant in your belly, you’re pregnant EVERYWHERE. Is it possible to put on weight in your nose? Because yours has spread across your whole face. Your skin is seeking revenge for all the years you ignored the sunscreen. You’re looking at lip-waxing kits in the chemist. Your ‘cute’ belly looks like a road map and GOOD GRIEF will someone turn the air-con on.
DANGER ZONE. Do not approach the pregnant woman. Do not talk directly to her. Do not look her in the eye.
They say pregnancy goes for nine months, but it’s actually 40 weeks, which is more like ten months. But by the end, it feels like you’ve been pregnant for seventeen months and you want to hurt someone. (If it makes you feel any better, the second pregnancy feels like it goes for about a week and a half.)
So yeah, when you are growing a human, it’s not confined to your uterus. You will be pregnant from the hair on your head to the toes on your feet. Let’s have a look at some of the fun little ways your body will remind you that it is no longer your body, it’s merely the host body for the life-sucking wonder inside it. Shall we start at the top?
HELLO GLORIOUS HAIR! Did you know that most women stop shedding hair in pregnancy? So all the hair that usually ends up down the plughole stays on your head, and by the end of those nine months, you’ll be looking all Blake Lively with your fine-ass mane.
Of course, like absolutely everything to do with pregnancy, this won’t happen for everyone, so fair warning: this could be a spiteful promise of glory that never eventuates.
Side note: the luxurious hair may not be confined to your head. It can also come in thick and fast everywhere you have hair and many places you shouldn’t have hair. Enjoy that.
Side side note: the hair doesn’t stay. But let’s leave that tragedy for the newborn section.
Oh, the glow of pregnancy. And by glow, I mean the slick, greasy shine of your T-zone, the mottled sparkle of your skin’s pigmentation, and that rosy gleam of rosacea.
Your Blake Lively hair is doing its best to distract from the crack addict skin. Pigmentation, acne, weird rashes and a flushed face will leave you feeling so #blessed.
OR it could be the best skin of your life. You never know. It’s like skin roulette!
Side note: an old wives’ tale says that if you have beautiful skin in pregnancy you’ll be having a boy, but if your skin is shocking it’s a girl because baby girls steal your beauty. Gross stereotype or not, this was actually true for me.
They’ll want to close, a lot. Because you’ll be tired. The first trimester will have you near-hysterical with how fatigued you are. New hormones, building a placenta, the drain on your vitamins and minerals; it can all leave a girl feeling a touch grumpy. Naps in the work loos become a constant temptation. Public transport leads to public snoring. You’ll walk in the door from work, sit down on the couch and only wake when someone prods you and tells you to eat something or go to bed.
The second trimester is often the time this all disappears and you’ll bounce around like an adorable pregnant puppy, with your tiny little bump and your glossy mane of hair, telling everyone how marvellous pregnancy is.
And then the third trimester turns up to slap your perky arse back into bed. It’s not quite the same as the inexplicable fatigue of the first trimester. This exhaustion is simply because you are large and you can’t sleep. It’s possible you’ll have to be spoken to more than once about threatening violence against people who tell you to get as much sleep as you can now ‘before the baby arrives’.
You’re not imagining it. Your dreams have become mighty effed-up. They’re long, complicated, utterly disturbing and you can recall every frightening detail when you wake up. These are the kind of dreams that’ll have you wondering if someone as demented as you should be allowed to bring a child into this world. If what you’re growing even is a child? Maybe it’s a demon sprite that possesses you at night?
It’s okay. They’re totally normal. I mean, the dreams aren’t normal, they’re seriously unnerving, but it’s normal to have them during pregnancy, because hormones. (Yeah, this will be a recurring theme. It’s all hormones.)
It can become really stuffed up. Because why should breathing be easy for you?
All the mucus-producing parts of your body will go into overdrive so you could be all blocked up for quite a while. And yes, I did notice how gag-worthy the phrase ‘mucus-producing parts of your body’ was. Welcome to pregnancy.
Your nose might also bleed now and then. Because why not?
The stuffy nose could be a blessing though, because the alternative is that you can breathe and smell through your nose, and when pregnancy turns you into an actual bloodhound, you don’t want to smell anything. It’s like you’ve never smelled smells before in your life, and the greatest tragedy is that the world smells SO BAD.
The supercharged sense of smell is apparently to help pregnant women in the wild avoid all the soft cheese and oysters or something like that, but in reality it just highlights the stench-hole we all live in. Normal people walk around like everything is fine but pregnant women know we’re all living in a rancid, steaming garbage pile.
You’ll discover your boss never washes his hair because you can smell it from outside his office.
You’ll know what Janice had for dinner last night and, to be honest, it’s probably why she’s still single.
Public toilets will become a nightmare of putridity.
As an added bonus, YOU might also stink—and it’s a smell that no amount of showering and/or deodorant can erase. How lovely.
Yes, even your teeth. Your gums are probably going to bleed. You’ve got so much extra blood swishing around your body, and your gums are extra sensitive so brushing your teeth is an open invitation for bloodshed.
Also, your teeth can MOVE. Some women end up getting braces after they’ve finished having kids because their teeth shifted so much during pregnancy. Seriously, no part of your body is safe.
You might wake up one morning, your face all juicy and your pillow sopping wet, and desperately try to remember what you were doing last night.
Turns out, you’ve been drooling like a bull-mastiff. So much saliva, so little mouth control. You might want to grab a handtowel and put it on your pillow. And tell your partner not to mention a thing if he wants to continue sleeping next to you.
Yep, it could get all sore and out of joint. Pretty much like every joint in your body. That magical hormone relaxin—the one that helps your pelvis move and expand to fit the baby—leaches into every part of your body until you’re a full-on Gumby, which can be problematic if you want to stay in one piece.
I’m throwing this in here because I had super itchy armpits during pregnancy. Scratched the bejesus out of them. I’ve never met another person who’s experienced this, but I figure if it’s in a book, it’ll become legitimate. The secret shame of my itchy armpits is now out in the mainstream.
One of the first signs of pregnancy for many women will be sore boobs. This isn’t period boob pain; this is next-level trauma to the chest region.
Imagine someone’s taken to your boobs with a meat tenderiser, seasoned them with pepper, pan-fried them with some onions, then chewed them up and spat them back out again.
So yeah, they’ll be raw. It’s time to say goodbye to underwire bras, those medieval torture devices.
They’ll also be huge. If yours were originally of the ‘cute and pert’ variety, your pregnancy boobs will be the best knockers of your life. Take dozens of photos. Rejoice in how full and how high they look. Enjoy that cleavage. Get those girls out every chance you get because people really do love a good set of melons. (If they’re just for show, that is. If they’re functional breasts—for, you know, feeding infants—boobs are mortifying and dangerous for the more sensitive members of society.)
If your bust was already pretty impressive, this is going to be a daunting time for you, my friend. The bosom could take over. It’s lucky you’re not supposed to lie on your back during pregnancy, because they might just creep up to smother you in your sleep, the sneaky little devils.
Also, fair warning: your boobs might leak as you get closer to your due date. Nothing to worry about. You’ll be leaking from everywhere soon enough.
Remember when your nipples were all teeny tiny and cute? Ah, bless those little nips. Say goodbye. That’s the end of that.
They’ll grow and grow and grow and get darker and darker until half your boob is nipple. Roughly the size of a dinner plate or a nice cheese platter, right there on your chest. There’s a theory that says your nipples become offensively large and dark so your baby can find them when they’re born. Clever little monkeys.
Your balance will go askew, FYI. If you’re carrying all this new junk in your front it can throw everything off. Walking down stairs can become a challenge when you can’t see your feet, and leaning down to look where you’re stepping isn’t a great idea when all your weight is there to start with.
Oh, and you might be dizzy if your blood pressure is a bit low, so a dizzy, off-balance pregnant woman is a woman who should be sitting down with her feet up, watching TV and eating snacks. In my humble opinion.
Heartburn sounds a bit cute, doesn’t it? Like something out of a country song. Or like your heart has popped off to Fiji for some R&R and wasn’t very sun safe while playing beach volleyball.
What it actually feels like is molten lava bubbling up your oesophagus, burning great acidic holes right through your food pipe until you begin to fear your food will start seeping directly into your body cavity. You’ll need to sleep sitting up because every time you lie down, you worry actual fire will leak out of your mouth.
It’s unpleasant, but it’s okay—you get to drink liquid chalk to calm it down. Yay.
Side note: there’s an old wives’ tale that says if you get heartburn, it means your baby will have a lot of hair. There was a point in my pregnancy where I feared I was about to birth a Persian cat.
People will snidely tell you that you’re not really ‘eating for two’ so you don’t need to gorge like an animal.
I challenge those people to take some food off a pregnant lady and see how that works out.
No, you don’t need twice the amount of calories, allegedly. Nutritionists claim you only need a few hundred more every day to sustain the growing person inside your body.
Quite frankly, I don’t know or care how many more calories you need; all I know is that at certain times in my pregnancies I would get so hungry that I would double over in pain. Like my stomach was eating itself in a quest to fill an unfillable void.
I slept with food next to my bed, and my husband would often wake to find me sitting up, eating a banana at 3 a.m.
The worst part of being hungry/hangry is right at the end of pregnancy when you’re ravenous, every minute of every day, but can’t eat more than a few bites because your human occupier has its feet shoved into your stomach, flattening it to a quarter of its original size. It’s like a gastric bypass you didn’t ask for or want. It’s a hunger that can never be satisfied and it’s inhumane.
Your womb invader can also make it really hard to breathe. That can happen when a person has two feet resting inside your diaphragm, the inconsiderate little twerp. But it can also happen in the first trimester simply because of the extra progesterone in your body. So you’ll feel chubby, out of breath, sick and exhausted and you can’t tell anyone about it. Have I mentioned the first trimester is the worst?
Constant.
I refuse to call this ‘morning sickness’. What skid mark decided to make it sound like some sort of whimsical, time-limited quirk of health? It’s not a morning thing; it’s an all-day and all-night thing. It’s like you’re stuck in the worst hangover of your life for weeks and weeks and weeks on end.
What you might not know is that vomiting isn’t always the worst part. The waves of nausea that stop you from speaking, moving or even thinking; this is the killer. The threat that you could throw up at any minute hangs over your head like a bucket of spew ready to tip. The ‘will-I-won’t-I?’ is exhausting; so don’t let anyone downplay your agony just because you’re not physically throwing up all day.
When it finally does all come up, it can actually feel like a release. Like a sneeze that’s been coming for hours. Sure, it’s gross, and you’ll probably wee your pants a little bit with every lurch of your stomach (and you’ll almost definitely notice your toilet needs a good bleaching) but hopefully you’ll get a few minutes of calm before the storm hits again.
The really twisted part about this is that for most people, it’ll be worst from about six weeks until about twelve or thirteen weeks—which is traditionally the period before you’ve announced your pregnancy.
So you’ll be stuck in work meetings wishing you could crawl under the desk with a bowl of hot chips and a pillow, dry-heaving into your handbag and willing yourself not to spew on your boss’s shoes. Your colleagues will ask you if you’re tired because the pastygrey sheen of your skin is turning their stomachs, and you’re forced to smile, flash your furry teeth (because brushing makes you gag) and tell them you’re absolutely fine.
The quease will start to ease for some women at about twelve weeks, but most will still feel yuck until about fifteen weeks, so this is not just a first-trimester thing. Some lucky lasses will continue to hurl right up until the day they deliver. That was me #blessed.
The strangest thing is that some days you’ll wake up and feel perfectly fine—and then you’ll panic that something is wrong with the baby. Don’t worry; you’ll most likely feel deathly again the next day #grateful.
Spare a thought for any woman who experiences hyperemesis gravidarum or HG. This is not morning sickness, and it’s not nausea. It’s round-the-clock head-in-toilet vomiting that often ends in hospitalisation because they simply can’t keep any food or liquid down. It’s dangerous, debilitating and a curse you wouldn’t wish on your worst enemy. HG survivors are warriors.
Obviously, you’re going to get larger. Traditionally women aren’t fond of getting a bigger gut but a baby bump is special and I hope you love it as much as I did.
The best part is: the bigger it grows, the firmer it gets. Did you hear me? SO FIRM. Like a rock. Haven’t you always wanted rock-hard abs? I mean, it won’t be actual abs. They’ll depart as soon as your ankles do, but it’s a deliciously liberating feeling to no longer worry about rolls of fat when you bend over. Sure, it’s vain and superficial, but excuse me, this belly is magnificent.
Even women who’ve always shied away from wearing tight clothes will want to slip on a stretchy dress and flaunt that bump wherever they go. It’s like all those years of being told you need to be tiny are overridden by your body’s biological drive to be ‘with child’. A deep, ancient part of your psyche wants to be bigger, rounder, fuller.
Not to mention, the attention you’ll get from everyone else. Even if you’re feeling like rubbish, most people around you will think you’re a goddess. Everyone LOVES a baby bump.
Plus, never underestimate the value and novelty factor of ‘The Tummy Table’. It’s handier than you think.
The transformation of the bellybutton, however, is fascinating. I recommend placing bets among your family as to if/when the innie will become an outie.
Mine popped out quite early, and from then on it was like a live wire—touching it would send an electric shock straight through my body and make me feel like spewing.
So you can imagine how well I took it when complete strangers would touch my bump, inadvertently brushing against my bellybutton. They may as well have pinched a nipple.
I’m happy to say no one pressed charges against me.
Your body needs to fit a whole second body inside it, so things need to get stretchy. And that can be bloody painful.
Round ligament pain is like growing pains for your belly. Coughing, bending, picking things up, laughing too hard, turning over in bed … just don’t do any of those things and you should be okay. Otherwise, you could get an excruciating stabbing sensation in your guts that’ll have you in a total panic. (What’s new?)
You might also feel that pain in your ribs as they expand to fit that kid in there. Did you know it takes up to two years for your ribs to go back to where they were before? Yep. You probably won’t go back to your old bras for a while. But, honestly, who wants to go back to underwire?
This is the dark line that pops up on your lower tummy (often co-starring with its mate ‘belly fur’). Some people say the line is there to help newborns find their way up to mum’s boobs in the ‘infant crawl’. (Yes, some newborns can crawl their way up mum’s tummy just minutes after being born. Nature, hey?) It’s basically a runway for babies. It’s like lights along the aeroplane cabin, showing bubby the way to Milk Town.
Or it could just be a hormonal thing, like everything else. But that’s far less exciting.
It does fade after you give birth, but it’s a weird little thing—especially if you get a crooked one like I did. It’s like my body was trying to throw my poor child off course.
The streeeeeetch of your skin can be particularly uncomfortable. If you’ve always had a pretty tight rig, your skin could stress out with the stretching sensation, making you feel sore and itchy and sensitive, like you’re cracking all over. You could also be left with permanent reminders.
I’m talking about tiger stripes and battle scars. You’re either going to get them or you’re not. It’s all a matter of genetics. It doesn’t matter if you were big or small to start with and it doesn’t matter how expensive that belly oil is. Literally, no potion on the planet will stop those purple, angry streaks appearing because they come from underneath the skin’s surface—where no cream can reach. They will fade over time and won’t be quite as purple or as angry, but they’ll never completely disappear.
But keep on slathering your bump if it makes you feel better! No harm in having a silky-smooth belly. And the baby will love feeling your hands rubbing away. Yes, really, they can feel it. How freaky weird cool is that? Did you know towards the end of your pregnancy they can see light too? Shine a torch straight on your belly and see if the baby moves.
The pressure on your hips, pelvis and general baby-making area is extreme. It’s literally holding you all in.
As that relaxin pours through your body, it could entice your hips to take off on a holiday to the south of France, leaving you walking around like an 84-year-old woman.
Some women will be so rubbery they’ll end up with sacroiliac joint pain and/or pelvic girdle pain—two of the most painful conditions you’ll ever experience. Walking, sitting and turning over in bed will become agony. I had this and was in tears every day. Don’t suffer in silence: you need a doctor or a physio and perhaps some medical support garments to help you through. Glamorous, no? But it’s no joke. Some women end up using crutches or even a wheelchair at the end stages of pregnancy.
My goodness this is a fun one. When your vagina can no longer bear the responsibility of holding everything in, it can explode. Like a burst frankfurter turned inside out, exposing the fleshy meat inside. One day you’ll realise that everything that was on the inside is now on the outside and it’s twice its normal size. Don’t be alarmed: it’s just your vulva. Poor pet is under quite a bit of strain down there so she might swell up a bit. So if your doctor checks down there and says, ‘Whoa, that’s a big one!’ don’t be surprised or offended even though obstetricians should probably be better at hiding their shock when looking at a pregnant woman’s vajayjay. If you ask me.
Oh, and varicose veins in the fanny are a real thing. FYI.
Shout out to all the discharge as well. Isn’t discharge the most disgusting word in the English language? No wait, that’s moist. Or mucus! Coincidence? The moist, mucus discharge is real and unrelenting. There’s an ever-present gooey feeling down there. There could also be a bit of wee mixed in but, honestly, does a bit of wee make much difference?
Then there’s the mucus plug. This is a fun one for your partner to research. Ask him to look it up and find out what it is so he can better understand the signs of labour. He wants to be involved, doesn’t he?
Oh, and thrush! Don’t forget about thrush! Honestly, it’s just a good nine months of bedlam down there. Which can be tricky when you can’t see it anymore.
One silver lining though: NO PERIODS! Hooray!
You’ll be walking along, having a lovely gossip with your girlfriend, taking in the warm breeze, enjoying the bird calls in the air, when BAM! Lightning crotch.
All the nerves jangling around near your cervix are in a right state of panic as they get ready to evict the person inside you. As they fuss about, they might fire off stray electrical pulses that feel like a bolt of electricity shooting straight up your clacker. It’s like being zapped in the hoo-ha with a cattle prod. It’s like you’ve been fanny-punched by an invisible imp.
It’s quick, it’s devastating, it’s over, and you’re back to your day. Pregnancy is fun, no?
I once went on a water binge because I read that drinking three to four litres of water a day would make me look ten years younger. I basically spent a week on the toilet, like a hose with a hole in it. (I didn’t look ten years younger, by the way. Don’t try this.)
Pregnancy is a similar experience. You’ll be about five weeks pregnant and all of a sudden you need to wee. All. The. Time. You won’t get through two hours of sleep before your bladder wakes you up and reminds you to go. With all the extra blood flowing through your kidneys, you’ll start pumping out about twenty-five per cent more wee than normal. Some days it’ll feel like there’s no end to the amount of fluid your body can produce.
Then, when the baby starts to grow, it’ll start kicking your bladder for sport. This is an enjoyable way to wet yourself.
Then, when the baby gets really big, it’ll sleep with its rock-melon head snuggled into your bladder, reducing it from about the size of a teacup to the size of a tablespoon. When you realise you need to go to the toilet, you’d better already be inside the bathroom, otherwise it’s too late. You’re weeing.
On the other hand, pooing will stop, so that’s something.
All of that straining to poo could leave you with a darling string of haemorrhoids, and the kicker is that they mightn’t ever leave. There’s just so much pressure down there, and with all the extra blood flow it’s just a throbbing, protruding vein waiting to happen.
Giving birth does not help this situation, FYI.
You’ll also be super sweaty, by the way. Just everywhere, and especially at night. Pregnancy will make you hot. So very hot. And not hot in the ‘Check me out!’ way; hot in the ‘I hate everyone’ way.
Please spare a thought for all women who planned their pregnancies so poorly that they are eight months gone in the depths of summer. It’s a hot, sweaty, swollen mess and everyone in their vicinity will suffer because of it.
In a further attempt to make sure you don’t sleep ever again, your body will periodically wake you up with crippling leg cramps. The ones where your toes curl up uncontrollably and you need to get out of bed and stand on your leg to force it to remember how to be a leg and not a burning rod of fire and pain.
Your feet might grow. Isn’t that fun? I’m not just talking about the swelling in your ankles and feet, which can also happen (and can be a sign of pre-eclampsia or high blood pressure and should be checked out by your doctor). I’m talking about the actual bones in your feet spreading out as the ligaments loosen up.
A lot of women will end up wearing a larger shoe size because of their pregnancy. And it’s usually permanent. New shoe wardrobe, yay!
Yep, having a baby can affect your whole body, from the very tips of your hair down to the bones in your feet. When you’re pregnant, YOU are pregnant. Not just your belly—the whole shebang. All of it. SO VERY PREGNANT.