Yes, that all sounds like a lot—and it is—but do you even understand the kind of currency this gives you for the rest of your life?
YOU ARE GROWING A PERSON INSIDE YOUR BODY, like some sort of creature from science fiction. It’s straight-up witchcraft, what you’ve done. Forevermore when someone (i.e. your partner) tries to tell you about something incredible they just did, you can smile and nod and tell them they’re very clever, and then sweetly enquire if they, by chance, grew a whole human inside their body. No? I didn’t think so.
From a couple of cells, you’ve grown a heart, a spine, a liver, legs and arms. A WHOLE PERSON. I’m not sure it’s possible to ever fully grasp the amazingness of pregnancy. Never again in your life will you accomplish so much in a day. (What did I do today? Oh, not much … just grew a pair of eyeballs. What about you?)
You know when you see a pregnant woman gazing off into the distance, smiling like a spacey, round Buddha, and you assume she’s having a brain freeze of some sort? That’s not a brain freeze. She’s sitting there thinking, ‘Holy shitballs! I am an ancient vessel, built for magic, growing a person who will one day breathe and walk and talk and probably end up running the country because I can just feel her genius developing as I sit here. Because she’s, you know, INSIDE ME RIGHT NOW. Because I am a woman and I grow people. Why aren’t women in charge of everything? We CREATE LIFE! We’re incredible!’
Those spacey, ‘I’m magic’ moments will help you through the ‘Oh my god, my vagina is about to fall off’ moments. Because you are magic. Trust me.