Congratulations, you’re pregnant! How are you feeling? Excited? Scared?
Don’t worry, you’ll be fine. Women have been doing it for thousands of years, they say! Most natural thing in the world!
And with those comments (often uttered by men, because gosh it’s fun when men share their opinions on pregnancy, don’t you think?), they’ve dismissed everything about creating a human that makes it such an achievement. Because growing a baby isn’t just getting a big belly and feeling nauseous for a few weeks.
Oh, sister, no. It’s a tad more involved than that.
Pregnancy is the most bizarre and mystifying thing your body will ever go through. And I mean that in the least terrifying way possible. I mean, sure, you might go through it skipping and laughing and rubbing that glorious belly of yours in everyone’s face. That’s entirely possible and I wish you all the best with that.
It is, however, a little more likely that your entire body will swell, transform and totally reconfigure itself to make way for the parasite bundle of joy invading your abdomen and pushing down on your genitalia until it feels like the whole mess could fall right out of your body.
Have you ever seen a picture of what your organs do while the foetus is in residence? Everything that used to fit in there perfectly is relocated, like refugees in your body. They’re pushed into hostile places where they don’t belong. They can’t go back to where they came from because their home is now occupied and dangerous. Your liver is in your ribs, your stomach is in your throat and your kidneys are resting on your rectum. It’s a humanitarian crisis in there. Add to that: a whole human being with limbs that get stuck under ribs and stretch at your skin—and your body is an actual war zone.
That little person inside your body (yes, YOU HAVE A WHOLE PERSON INSIDE YOU) will do unspeakable things to your organs and joints; it will have you lurching from deliriously happy to murderous all in the space of five minutes; it will leave you barely able to move until you’re begging for it to GET OUT. Eventually it’ll tear your vagina to pieces as it forces its way out, leaving you peeing and pooing yourself like a degenerate.
Oh, sorry, love, is this making you uncomfortable? I apologise; it can be a bit confronting. But once you’ve had a child, it will seem bloody hilarious. No matter what sort of person you were ‘before’, pushing a human out of your body will gift you with a new-found shamelessness when it comes to talking about your genitals and how it all works (or doesn’t work, as the case will very likely be). Fanny jokes just become funny. When your V has been to war and returned, she enjoys having a good laugh about it with her comrades, you know?
While you may know some of the technical details of what’s going to happen while you’re creating life, you probably don’t know The Whole Story. Because people never tell you The Whole Story because The Whole Story can be a bit … confronting. But I reckon forewarned is forearmed, and it’s better to know all of it now so you don’t feel like a freak when it happens to you.
Just remember … you’ll (probably) survive.
Love Lauren xx