Sunday, July 7, 2013

Pregnancy Confessions

I have a confession. Well, a few confessions.
Confession #1: I've been a little bit of a pregnancy/ birth junkie for about 3.5 years. Like... borderline obsessed, minus the borderline part. I swear most waking moments (when I didn't have litters of puppies on the ground....) were consumed with reading and learning about all these decisions Jon and I would make for our babies should we ever be lucky enough to have them. In my reading, and many conversations with Jon of which I'm not entirely sure which actually interested him and how much he just went along with to humor me, I learned a whole lot and I'm thankful for that knowledge. I may be a bit weird now. I regularly pull out all (insert embarrassingly high number here) cloth diapers I've acquired and look at them, folding and organizing. Gosh darn it my newborn stash is adorable. I also think placentas are fascinating and totally cool. (I WILL be encapsulating, by the way. Yeah. You can go google that now and be absolutely horrified. I think it's awesome.)
Confession #2: For being fairly educated on these matters, I actually don't know a dang thing. I honest to goodness thought that being a pretty health conscious person with a pretty healthy diet, I would sail smoothly through pregnancy. I was convinced that people generally brought the sickness and nausea on themselves by not taking care of their bodies and paying attention to nutrition and, surely, this process that is what the mere survival of our species depends on can't be THAT hard on an otherwise healthy woman. No, it must be in their heads and in their choices. If only they'd make healthier choices they wouldn't be so miserable. Oh how very ignorant I was.
Confession #3: As much as I was absolutely and completely convinced that I just HAD to be one of those women that loves being pregnant and would never, ever have a single negative thing to say about this magical process, I'm not. During my 3+ years of infertility I admit it would really irk me when I'd hear women complain about their miserable symptoms. I still think it's a little insensitive around those struggling with fertility issues, BUT, I've come to realize that my conception problems didn't make them any less miserable... I didn't understand how anyone could NOT enjoy being pregnant. Then I got pregnant. On one hand, it's wonderful and I do wake up every single day and immediately think of how many weeks and days along I am, counting down the weeks to my guess date, and read all about baby Chase's development. I've never been happier about anything than to be expecting, I want this more than anything in the world. BUT. This pregnancy has not been easy, and it has not been fun.
A part of me has felt too guilty to just be straight up honest. I mean, I wanted this, we tried for this, we prayed for this for SO long, how dare I speak negatively of it now that our dreams are coming true?!

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