Men patronize women by complimenting them on their ability to give birth. Give me a vagina and a uterus filled with a baby that’s ready to party, and I know I could push it out. It wouldn’t be pretty; I’d definitely cry, scream and call a nurse the c-word, but I’d pull it off.
Don’t get mad. I’m going somewhere with this.
What I could never do is be pregnant for more than a week. I know some women “love being pregnant,” but I’m pretty sure they’re full of shit. Real women, for whom pregnancy feels like a choppy ride on a rowboat, want those Gaia mothers to eat their tempeh wraps and shut it.
As an emotional witness to two pregnancies, I understand it’s basically like having the stomach flu for six months, followed by three months of being fat, wearing elastic, and rolling around for the remote while peeing a little in your pants. Sure, the end part seems great, and in fact many people in Mississippi live their entire lives that way, but it’s those first six months that make women worthy of awe and worship.
I remember my wife saying she’d been nauseous nonstop for two months. She would barf at least twice a day for 2 months. I incredulously asked, “So wait, you’ve been nauseous and debilitatingly tired for 60 days and even after you throw-up you don’t feel better? ” She replied, “Yes” in that “Shut up, or I’m gonna projectile on your face” kind of way.
Nausea is the worst feeling in existence. In my drinking days, if I got the spins, or felt even a little queasy, I would go make myself puke immediately. Problem solved.
I’ve had the stomach flu twice this year, and if Rush Limbaugh had appeared asking for my soul and a sensual massage in exchange for health, I would have whimpered, “Take it evil doughboy and slide on over next to me. Oh, and put my iPod on ‘zen mix.’”
Given my lack of tolerance for discomfort, I have little doubt that after 48 hours of being pregnant and nauseous, I would think, “Umm, I don’t want a baby this bad,” and throw myself down the stairs.
There must be a hormone that starts firing when a woman becomes pregnant. It makes her more tolerant of feeling like she’s in the way way back of a 1984 Plymouth station wagon with a gas leak driving through the hill towns of Tuscany. That hormone is the only thing separating us from extinction, and I want an injection of it next time I get dizzy.
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I’ve been extremely lucky. With both of my pregnancies I had absolutely no sickness. My problem? Sleeping on my side. I usually sleep on my back, and sleeping on my side every night killed my hips. Plus the fact that I was always exhausted. However, if finances were better? I’d do it again in a heartbeat. =D
This is one of my favorite posts! Can't stop laughing! I didn't get very sick during my pregnancy, but the last two months, in the heat of Israeli summer were SO miserable. After birth I was incredibly relieved not to be pregnant anymore. Now my husband keeps asking if we can try for another… give me another year to forget ok?
You are freakin hilarious, honestly. I love this post! Mostly because when I was pregnant I felt like I was walking around in a nauseous haze, with bad skin and greasy hair- definitely not "glowing".
I was pretty lucky with my pregnancy as well. No nausea at all. What i didn't expect was how tired I would be. Had i not known i was preggo I would have assumed I had mono, or Rip Van Vinkle disease. With that being said, i was completly unprepared for how exhausting the actual boy would be.I would take being uncomfortable & peeing every 15 minutes to sleep deprevation any day. He is 3 now & we ponder doing this again, perhaps. I remind myself that insanity is doing the same thing over & over & expecting a different result, but perhaps when he turns 4 we may try this again, assuming my old uterus & eggs will still cooperate
Fantastic blog. These are the words I wish my husband had written. But despite constantly acknowledging my own pregnancy heroism, I think there must be a hormone. I vomited everyday for 6 months during my first pregnancy and never really felt better. Got the stomach flu a few weeks ago – for FOUR WHOLE HOURS – and wanted to kill myself. My current life plan is to be done, forever, with nausea.
The hormone totally exists. With my first I was so nauseous I couldn't smell what I was about to eat for more than 5-10 minutes or I couldn't eat it. I also couldn't eat any meat, or anything sweet like candy, cookies, cake… And I was a cake decorator at the time! Talk about torture, every smell that came out of the ovens made me want to hurl. With my second I was worse – I unknowingly got pregnant in october and had bought a frozen turkey for thanksgiving. The mere KNOWLEDGE of that frozen turkey in my freezer made me hurl daily until I begged my husband to give it away. And that's just the nausea part of my pregnancies! I won't get into the painful parts.
But you know what? That hormone kicked in because even though I remember all the horrible parts, what I FEEL is how much I loved pregnant. It's seriously insane.
On a side note, I wish they could isolate the nesting hormone you get when you're pregnant, because I have some baseboards that need cleaning…
Ha. I love Robyn
Thanks for your insight. After 2 kids, both pregnancies requiring a chemo patient drug (Zofran) to control the constant vomiting that lasted from 6 weeks to delivery, it is nice to not feel guilty for hating pregnancy but loving my 2 boys. My husband has been awesome and supportive throughout. However, whenever he suggests that we should try for a girl, I sweetly tell him that he is welcome to try, and I will fully support HIS pregnancy! Otherwise, I will happily continue to take my pill every night.
i would have to say, i am one of those women who love being pg. and love giving birth. Both are simple, i've never had morning sickness but i did end up with kidney stones. In the ER the doc said 'if you can get through this, you can get through birth.' He was totally right, w/my birthing exp. i'd take it over kidney stones any day.
My husband is happy you were bold enough to admit what a complete wimp men would be with pregnancy. His only point of disagreement: he would also pass on the giving birth part. His comment: hell, no that looked awful both times I watched you do it.
Agreed
Although my pregnancy was totally unsuccessful and lasted only 5 months, labor sucked and I didn't think it was all that fun. My response,when asked what pregnancy was like, was that I felt like my body had been hijacked by an alien. And I remember stating that I thought any woman who claimed it was the time of their life or enjoyed it were either insane or completely full of shit. However, given the chance, I would totally try again.
I am 2 months along, and I guess I have been fortunate not to feel the way you describe pregnancy yet. But now I will just love what is coming forth, thanks. lol
Being 6 months pregnant with my 3rd child and being completely miserable(vomiting since wk 4, heatburn since wk 8 and now a sinus infection that wont die with antibiotics) I'm kicking myself in the rear for not getting "fixed" 3 yrs ago after my son. I am totally floored that a man exists out there who realizes pregnancy is nothing like movies make iit out to be. Is there anyway you can call my hubby and tell him that I'm not just being lazy cause I want to…
No freaking joke on the calling the hubby thing. I am 7 months pregnant with my 3rd child and am having pelvic separation that is so debilitating that I can hardly walk. Finally! my husband understands a little bit when the doctor prescribed me Vicodin and I've been to the hospital two times. So glad that there are men out there that GET that pregnancy totally, utterly, freaking blows. (yeah, yeah, the whole baby at the end thing makes it worth it, yadda yadda)
My husband told me through my entire pregnancy that he could do it, be pregnant with the 50-times daily bathroom trips and killer heartburn, deliver the babes, breastfeed and all of that. I just smiled, nodded, winked and cursed lightly under my breath. Then he was witness to the labor and delivery. A year and half later, I still catch him staring at my stomach and nether-region, then glancing at his own and shaking his head.
As the mother of 6, all born one at a time, I could not agree with you more about this issue. I loved PARTS of being pregnant, but not all of it, the first kick was always cool, but gave way to having to try to sleep with the breakdancing (it was the 80s when I had my first 2) going on all night. The point about endurance is well taken- I do not doubt that most men could handle the birth experience, but the full deal? Not so much. Case in point- My family just got over the flu, and in a rare occurance, I also got sick. I was tending to my 13 year old at 1am who was getting sick in the bathroom while at the same time holding the puke bucket and getting sick myself, my husband slept through it and when he got sick later that day, stayed in bed all day. pregnancy is a lot of those kinds of moments. . .
LOVED this! I giggled through the whole thing. I'm actually one of those who loved being pregnant and I'm not one of those gaia loving granolas. I skipped most of the crappy feelings. I peed like ca-razy, but generally I skipped all of the maladies. It makes being pregnant kind of fun if you can avoid all of the first trimester horrors. I'm also aware that I'm a rarity and that my second pregnancy is going to make me pay double.
Agreed. I would give birth 100 times if I could do it without the pregnancy. I hated being pregnant. Granted giving birth is… hard (understatement)… it's over in a day or so, and they you have your baby! Pregnancy is just so… long… and miserable. Especially in the summer.
The being pregnant part was EASY compared to all the hell that breaks loose once the baby arrives! There were many a night that I rocked a screaming baby thinking 'I'd MUCH rather be pregnant another 12 months till this baby can reason with me' and on those 'special' days I found myself thinking 'I'd give birth all over again today if I could stop this baby from crying'- seriously… It's the AFTER part that's hard!
^^^ This. I guess I had relatively easy pregnancies. But the hormone crash, the pain of getting used to breastfeeding, the lack of sleep, pumping, endless crying, and trying to accomplish anything at work on top of it all — all of that is what made me think"why the hell does anybody ever have more than one kid?". And giving birth hurts like a mother-Fer. I had my 2nd 5 months ago and I am never doing this crap again. Hell no.
I didn't get nausea or heart burn with either of my pregnancies. I craved spicy….went through many bottles of Tabasco & hot sauce. I'd gladly skip the last 2 months when my whole body transforms into puffy memory foam and I look like my body has been taken over by some alien being…..both kids were well over 10 pounds each and liked to move around or get hiccups….hubby is still freaked out!!!
OMG … I don't know you from Adam, but I think I will read everything you write because I just laughed so hard. I may have even peed a little (which is side effect of two pregnancies, not followed by the doctor-ordered kegels … whoops.) I was one of the black sheep, those women that –how dare they– hated being pregnant. I would have so much rather preferred that the friendly stork delivered my son and daughter in a nice little basket to my front door and rang the bell. Or my husband could have been pregnant for me — I mean, that guy never turns down a challenge?! Thanks for the much needed hilarity on a hard Monday afternoon. ;)
You are totally amazing…
I would have taken "relatively amazing." Thanks :)
Wait – some women are only sick for six months? Lucky.
Yea, I think my wife is still sick and our kids are 2, and 4
Pregnant with Number 4 … Modern Medicine every 8 hours around the clock for 16 weeks straight and my nausea and vomiting never stopped. My 1 year old ran around mocking me as he made a dry heave noise and egged me on with a "cough mommy … cough" as if to say, "I dare you to do it again and if not, I PROMISE to explode in my diaper for the 10th time today until you do."
It has been delightful … or, more accurately ~ 100% as you described it above!
I agree there must be a hormone protecting our species!!! And yet: one kid, two kids, three kids, FOUR! Tally me bananas!
Both of my pregnancies were nearly problem free (no nausea, vomiting, etc.) but I never loved being pregnant – I didn't even like it, either. I didn't like that some little darlin' I hadn't even met yet was already controlling my life (lol). Agree completely with this: "I know some women “love being pregnant,” but I’m pretty sure they’re full of shit. Real women, for whom pregnancy feels like a choppy ride on a rowboat, want those Gaia mothers to to eat their tempeh wraps and shut it." (Are you SURE you're not really a woman? You nail so many of these issues, I'm not entirely convinced you're a guy. Either that or *gasp* you actually DO listen & pay attention to your wife (lmao).) Thanks for another laugh-out-loud posting!
I laughed out loud at the Rush paragraph, nicely done. Not pregnant, no kids yet, so this post is just a little frightening (the nauseous nonstop for two months part got me-I hope you're right about this magic hormone). But I'm pretty sure I'll be able to handle this better than my husband. He had a sinus infection last week. Granted, sinus infections suck, but really, you'd think he was dying. "But you don't understand Cait, it's just so stuffed, so much worse than a cold, the stuffiness is terrible, my nose, so stuffed, it's awful…" We'd be divorced by the end of gestation if things were reversed.
I could totally be friends with your husband.
It's called mansick (mantired, manmartyr, etc…). My husband wanted to go to the hospital for a fever of 99.1 last night. When it broke, he was giddy like he'd just made it through a near death experience. I had what he has last weekend, and I cooked and cleaned for a dinner party.
Totally spot on Jen R. Men can pick up heavy things, fix things, work through pain, but you give us a little case of the sniffles and we cry for mama.
None of my three pregnancies were like that… Except for the getting fat and peeing part. I had very easy pregnancies and, in fact, I loved that last part so much that I decided to stay that way forever. (Well, I do live in Alabama, so maybe that explains that.)
I'm not really sure if that hormone really exists because I always spend the first three months telling myself I will never do this again. If you really think about it though all the other crap you go through seems like a peice of cake after being nauseous for three months so maybe that's what it's for. It makes us feel invincible. ;)
I was miserable my whole pregnancy – vomiting, swollen, the whole deal. But you know what? I have no idea WHY, but I loved being pregnant. I honestly couldn't explain it to you, other than maybe it's the anticipation and the wondering who this little thing inside of you is going to turn out to be. Also, it's a fantastic excuse to sit on your behind and eat all the Ben and Jerry you want. That may have helped a little.
Preach it brotha man. I just got done my first trimester with my second and while this pregnancy has gone "smoother" than the first one, I have taken to mumbling, "Never again" on my way out of the bathroom after my pre-dinner vomiting. That and changing my pants because the vomiting made me pee.
Awesome. I used to live in Mississippi. Also, I've been pregnant. You're definitely onto something here.
I'm sure this post will make me extremely popular amongst nausea-free Mississippi residents.
As a women who is 6 months pregnant with my second child – I appreciate this post…a lot…and I never even got nasuous or vommited once – either time – I am one of the lucky ones…I do love being pregnant but its b/c I dont vomit all the time. that being said – I still think the population would suffer greatly if men had to be pregnant – it just wouldn't happen and I bet sex would not feel as AWSOME unless men were wearing a condom if that were the case!
Hilarious. Love all of this, timing, writing, description, and kudos.
The Rush Limbaugh sensual massage is especially nice. How much do you want to bet if men were the ones who got pregnant the "birth control" and "abortion" conversation would be a LOT different?