I’ve got to be honest, I truly didn’t enjoy being pregnant. Yes I know the biology is incredible, I’m growing a tiny person and I should embrace the insanity hormones, but aside from the seemingly endless vomiting and exhaustion, I just remember feeling utterly hijacked by this tiny little pirate marauding around my insides, causing chaos everywhere he turned. Throughout the pregnancy I wished I felt differently, that I bonded and glowed and all the other things you hear that happen, but it sadly just never clicked for me and as the belly grew bigger, I liked myself less and less. After 8 months I was staunchly adamant that I would never – repeat never – go through it all again.*
This fact had been happily accepted and neatly filed away for a few years, along with my other never-to-do-again memories such as sky-diving and beer-bongs, but it has recently resurfaced because I am quite surprisingly about to embark on the whole baby shennanigans again**. And before I even get close to puking in a plant pot, I know as much as I’d love to have another child – I still have more than a little trepidation about going through pregnancy again.
Perhaps all my best intentions of being a calm and serene incubator this time around might somewhat alleviate these issues – taking up baby yoga and only eating vegetables planted by virgins being just a few, but I’m sure all these divine plans will be flung out the window the minute the first production deadline hits in favour of sobbing at the keyboard with a packet of timtams.
I have a very clear memory of being handed my newborn son, and amidst the chaos of an overly complicated emergency ceasar I simply thought ‘thank god he is out of me, someone please take him away. And this feeling didn’t change for almost a year.
Maybe the second time will be easier, the biggest upheaval of the transition into motherhood is already achieved and I’ve accepted the mummy tummy is for good. Or maybe it will be a million times harder with a 3 year old in tow?
Does this happen more now because our lives today don’t allow us the time to be pregnant? Morning sickness has to be snuck in around meetings and deadlines, fatigue managed by napping in the carpark for 20 minutes at lunchtime.
I do wonder how many women are delivering with their iphones to hand, and still feel like they’ve let someone down before they’ve begun? I know I am certainly guilty of all of the above, and mostly because I put that pressure on myself.
What I do know is the inbuilt human desire to reproduce must be so overwhelmingly strong, for it to cause such a deranged u-turn for someone such as myself!
I now love my first fiercely and unconditionally, yes even when he shoves a plastic dinosaur in my ear when I’m trying to grab a cheeky lie-in. So lets hope that the second goes the same way with an added dose of pre-natal tranquility to really start us off on the right foot...
Did you experience the pre-natal bond?
Did you enjoy being pregnant?
Or vice versa, did you struggle with pregnancy only to have a great experience second time around?
*and yes, I know now that it was a classic case of ante-natal depression, but that is a whole other post.
**cue a mountain of calls from family and friends who are now reading this realising they can serve me a big fat dose of ‘I told you so’.
***yes, don’t worry that feeling has gone now, only to resurface whenever I hear the ‘In The Night Garden’ theme tune.
