FYA!!!! How are you?!! It's so good to see you! How've you been? Great! Oh, me? Well, funny story…
Last September we rented an "elegantly decayed mansion" for a weekend in New Orleans to celebrate my 40th birthday. About a week before we were to arrive, I got a message from the owners of the house that, FYI, it was also being used as the set for Marie Laveau's beauty parlor and Voodoo throne room for American Horror Story. This made me VERY EXCITED.
We arrived to find an exhausted host who had been up all night because Angela Bassett was filming some sort of Voodoo ritual involving the slaughter of a goat. He gave us the keys and asked us not to touch the set or props -- which were EVERYWHERE. So, of course, we didn't sit on the throne or try on the wigs in the beauty parlor. We didn't hang out in Angela Bassett and Jessica Lange's dressing room, or pose holding the rusty saber that was used to pretend sacrifice the goat in the Voodoo ritual. We admired all these things from afar.
The long weekend was fun and full of walking around one of the most beautiful cities in the world, sipping sazaracs and scarfing amazing food, but our real adventure begins once we got home. Because that Voodoo ritual? Turns out (SPOILER ALERT for AHS Season 3!!!) it was a fertility ritual. Which is, of course, the only explanation as to how, a month later, I found out that I wasn't just 40, I was 40 and pregnant.
So for the past 9 months, I've been on the wildest, weirdest adventure of my life so far. And the biggest thing I've learned? Nobody talks about all the crazy shit that happens when you're pregnant UNTIL you are pregnant! I have many theories as to WHY this is. I've heard once you have the baby, you forget all about everything that came before. I've been told that people are afraid that if we all really knew what it was like, none of us would do it. And there is the fact that every single human being is different, and every single pregnancy is different, so not all things happen to all people.
HOWEVER, there are a few things I think it would have been nice to get a heads up about. You know, so I wouldn't panic and think something was wrong when I was nine weeks pregnant and started having shooting pains to my vagina. Which is, apparently, TOTALLY NORMAL. (???!!!!!! Am I right?) SO, I wanted to share the truth, to save other women the anxiety and shock I experienced at NOT KNOWING.
Below is a list of things that may or may not happen to a pregnant body. I'm not saying every one of them has happened to me. A lot of them have, but some are things I've learned from others. WARNING: If you think you might not WANT to know, skip to the end! (In other words, don't get mad at me, I'm fragile.)
Pregnancy: Sh@t Gets Weird
- Growths: skin tags, warts and moles. They may develop. Common sites are neck, underarms, boobs, and genitals. They stop growing after pregnancy, but will remain on your body unless you have them professionally removed.
- Gas: lots of it. Including, sometimes, farts that smell like baby poop. (If you've ever changed a dirty diaper, you know exactly the smell to which I'm referring.)
- Morning Sickness: It's not just for mornings, and it's not just for the first trimester. (Key solution -- EAT. It won't seem like it, but it's the only thing that can sometimes help.)
- Acid Reflux: I now know what it's like to be on heroin,* in that I'm glad they make you sleep on your side when you're pregnant, because that way you wake up coughing on your own vomit, instead of just choking to death.
*Everything I know about heroin, I learned from that one episode of Breaking Bad.
- Sleep: forget about it. Whether it's getting up five times a night to pee, waking up every hour because your back and hips hurt, or not being able to lie down at all thanks to the aforementioned acid reflux, you may start averaging 3-5 hours per night. HOWEVER, this is after the first trimester during which you are SO tired and sleep SO blissfully, it's like you're living in a super special sleep bubble. So there's that.
- Dreams: crazy assed dreams. Like, that I'd had the baby, but kept getting distracted by work and mowing the lawn, then realizing I hadn't started breastfeeding her, and my milk might not come in, and the nurses were giving her formula, which was fine, but that was before she turned into a cat, and as I held her, I wondered how I was ever going to breastfeed her with all of those teeth? This is something I HAD been told about. BUT, what nobody told me about until after I'd had one, was...
- Sex Dreams: strange, totally not sexy sex dreams. Like, giving a BJ to John Malkovich in a coffee shop WHILE he was wearing his costume from Dangerous Liaisons-type sex dreams. Seriously, WHAT THE WHAT?!!!
- Random Pains: All types, all kinds. Shooting, cramping, dull, aching, sharp and piercing. Plus, the aforementioned pain that feels like a lightening bolt to your vagina.
- Rubbery Skin: your belly, hips and thighs may change texture and feel like prosthetic skin, instead of real skin.
- Acne: all over your face and/or torso. More common when you're having a girl.
- Immune System: It runs at about 30%, and the common cold feels like Swine Flu. Wash those hands!
- Hemorrhoids
- Temperature: You will get hot. Like, ALL the time. You might even have hot flashes that start at the ears, travel up the head, down the face, neck and chest -- all the way down to your feet, leaving in its wake a burning, fiery sensation and a whole lot of sweat.
- Boobs: big, droopy, sore boobs.
- Nipples: they get bigger, too. And can change color. Permanently.
- Saliva: an excess amount of it. Because it's not enough to be an uncomfortable, nauseous, exhausted, burping, farting lump, you get to drool, too.
- Sense of Smell: You may become a super hero/mutant with this new, improved sense. There may be places you have to walk out of as soon as you enter them, because, nope, that place smells like rotten fish. You may gag and vomit when your dog or husband or self farts. You may be able to determine, just by thinking about the smell of a food, whether or not you'd be able to keep it down. (I have to admit, that last one was a pretty cool talent to develop.)
- Cravings: you may develop an insatiable desire for foods you otherwise think are disgusting, like buffalo chicken pizza and peanut butter in ice cream. (Side note: those are two things George has always loved, but I have always hated. Could it be that his genetic makeup determines what type of foods he likes, and that this kid has a predisposition to crave those foods, and is controlling what I want from the inside?)
- Emotions: They'll run high. I've heard stories of tears at 3am because a woman thought she was going to die if she didn't get a Big Mac RIGHT THEN. For me personally, I just started crying during MORE TV shows, commercials and movies than normal. I may have shed a tear while watching Thor, and not even known why. I might have started sobbing uncontrollably EVERY SINGLE TIME someone raised three fingers in salute to Katniss in Catching Fire. Because of the spirit of Revolution, you guys!!! There's also the possibility that I cried during every episode of this season's Once Upon A Time.)
I'm not saying it's all bad, and I know some women who actually enjoy being pregnant. It's crazy that a person can live however many years in their body and then all of a sudden become a pod to grow another human being. HOW is that even possible? But I do think, as with all women's health issues, it's important to have real, frank, funny discussions about it. To support each other, to laugh or cry or sweat together in our discomfort. To recognize that pregnancy, miracle that it is, is NOT a contest, and that it's not for everybody. That people who choose not to have kids are just as fulfilled as those who choose TO have them. Or those who never quite decide one way or the other until they spend a weekend playing with the props used in an OBVIOUSLY REAL ritual, (thanks, Angela Bassett) but who're thoroughly ecstatic to meet the little girl who perhaps picked them to be her parents.
So wish me luck, FYAers!
p.s. Code Name Verity is hurting my heart! But it's so good!
Post Script: On June 26th, Harriet Bird Bragdon was born, making all the discomfort her mom endured over the past nine-plus months a distant memory. Kidding! Is she amazing? And totally worth every bit of everything? ABSOLUTELY. But as we navigate the too-little sleep, the euphoria-meets-panic of falling in love every day -- IS SHE OKAY?!! How about now? -- that is being a new parent, I am tremendously grateful for this little girl, and I am also SO HAPPY to not be pregnant anymore.