Being pregnant wasn’t fun for me…to say the least. Once you become child-bearing age, you find out there are two camps on this subject. Firmly seated in one camp are the women who love, LOVE being pregnant. You’ll hear things like: “I felt the best I ever have in my life when I was pregnant,” and “I wish I could be pregnant forever.”

Firmly seated in the other camp are women like me with their mouths hanging open in amazement and fear at the thought of being pregnant “forever.” Myself and other women willing to admit it will say things like “Being pregnant was a slow, torturous process that I would never choose to repeat.”

Don’t get me wrong, from the moment I found out I was pregnant with both of my precious daughters, whose entrances onto the planet earth were planned, I was engulfed in excitement. The first time in the driver’s seat of pregnancy, I was confident it was going to be the most amazing experience of my life. The second time around while pregnant with daughter #2, I knew I wasn’t in the driver’s seat but pushed over into the passenger’s seat by a maniac at the wheel who wouldn’t let me wear a seat belt.

It seemed the moment I put down that little white stick that told me I was “with child,” the nausea started. Don’t let the title “morning sickness” fool you-this sickness lasted all day and all night. And it wasn’t the type of nausea where I ever threw up, not once. Trust me, I was begging my body to just let me evacuate the contents of my stomach to get some relief but this old girl was holding onto every morsel I ate to fuel the growth of my sweet baby girl…and to also torture me it seemed.

The “all day sickness” was tough and tougher yet was that I had an aversion to eating anything but the fatteningly rich white cream sauce known as Alfredo. I didn’t crave apples or pickles or anything that had less than 500 grams of fat. All I wanted to eat was noodles bathing in a piping hot Jacuzzi tub of Alfredo sauce. And never mind the warnings from friends who had been pregnant before about eating in excess. “Don’t take ‘eating for two’ literally,” they’d say. “You will regret it.” But isn’t being pregnant the best reason in the world to bust loose and eat the way I have always wanted? Pile the noodles high; pour the Alfredo from a gallon bucket…Yum. Any one of you who have been pregnant can predict the results here…unfortunately when baby girl #1 came out she only weighed 8 pounds, not the 50 I was hoping to get rid of that day in the delivery room.

But my pregnancy wasn’t all fun and games…eating like I was going to execution in between dry heaving by the side of my bed in the middle of the night…When I was about 14 weeks along, my husband and I had a terrible scare. While attending a work-related luncheon, I excused myself to empty my bladder for what seemed like the 12th time that day and saw red and red. Not being one to panic, I waited. But an hour later when I was still bleeding, I became hysterical. I called my husband from my office at work bawling my eyes out, telling him he had to meet me at the doctor’s office downtown near my office building. While my drive was a short one, he was at least 20 minutes away in his office. As if transported in a time-traveling Delorian, he arrived at the doctor’s office 2 minutes after I did.

After an ultrasound, the doctor confirmed our baby was alive but that it appeared the placenta was pulling away from my uterine wall, causing the bleeding. He couldn’t tell us if this tearing would continue which would lead to miscarriage or if it would stop and our baby would survive. We were absolutely devastated. The doctor put me on “pelvic rest” which my husband was more than happy to oblige to at this point and also told me I should stop exercising for the time being. (Is the 50-pound weight gain scenario coming into focus yet?)

The bleeding did stop and the tearing stopped and our sweet and beautiful daughter survived and was born perfectly healthy and robust…a day after her due date. What didn’t survive were my nerves. I was scared all of the time that I would lose the baby or that she was somehow injured by this insult to my precious womb so early in her development. I was able to quiet the fears from time-to-time but didn’t feel complete relief until I held her in my arms after 36 hours of labor. Yes, I said it, 36 hours of labor…that did not end in a c-section but rather a natural childbirth, where all drugs had worn off, and that tore me open from what felt like my sternum to my tailbone.

I am starting to realize that at this point in my story you have probably pegged me as a complainer, a whiner, a pessimist to the nth degree. Let me assure you though that I am not. My husband and I were absolutely thrilled to be pregnant and so excited to have children together. We had always planned to have children and had chosen what we thought to be the perfect time in our lives and marriage to start a family. But understand most of the stories I heard about pregnancy from family members and friends growing up and as an adult were that it was a “wonderful” experience and the most beautiful time in a woman’s life.

After 20 weeks of pregnancy and walking around with two painfully misplaced ribs, thanks to my daughter being breach and having a head that’s position disabled my body from having a rib cage, I thought something must be wrong with me. When I got carpel tunnel from cleaning my shower with a scrub brush and calling my nurse mother in the middle of the night wondering if I needed to go the emergency room (which by the way I have never visited in my life) I really thought something was wrong. And when I developed an itchy, red splotchy rash that covered my entire torso, I was about ready to give up. Was I the only woman on earth who thought being pregnant was not the cat’s meow but rather the cat’s nasty, vomit-smelling hairball?

When Mother’s Day came around in May 2005, a long, painful month before our first daughter was born, I was disappointed when my husband didn’t get me a “Mother’s Day” card. “But you’re not a mother yet,” he protested. “The hell I am not!” I refuted. “I have been tortured for the past 8 months and I have stretch marks, dammit!!” But I’ll give him this one-he was actually right. I really wasn’t a mother yet.

I had felt the pain, the inconvenience, the tired days and nights and so many of the hardships that come with motherhood but I had yet to see the sparkle in my baby’s eyes. I had yet to smell the earthy, rich scent of her hair or spend an entire morning kissing her and listening to her laugh. I hadn’t experienced hearing her say “Mama” for the first time or watching her learn how to crawl and walk. I hadn’t felt the pride when ladies in the grocery store exclaimed “she is so cute!” as we passed by them with our grocery cart. And I couldn’t yet fathom that one day my five-year-old and I would consider each other best friends.

I learned my lessons about motherhood early on…it is unbelievably hard both physically and mentally, but it the most remarkable and rewarding job this woman will ever have, in addition to being the most amazing experience of my life. And I became so convinced that another child was worth it that we got pregnant a second time…

Author Bio: Amanda Gorsche Miller is a freelance journalist and marketing communications consultant who owns a small marketing communications business, Miller Multimedia Solutions. For more information, Visit Miller Multimedia Solutions.

Category: Parenting
Keywords: parenting, labor, pregnancy, woman, children, baby, marriage, parents, child