AIBU to say out loud that pregnancy mostly SUCKS?!

[swanseacat]

There, I've said it. It feels like such a taboo to say it, and for so many understandable reasons. Let me elaborate...

This is my second pregnancy, our first took us 2 years, and we'd just started investigations when I fell pregnant. Actually I carted my poor hungover DH round the Fertility Show and forced him to give a sample, all the while unaware I was several weeks pregnant. So we thought our second one might take a while, and after about 6 months of trying (already aged 36) we started down the investigative road again. Thanks to the joy of the NHS it took about 18 months to rule our chances of conceiving naturally very low, and then to send us privately as we don't qualify for any free cycles having a DD already. The first cycle cost £6k and failed. We embarked on our second and last, extremely pessimistic, and gearing up to get a pet instead. Much to our surprise, it worked.

I say all this so no one thinks I have taken the fact of getting and staying pregnant lightly. It's taken 2 years and £12k to get to this point. I know all too well what it is like to sit on the outside of the pregnancy club looking wistfully in, and therefore it seems so deeply insensitive to moan about how dreadful I have felt, every day since week 5. And yet that is the reality. Hideous constant nausea, never actually culminating in being sick but forcing me to seek out food every 15 minutes, hating most of what I am eating and its impact on my body, but unable to ignore the vile feelings in my stomach and mouth. Crushing tiredness, so that after a 2 hour nap of the dead in the afternoons I wake up still exhausted. And now, at 19 weeks, I've added agonising back pain. And the response of just about every single medical profession / care giver? SUCK IT UP, B, YOU'RE PREGNANT!!!!!!

Yes, I know it's a great thing, but should that make my daily experience of mostly misery any less real? Does it help when people say 'Oh, morning sickness, that's good, it must be a strong pregnancy'? Does it b***s. Every so often I encounter other mums who tell me gleefully "I threw up 4 times a day throughout my entire pregnancy" like it's some kind of badge of honour, which of course only serves to make me feel like a wuss for even thinking of complaining. So, mostly, I don't, and it's just my poor DH who gets it in the neck ever so often when I can't bottle it up anymore.

AIBU to wish it was appropriate to be more honest?

Totally Shodan, I had a gruesome pregnancy but even if I hadn't, I wouldn't have liked it. I hated sharing my body with someone, even if that someone is my gorgeous DS! and though I didn't miss alcohol as I was too sick & right off it, I missed the social experience of getting drunk socialising wth a drink. I missed being able to go for a big walk with my dog, or wear nice clothes (still miss this!!). Maybe silly things but they still have an effect on your quality of life!

I remember asking my friend what she wanted me to bring to the hospital (being induced) and she texted back "GIN. And I'm not joking"

I certainly didn't mean to suggest that people who say they've had awesome pregnancies are lying, only that it can be annoying to hear when you are feeling like death! I was lucky in that I had a great labour, 4 hours, gas and air only, and a huge 10lb 10oz baby, but I tend to keep quiet about it as I know a lot of people with horror stories

Op this is a big problem, people only tell the horror stories which creates fear of birth. People must be allowed to be open about positive experiences of pregnancy and birth. I find it very sad that you feel otherwise.

Lumpy, heavy, unable to move as quickly as usual, unable to fully participate in my sport, not 'allowed' to eat some of my favourite foods- minor and very selfish reasons!

Shoden - I had sickness for the entire pregnancy and I had SPD, I tell people these are why I hated being pregnant. Though that was annoying, the true reasons I hated it are closer to what you describe. It was the general feeling of not fully being myself and not being able to do all I was used to doing. Like walking for more than five minutes!

You're all very kind . Thank you

I hated sharing my body with someone - yes yes! In fact, it took a few weeks after the birth before I stopped gleefully think 'Mine! All mine again!' about my body... (apart from the breastfeeding, of course. But that was ok, because I could put the baby down afterwards )

Pregnancy is baaaalllllllllllls. I was unnaturally huge- I know everyone says that, but I truly truly was. I got to the point where I wouldn't leave the house because I was so fucking sick of saying "YES there is just one in there, NO I haven't got my dates wrong and NO I don't think it's going to be an 11lber". Not only that, but it was a huge physical struggle to the point where if my OH was out of the house I had to piss in a big mug in the living room because I couldn't get to the toilet by myself. And I grew a beard. Ugh.

^
That all sounds like really minor stuff, but it was utterly miserable at the time.
The first trimester was hideous too. Morning sickness and constant weeping. NOPE.

Yanbu!
My first pregnancy, Hyperemesis from week 5-39. Anti-emetics didn't help, 3 admissions for IV rehydration and the ability to dry heave and instead of vomiting I would wee myself. Every. Single. Time. The constant mouth watering, spitting into a tissue as swallowing saliva meant more stomach contents to bring up. Don't get me started on the SPD.

Some women glow, me? I was a hobbling, heaving, urinating mess.

Glad I found this thread, it needs to be bumped!

3 months of constant can't get out of bed nausea
followed by miscarriage
followed by gaining 2 stone trying to fill baby void with xmas cake and wine
followed by 4 months of constant nausea
followed by lectures about my bmi when if I don't eat every 2 hours I retch up stomach acid
followed by doctors appointment today confirming I have SPD.

Doctor just told me SPD is probably my fault as I am overweight and 'some women actually lose weight in pregnancy with diet and exercise'

so much rage

All together now "HAVE YOU TRIED GINGER BISCUITS? "

I hated been pregnant too. Hideous nausea for 12 weeks first time and 16weeks second time. Bone tired throughout. So uncomfortable.

Love both my dc but pregnancy was hell. Awful pregnancies and awful sleepers both at the beginning (dd for a long time) but I did have easy births. Something to wish for!

I'm quite chilled about the childbirth part, mainly as I figure it can't be worse than the rest of prgnancy! I'm at 13 weeks with my third, where we are starting to tell people, and they all say "Congratulations!", I mainly say "Ergh..."

I told my 67 year old cleaner that I hated her this morning, as she had no morning sickness with any of her 8 children! I mean, she's onto great-grangchildren now, but still I feel the bitterness!

With DS I was sick every single day of my pregnancy, but it was usually just first thing and then I felt sort of ok. This time however...

13 weeks. Yesterday I barely made it to the loo in time to boak luxuriously for the 5th time. Dry heaved with such force, after I ran out of bile, that I both pissed myself and sharted in my only comfy pair of trousers. Awash with the sheer fucking dignity of it all I flung trousers and knickers in the bath, only to have 2.5 year old, mid potty training DS, point out "poo in the toilet mammy, not in the pants".

My right hip has decided it hates me. I can't breathe but the taste of my inhaler makes me boak (as does the air, my own molecules, the sight of a frog on TV). I am starving, but I can't keep any food in. I am fucking exhausted.

I just wanted the chance to glow, you know? I have a friend who is 16 weeks and she is glowing. Keeps mentioning how radiant she feels, how perfect everything is, and I want to smack her perfectly made up face. Meanwhile I lie here, sweaty, vomitous, flatulent, wrecked, painful. If I didn't know I was pregnant I would be looking for the circling vultures.

Yes. I hate it. I am hugely lucky, enormously grateful, but fucking miserable.
YANBU OP.

My first pregnancy - cluster headaches till 12 weeks, then ok.
My second pregnancy - headaches till 12 weeks, but not as bad. Got to 12 weeks and naively thought it was plain sailing from there. Ha ha ha! Not.
That's when the vomiting started. Every day, it was bad. Kept just enough food and water down to keep out of hospital but it was grim.
Sickness ended, SPD started. Unable to walk, chronic pain and the feeling as if someone was kicking me in the fanjo. The exhaustion, the fact I could only get comfortable on our sofabed, the bladder weakness, the chronic heartburn and reflux from 20 weeks that was so bad I was just necking Gaviscon from the bottle...
Actually relieved my waters broke at 36 weeks and was rushed to hospital. A hideous failed induction and an EMCS later I had a lovely baby. Ahhh...

I take comfort in the fact that many have you have more than one child. So at some point this must get better :D

Hated being pregnant (despite being so keen to get pregnant!).... Babes decided to grow in my lungs it seemed.

All was lovely once they'd been extracted though!

Pregnancy won't last for ever, it just seems that way sometimes, lol!

Just for one day I would like to feel like that woman in the baby books. You know the one eating a freshly prepared salad or smiling on a treadmill, all glowing skin and showing just enough bump to demonstrate how stretch mark free it is. I hate that bitch.