Dear Diary, Everything Hurts and I Peed My Pants

An unabashed list of the strange bodily changes I have experienced during my first pregnancy.

Dear Diary (Substack Version),

Everything hurts and I peed my pants. Again.

I’m not quite sure what I expected pregnancy to feel like physically, but it is nothing like I imagined and mostly everything I heard it wouldn’t be. Do I feel like a cute little glowing fruitful fairy? Sometimes. But mostly I’m just laughing at the lengthy list of symptoms that grows with me every week while I waddle from room to room.

My big feelings about being pregnant have never felt binary. They change constantly and multiply exponentially. The wavering is exhausting, and so is this process for me. Our bodies are uniquely situated to our individual lives. What is one woman’s magical evolution might be another’s Hell. I find myself somewhere in between.

I want to hold my daughter in my arms. I want to rock her to sleep in the calming hours of morning and evening twilights. I want to stumble to my teapot at 3am with her on my hip, crying for milk, audible to my ears, weak at the knees. I want what can be seen and held and realized. Right now, I’m no good at the unseen.

Pregnancy has been especially rough on my body, and it is why I am particularly sensitive to the Just You Wait Battalion who is more than inclined to “warn” me that it just gets worse. But does it? Or aren’t we all remarkably positioned to have different experiences in our own special bodies?

I’m craving connection to the mothers who have felt, and feel, as I do. Who sprint full-speed toward the clock counting down the days until labor begins. Who would accept sleep deprivation with their tiny human in a heartbeat over the perpetual pregnancy panic that one day a heartbeat will stop before the tiny human makes it out of the womb. I’m craving connection to the mothers who infuse vials of dream jars with gratitude for the ability to carry life and drink their byproducts like elixirs to bring any semblance of reprieve to heal the violence they require to fill.

I am not afraid of motherhood, generally. I asked for this. I have fears but they are not what currently drive me. Maybe that will change for a later musing, but it is not my reality today. I am not ignorant to the obvious difficulties motherhood will bring, or to the difficulties of which I do not know because I have not yet faced them. I am feeling a lot right now, and it is hard to sift through all of these thoughts cleanly, but I hope that when my daughter is here that I will feel like a monarch set free from an isolated cocoon. As I burst through, I will honor this process that has helped me grow my delicate wings, and then I will fly far, far away into the next meadow.

Over the past 33 weeks, I have documented everything I have felt. If you were to print each adjective I have chronicled that has happened upon me onto small magnets, you would be able to sell 20 different sets of refrigerator poetry about my pregnancy. Are we crying today? Raging? Doing absolutely nothing except staring at the ceiling?

Today, we are laughing. We are making light of all the things that often feel heavy. Because the end of my first pregnancy is near; and even though everything has been so strange, I am ready to begin again for whatever is to come next.

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If you’ve ever been curious about what the weird and wonderful human body can do during pregnancy, I have the list for you! For your entertainment, or to help you feel seen in your own journeys, I brazenly open my diary of symptoms in the spirit of honesty about my experiences and all the things I had no idea were related to growing and holding life.

First Trimester

I’ve talked about my first trimester in previous posts, so I don’t have much more to elucidate here except that I still believe this was the worse phase of pregnancy. By far. Three months of bedrest for three classic symptoms on a debilitating level:

• Weight loss: pregnancy weight gain? That comes later. But pregnancy weight loss? Ah yes, the residual effect of its cousins, All Day Sickness and Food Aversions. I lost 10 pounds in my first two months of pregnancy. Super fun times!

• All day sickness: morning, noon, and night. Ginger didn’t help, and I’ve already tried everything you want to suggest is puke-proof. Trust me, I’ve tried it all. If I ever get pregnant again, my first order of business is a Zofran prescription. Period.

• Food aversions: the sweet smell of crispy bacon in the morning sent me spiraling into a fifth dimension. My favorite meal during this time: smashed banana with a side of Goldfish. Yes, this baby was built by smiley orange crackers.

There were no fun symptoms in the first trimester, but there were a few happy milestones that eased the discomforts ever so slightly:

• Seeing my baby for the first time on an ultrasound.

• Hearing my baby’s first heartbeat.

• Learning my baby was a girl.

Second Trimester

This is when the real fun began; when my bump grew visible and I outgrew all of my clothes and I cleaned out every single room and drawer and cabinet in my house.

• Sour cravings: Sour Skittles and Sour Patch Kids were gold to me. RIP taste buds, though, a worthy sacrifice.

• Protein cravings: after being completely averse to all things meat in my first trimester, I couldn’t get enough protein in my second trimester. I wanted six pieces of bacon for breakfast. I wanted to eat an entire rotisserie chicken all by myself (and I COULD). I needed boneless wings every day, doused in ranch dressing, not to be shared. Baby gets what baby wants!

• Back pain: my lumbar pain started early, mostly concentrated in my coccyx/tailbone region, where most of my weight has piled on. It persists today. The alleviators? A cushy tailbone pillow for sitting, a heating pad, and a pregnancy pillow for sleeping. They are not full cures, but they help immensely.

• Unpredictable energy levels: many enjoy the second trimester because of the anticipated “energy boost” promised by science, but I never felt that surge. I felt random bursts of manic energy, followed by intense lulls of depressive symptoms. Every day was either high highs or low lows. It was exhausting.

• Slow hair growth: I have oddly enjoyed this symptom. I can go weeks without shaving my legs. BLISS. The hair on my head unfortunately is now growing slower as well, but I haven’t lost any either. I’ll take it as a win.

• Stomach cramps/gas: doctors panic when you tell them you have stomach cramps, but think about what’s happening inside — brand new stretching and morphing and expanding. Of course there will be discomfort! The key is differentiating between what is indeed round ligament pain (sharp, overstretched pangs) and internal changes to organs (naturally squished by the womb) versus menstrual-like cramping often accompanied by bleeding (not so normal).

• Throbbing legs: a symptom only the ladies of Reddit have experienced with me. My legs throbbed all the time in the second trimester. It’s all the new blood!

• Petrificus Totalus: actually known as “lightning crotch” but my husband likes to point a fake wand at me and shout this Harry Potter spell to lighten the mood whenever I suddenly stiffen like a board from this weird and miserable symptom.

• Dizziness/headaches: you know, just par for the course.

• Brain fog: where art thou brain? I do not know, I left it behind with my pre-child body. Have you seen my glasses? (They’re on my head).

• Bloody noses: this one is wild. I have never had a bloody nose in my life. Now I have one once a week. Root cause: uncertain. Main cause: pregnancy. Because when in doubt, the reason is pregnancy.

• Hashimoto’s Disease: apparently my thyroid is dysfunctional, and not due just to pregnancy, but because my pregnancy has induced a Hashimoto’s response and now I likely get to manage it for life. Hooray!

• Heartburn: this is something my husband has. Now I have it too. We love to share everything.

• Crying spells: spicy mayonnaise so good it makes you pour waterfalls from your eyes? Yes, I’ll take one crying spell with spicy mayo per day, please.

• Itchy everything: because I don’t know, pregnancy.

• Clumsiness: I drop food on every clean shirt I put on. I need a bib. I also drop anything I’m holding. All the time. Because again, I don’t know, pregnancy?

• Eczema: random discoid patches have attacked my calves and hands — only in pregnancy. Super cute.

• Cold sores: I haven’t had a cold sore in ten years. I’ve had five in eight months. More immune responses to pregnancy. SUPER DUPER cute.

• Odd vibrating sensation: I don’t know how to explain this, but I feel like my chest is vibrating sometimes. Apparently, this is normal. It’s just “pregnancy.”

• Heartbeat in ear: I can hear my heartbeat pulsating in my right ear. At first, I thought someone was knocking on my bedroom door one night when it first began. Turns out it is my own body knocking on my skull.

• Popping pelvis: this one felt good, until it didn’t. You don’t want to test it. Always keep your legs together like a mermaid when rolling over in bed unless you’re a masochist.

• Drooling: I don’t know how to explain this one, but I’m drooling a lot. Like a big BABY.

Third Trimester

Truthfully, the third trimester has been my favorite. I feel the most mentally stable. I feel physically pained, but I feel like I have a grasp on my symptoms and I know where I’m headed. I feel like everything I’m experiencing is expected. I can feel my baby rolling and moving. I can see the end. I feel swollen, but I’m at peace.

• Weight gain: I have managed to exercise for the past four months, my placenta is functioning properly so I luckily do not have gestational diabetes, and I have eaten fairly well, but I have still gained more than the average amount of expected weight. I am here to absolutely preach that there is no real standard for weight gain in pregnancy. I am up 57 pounds, and I still have six weeks left. 57 pounds. I was told 20 pounds is “normal” from the outset, and I am having a perfectly healthy pregnancy. Ladies, do not dwell on the scale during pregnancy. It does not mean anything. You are doing everything that you can to grow your child the best way your body knows how. If the scale goes up, it’s because it needs to. Never let anyone make you feel guilty for something you cannot control based on an arbitrary standard.

• Swollen feet/ankles: ouch, my feet hurt. And so do my ankles. Shoes with laces? Be gone!

• Insomnia: four wake times per night, minimum. I like to call this Newborn Training.

• Peeing my pants: seriously, never again make fun of your mothers. Because once your uterus grows a human and your bladder is squished into a teeny tiny sliver, you’ll be peeing your pants all the time, too. Sneeze a little too aggressively? Oh, that’s a trigger. Husband makes a funny joke? Done for. You can strengthen your pelvic floor, but you can’t always stop the mom-stream.

• Stretch marks: purple tiger marks all over my inner thighs, hips, and lower belly. The Internet keeps telling me I should be inclined to rid of them, but that feels mean. I kind of like them. I trace them. I like to take pictures of them. I don’t know why. I think I’ll keep them (for now).

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Transforming requires discomfort by nature. I cannot become new if I am not rearranged. As I approach birth day, I laugh at this list more and more knowing that everything that has resulted from this pregnancy has brought me closer and closer to Joni.

Do I wish I was one of those women who felt just a fraction of my own symptoms? Sometimes. But I must remember that every woman is unique in her own right. She may have experienced other kinds of suffering leading up to pregnancy that I cannot fathom; this may be her reprieve. She may have her own fears and battles to wage even though they’re not manifesting in a difficult gestational period. She may love being pregnant and despise how she feels postpartum. She may fear what I do not. She is not me, and I am not her.

We do not have any real control over our bodies or what they will do or how they will react to change or life on imperfect Earth. We can only process, reflect, share, connect, commiserate. We can cling to those who get us and respect those with different experiences and understand that we’re all just here trying to make the best of it all.

No matter what, it’s all worth it in the end — for me, anyway.

Xo,

Violet Carol

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More words from Violet Carol can be found on Instagram.

Older Mother Love Letters posts can be read here.

Mother Love Letters is a newsletter for intimate words on the messy and magical shared experiences of pregnancy and motherhood. If this post resonated with you, please feel free to “like” it, share it with a friend, or leave a comment to connect.