Ten Things

Ten [weird] things that pregnancy did to my body. Because no one tells you the crazy ish that goes on when you grow a human inside of your body. I'm here to reveal the real truths, you guys. Straight up.

1. You can go blind. When I was little I always really wanted glasses. I used to pretend that I had bad eyesight so that I could get glasses but I was bad at lying and so I never got glasses. Then I got headaches from reading tiny print in textbooks and got reading glasses. THEN I got pregnant and realized I couldn't see a damn thing. It happened all of the sudden, too; like one minute I was reading this far-away thing and the next minute it was super blurry and I couldn't see it at all. And so I had to get glasses. And I don't wear them very frequently because I'm not blind to the point of I'm going to cause an accident if they're not on my face, but when I do wear them I realize how much I really can't see. And also when I went to the eye doctor at the end of my pregnancy, she informed me that pregnancy will change your vision. WHO KNEW?

2. Your tolerance to spicy shiz will plummet. Evan is obsessed with spicy food. Like, he probably uses two tablespoons of Sriracha per one slice of pizza. It's sort of disgusting. I also like spicy food. But some point between my pregnancy and birth of Maddox, I can no longer hang. I use a pinch of anything spicy and I'm guzzling water like a camel (which, I know, makes it worse or something). I still really want to like spicy and use Sriracha and Tobasco and salsa and hot spices when cooking, but my tolerance is next to nothing.

3. No more allergies. The summer before I was pregnant with Maddox I found out that I was allergic to pretty much the entire world. I had an allergy test done and everything from trees to plants to cats and dogs to mold made me break out in hives. And then there were the mosquito bites. I should not have any blood left in my body the way I attracted mosquitoes. And my reaction to their venom was the worst ever and I still have scars from scratching/mosquito bites. Then I got pregnant. And I don't have allergies anymore. Seriously.

4. You never forget the way a baby kick feels. Sometimes I'll just be minding my own business and a gas bubble will pop in my stomach and suddenly I'm like, "Wait. I am not pregnant. How did I just feel a baby kick?" And then I get all paranoid that I'm like 20-weeks pregnant and don't even know it. Because that would happen to me. But I think it's sometimes a nice little reminder (even if it's something gross like gas...) because that is the number one thing I miss about being pregnant.

5. Your feet grow. My feet didn't actually grow, thank God, but they did sort of change shape. I can still fit into all of my pre-pregnancy shoes (Evan is very thankful about this) but when I was an ice skater I had boots specifically made for my feet. Fancy. Anyway, at Christmas when Evan and I went ice skating they did not fit. We had bumped out the skates in places where my bones stuck out so that my bones wouldn't rub against the skate and blah blah blah skater's feet suck. I went skating right before I was pregnant and my boots fit fine. So, chocking this one up to pregnancy.

6. You become a back-sleeper. I was a side-sleeper forever and ever amen. Until I was at the point in my pregnancy where they grasp your arms and shake you and make you sign your life away, promising that you will only sleep on your left side. Immediately, the second they told me I was not allowed to sleep on my back, that is all I wanted. It was the only comfortable position and even if I started on my left side, I would undoubtedly wake up on my back. I'm finally back to being able to sleep on my side again; but every once and a while I still fall asleep on my back and I remember how it's suddenly the most comfortable thing ever.

7. Your leg hair stops growing. I think I shaved my legs less than five times in nine months. I mean, I do that normally but it definitely grows when I am not pregnant. ;] When I was pregnant I didn't have any leg hair at all. None. It was amazing. And immediately after Maddox was born, that was the first order of business on the hormone agenda of "Get Larissa's Body Back to Pre-Pregnancyness." And I wasn't happy about it. I totally don't even understand this phenom because I was taking pre-natal vitamins and the hair on my head grew and grew and grew and grew. But apparently my body put all of the effort it wasn't using to make a baby, into growing hair on my head. And I'm totally okay with that.

8. Your fingers can swell. I pretty much told zero people this story because it made me sad but I'm telling it now as I look at my wedding ring perched on my skinny little finger. Because I was pre-eclamptic my entire body swelled up to like 15 times its normal size. Exaggeration, but that's what it felt like. And so I made my mom try to pull my wedding ring off my swollen fingers with some suture string. We iced the heck out of my hand and I sat with it elevated so all the blood would drain out of my arm and it would turn blue from being frostbitten SLASH loss of blood SLASH no circulation due to my ring. So she hooked the suture string through my ring and pulled and twisted and forced it up, up, up to my knuckle and she almost had it off but then she got scared that she was hurting me (she was) and so she shoved my ring back down. And that pissed my finger right off and it immediately swelled up even worse than before. Basically it looked like my finger ate my ring. And so the next day I had to go to the ER and have them cut off my ring. It wasn't a life or death finger situation, but the ER has a frequent flier ring cutting card and so we went. And they put this thing that looks like a flower cutting shear between your finger and the ring and then they turn this knob that just cuts through your ring. It was traumatizing and I couldn't watch. I couldn't even look at my ring because a cut-in-half ring just looks so wrong. So I put it in a safe place for safe keeping for the day that my finger went back to normal and I could have it put back together (FOR FREE! Thanks, ring insurance) and have it back on my finger. This is definitely something that everyone told me about but I didn't listen and so thus, I had my wedding ring cut off of my finger.

9. Sometimes you lose weight. I went to an appointment one week and lost six pounds. And I was secretly really excited because after you watch the scale creep up and up and up month after month and then bi-weekly and then weekly, you're all, "Okay, that's quite enough of that." But there's nothing you can do about it because you're growing a life and no one really cares how much weight you gain. (Unless you're being reckless, in which case your doctor might care.) But so I went to an appointment and the scale informed us all that I had lost six pounds. SIX POUNDS! That was weird and totally a one-time deal because the next appointment I gained most of it back but that was mostly due to the fact that I had a baby shower and then I ate strawberry pretzel salad and chocolate cake for every meal for like a week. But sometimes you lose weight. 

10. The second your baby is born you don't even remember what it was like to be pregnant. Seriously. I know that, "you forget the pain" or whatever nonsense. No. You don't. I will always remember staring at the ceiling tiles while I was hit with wave after wave of contraction and begging Evan to find the nurse to get me an epidural. I will always remember the first time I sat up in bed after my c-section and the feeling that I had just tore my incision open because of the sharp, stabbing pain that ripped through my abdomen. I will always remember how long it to me to be able to walk around the block without needing to rest. That being said, I would do it all again. I would do it every. single. day. if it meant that I got to experience this precious baby for even a minute. He was worth every ounce of pain that existed from the day of his birth and beyond. But even though I remember the pain, I can't remember being pregnant. I can't remember what it was like to not be able to put my socks on or need Evan's help to stand up. I can't remember what it was like to have like 25 more pounds tacked onto the front of me. I can't remember when none of my clothes fit and my feet were so swollen that I basically had to wear flip flops and it was winter and there was snow on the ground and I looked like such a teenage mom. I can't remember any of it. And that's the weirdest feeling.

So, being pregnant is really crazy. Crazy in the best way, obvi. Like, your body is growing a BABY. A FREAKING BABY YOU GUYS. It's going to come out a baby [A LIFE], not a horse or a squid or unicorn. A BAY.BEE. And so clearly, when your body becomes an incubator, it's going to freak the heck out and do some crazy shiz. These are the things that I noticed during my nine pregnant months. They may or may not happen to you (sorry if you still have to shave your legs and your feet grow three sizes). And these things, although weird and maybe annoying (glasses. psh. overrated.), gave me a perfect baby boy and I wouldn't trade perfect eyesight or the ability to drink a bottle of Sriracha in one sitting for this sweet, sweet baby boy.