54 Real And Ugly Pregnancy Facts People Don't Talk About Often Enough

A friend (now 82) used to be a maternity nurse. When I had my first, she told me they used to tell women it takes two years to recover from childbirth. The first year to recover from the pregnancy and then another year to recover from the first year of having a baby. We should normalize this today. When she told me this, it helped my mental health immensely.

Soooo many things! I carried my babies high, so my bottom two ribs are still pushed out more than eleven years after my last pregnancy. Also, for the last three months of my first pregnancy, I had a gradually increasing pain in my liver, but only because my baby's hip was sticking into it.

Your pelvis can separate early - I spent the last four months of my last pregnancy on crutches, wearing a girdle to keep everything together.

If you have hypermobile joints, you have to make sure you exercise before, during and after birth (but use an exercise programme designed for pregnancy and postpartum) to help hold everything together. When I was visibly on crutches, I was introduced to a group of moms who'd had similar problems in pregnancy. Turned out all of us had hypermobility, but not a single doctor or midwife had flagged it up. That also decided me against ever having a third kid, as all these women said that's when the REAL, permanent problems started (one of them was in a wheelchair, the others all had issues with their backs).

Your body will change forever. For me, my abs will never go back together, my back will never be right, my ribs are permanently in a different position, I have piles, I had to go to a Bowel Physio to stop me pooping myself after the damage during childbirth. Nothing made me feel more Pro-Choice than carrying and birthing two much wanted and planned for babies. Because no one should ever be forced to go through that if it's not what they want.

Prolapse. Happened a few days after I gave birth. Hip and tailbone pain. All pelvic floor things. 
See a pelvic floor physical therapist during pregnancy if you can. .

Post partum. I've had 2 babies and each time its taken me about 2 years to start feeling normal again. Idk if hormones, brain re wiring or what but I was a different person for about 2 years post partum.

Oh and everything being a "normal" part of pregnancy... oh you are exhausted, its normal. You're super nauseous - normal. Every concern gets brushed away with pregnancy and you can't convince me that's why mother and infant mortality rates aren't better than they are.

You can see the baby move and it’s like an alien. Your belly will be lopsided with a giant lump that may be an elbow or a foot. And when they totally change positions it will look like an alien is trying to break out of your body.

It’s freaky. I never knew it would be like that.

And hormonal night sweats after the baby is born. For a week or two afterward I would wake up absolutely soaked. It was gross.

Hemorroids

I had no idea about how awful the first toilet trip is after you gave birth. Now I make sure when anyone asks what they need in their hospital bag before they go into labour I tell them straight up: STOOL SOFTENERS.

The anxiety. The anxiousness of knowing at any second you could miscarry, especially at the end when kick counts need to be tracked.

There are so many things that can go wrong in a pregnancy, even those that get to the finish line having no issues up until then, and it’s tragic. After giving birth and working in Labor & Delivery, I don’t understand why home births are as popular as they are because people hemorrhage, have shoulder dystocia and a baby’s heart rate can just drop from the stress of labor, much more often than people realize.

Severe food aversions! Everyone talks / asks about food cravings. I craved nothing. Food repulsed me. I could only eat a handful of foods (and I didn’t crave them, it was just foods that didn’t make me gag and I could keep down) but majority of food I could not even look at. I dreaded mealtimes. My husband had to make me eat most of the time. It truly messed with me. And if you don’t get it, you just don’t get it.

The after effects are lifelong. It does impact women's bodies in a way they will always have to manage.

There’s a lot of stuff I knew about beforehand, like the nausea, abs splitting apart, etc. But I didn’t know I would get so many nosebleeds!

The anatomy scan IS NOT JUST SO THAT YOU KNOW THE GENDER OF YOUR BABY.

And having a party that revolves around it is a terrible idea.

The anatomy scan is to catch serious problems if your baby happens to have any. And if your baby happens to have serious problems, it will be DEVASTATING to have planned a party that week.

The night terrors and vivid dreams.

No one told me I was going to dream of my house broken into, people cut open in front of me, or wake up in bed to not find my child, only to wake up 3 seconds later and realize I was only dreaming.

I thought I was so prepared for pregnancy, labour, delivery, and the newborn phase. I couldn't understand all these stories about birth trauma - I thought people were just unprepared. I decided to labour unmedicated as long as possible to see how far I could go but I never excluded the possibility of having an epidural. I ended up getting one with my first and then it failed spectacularly. It worked beautifully for several hours and then just stopped. The contractions came back full force and I was in so much pain I started talking nonsense. Eventually they placed a second epidural higher and I was numb to my ribs. For the second pregnancy I was "better prepared". I thought this time I had it. I went for a consultation with the anesthesiologist several weeks ahead and our plan was to place the epidural as soon as I got to the hospital. Labour progressed quickly and my daughter was delivered. And then the placenta didn't detach. My room became chaos as the doctor and nurses got ready to take me to the OR. They upped my medication to try to get the bleeding to stop. I begged the doctor to try one more time to manually detach it. He was finally able to remove it. But I lay in the bed wondering if I was going to make it home to my two babies. So yeah. I was humbled twice. You can't be fully prepared. There are too many unknowns.

Your body stops feeling like yours. Everyone has opinions. Everyone touches your belly and suddenly your body feels like public property. It can mess with your head more than people admit. You can also feel lonely, even if people are around. Not everyone checks on you but they check on the baby. That shift can hurt more than you expect.

Healing from a large tear during birth.. those two+ months were the absolute worst. Feeling nothing but stitches when you clean it, too afraid to look at it, can’t wipe so you have to spray it with a squeeze bottle…all while sleep deprived af, sore, etc.

Low blood pressure
It’s so annoying because there isn’t much to be done and it’s not dangerous. But let me tell you it’s nice to be able to faint at any time and you just feel unwell 24/7.

Excessive sweating & body odor changes because hormones can make you sweat more, and some people notice stronger body odor.

About midway through my first pregnancy, I woke up every morning with my hands frozen in a claw shape. I would have to use the other hand to loosen my fingers, and then they would be fine. Sleeping with wrist braces helped, and it went away after the kid was born.

I was so tired the last month of pregnancy that I was only awake 2 hours a day. I could barely stay awake long enough to even safely drive anywhere. I would just fall aaleep, even while standing. I was told it was normal.

Organ failure.

They say “oh, the organs shift to make room for the baby.” Then my cardiologist notes it’s common for women to have heart problems after the birth and they don’t consider it an issue until like six months after birth.

Also, pregnancy diabetes is not a failure of your pancreas but poor* management can have it become one. Or affect other organs.

Really, the body is under several types of stress and if it was stressed before it can really become an issue later in the pregnancy and postpartum.