Not-so built for motherhood.

Not-so built for motherhood.

For the longest time, I have absolutely loved to hear stories about those "natural" mothers. I don't mean hippie-natural - I mean the women who are totally built for motherhood. "I loved every minute of being pregnant. It was so easy," I'd hear people say, and dreamily wish I could fast forward and be pregnant and saying the exact same thing. Or, "childbirth was so amazing. I would do it again in a heartbeat." That's actually more common, and a lot of mothers say that it didn't matter how tough, complicated, or scary the birth was - they'd still do it all over again. The idea of being built for childbearing, though, is there. I adore the idea that there are some women who grow and birth children so easily that they should just keep having babies until they run out of beds in the house. Going through pregnancy and childbirth so breezily means these women are undeniably intended to be mothers. It's a lovely wistful vision of motherhood.

And, you can easily extrapolate it to say that some women are better than others. Or, some women really should run far, far away from all the sex lest they get pregnant. Sure, it's a pretty little dream of natural mothers, but it's totally at someone else's expense.

It turns out, one of those someone elses is me.

Don't worry, I'm feeling the little wriggler squirm right now. But getting here and staying here has been and is so far from the walk in the park I imagined, and that I thought that I witnessed other mothers going through. In the grand scheme of infertility, we got knocked up pretty quickly. Definitely below the average. But month after month after month of disappointment laid a steady foundation of doubting my body and feeling betrayed by biology. Once that seed has been planted, no amount of pink lines on a pregnancy test can take that away. But once upon a time, we finally got pregnant. That's when it started to hurt. My belly, my ligaments, my birth canal, my head, my breasts, everything hurt. It all started to creak and get ready for action. It got to the point where I had to stop running and all activity whatsoever because the pain was so bad. Then, enter morning sickness. And by morning, I of course mean ALL DAY LONG AND ALL NIGHT LONG. Gradually, as time progressed and I entered my second trimester, the nausea stopped having anything to do with being hungry. Whether or not I felt sick was indiscriminate to whether or not I had food in my stomach, and mostly, I'd feel worse after eating. And the pain, it's still there. I barely have a belly and I have to frequenty lie down to either dispell the nausea or relax my tummy. Some days, I feel like my uterus is completely strained all day long.

I am not the pregnant woman I imagined I'd be, the epitome of perfect motherly glow. Pregnancy is really hard on me physically. Really hard. But even right now, exhausted, sore, scared, and nauseous, I have no doubt that one day I'll look a future mother in the eye and tell her, "I loved every minute of being pregnant. Every last minute."