Monthly Archives: December 2008

Greg has been putting up with a lot of moaning and groaning from me the past few weeks. There is a lot of stuff about pregnancy that no one tells you. You get that positive test back and go out to buy a book on pregnancy and immediately wish that you had purchased the book before you got yourself into this whole mess. Why does the creation of life cause symptoms that look similar to those of a fatal disease?

The maddening thing is the blatant lying that goes on within families. Both my mom and Greg’s said that pregnancy wasn’t bad, that they even enjoyed being pregnant. From my experience so far – an experience that involved subsisting on nothing but vegetable soup and vanilla ice cream for three months because it was all I could stomach – I’d say your health would have to be pretty decrepit for pregnancy to seem like an improvement. So why the lying?

Greg and I have a few theories. The most obvious answer is that these women will stop at nothing to get grandchildren. Another possibility, one that Greg calls ‘momnesia,’ is that once you see how cute the baby is, you forget about the misery that came before.  A third possibility, another one that Greg helpfully offered, is that going through labor and caring for a newborn will make pregnancy look like a nine-month party. Thanks for that insight, Greg. You really know how to cheer a girl up.

I know I sound all gloom and doom. Surely there’s got to be something good to this kid thing. How else to explain all the families with two, three or four kids? Surely they weren’t all surprise babies. Right? (Please tell me I’m right.)