Pregnancy Woes
Two great things about pregnancy: you will never have better hair or bigger boobs. You may, however, end up with a myriad of other unfortunate conditions that will make you feel less-than-lovely, such as stretch marks, varicose veins, a frighteningly large butt, bizarre skin conditions, hair in strange places, and ingrown toenails. That's right! I just learned only a few weeks ago that ingrown toenails (which my husband considers "skanky") are one of nature's ways of saying "thanks" for propagating the species. The reason? Evidently its partly because your feet grow when you're pregnant and you may still be trying to squeeze into your old shoes (and don't think you'll necessarily be able to fit into your favorite size six strappy sandals after the baby comes, either, because the change is likely to be permanent) and partly because your feet and therefore your toes swell up and collide into each other, which can cause the nails to grow wrong. And the best part? When you go to your podiatrist to have your ingrown toenails removed, he may be reluctant to use anesthetic (even local) because of concerns about its safety during pregnancy. Instead, he'll just spray something very cold on your feet (a little frostbite please!) and dig in with a very scary looking pair of clippers—ouch!
Then there's the things you don't see—indigestion, shortness of breath, changes in your eyesight (!), Symphysis Pubis Dysfunction (that's where the bones in your pelvis start grinding together—whenever you change gears in your car, climb a step, roll over in bed ...), Carpal Tunnel Syndrome, tendonitis, heart palpitations, sore back, not to mention that one-of-a-kind feeling you get when your baby kicks you in the bladder—if you're not already pregnant, is any of this making you eager to get started?
So why do we do it? And why was I, after going through all of this at the age of 33 with my first child, so ready to do it all over again only six months later?
Nature has programmed us for this experience, and has programmed us so well that we are willing to overlook nearly every flaw in the design system. Imagine if you bought a piece of software that had a pretty nice end result but forced you to go through multiple system crashes, upgrades, updates and third party add-on installations before you could achieve that result—would you want to do all of that more than once? Would you even want to do it all the first time?
Nature, in her infinite cleverness, has designed human beings so that the end result of even the most uncomfortable pregnancies is so wonderful, so perfect, and filled with so much joy that nothing you went through to get there seems, in retrospect, like such a big deal. There is absolutely no other experience in life that can possibly equate to that. And so many of us are willing to do it twice, three times, or more—just so we'll have one more chance to hold that perfect little newborn person in our arms. So it's not a perfect system ... but it doesn't have to be.
I forgot to mention the waddling. No matter how you try to avoid it, in the end, there is always waddling.