What Pregnant Women Mean When They Say They’re “Uncomfortable”

Hemorrhoids are common in pregnancy (blame all the pelvic pressure, hormones, and constipation). This means sitting is uncomfortable at best and torturous at worst. If you ever hear a pregnant woman say, "It's OK, I'd rather stand," she's not being noble or a martyr. She's just trying to ensure that her hemorrhoids don't pop. Best part? Your new little butt babies can wind up being permanent fixtures. #miracleoflife #doubleblessed

My firstborn spent basically my entire pregnancy huddled up as high as he could possible go in my uterus. I've interpreted this to mean that he would be an ambitious person who always wanted to be on top, and that he is the most stubborn person on the planet and didn't want to come out, so he kept himself as far from my cervix as he could. Whether or not that's true, what's definitely true is the fact that he put pressure on my diaphragm and lungs and I couldn't get a deep breath in for months. Super uncomfortable and annoying.

Everybody loves penguins. (If you don't you're a monster and, seriously, I just have to ask, what is wrong with you?) That said, no one wants to move like one. It's cute on a short, chubby little bird. On human people with hips that weren't meant to carry weight the same way a penguin does? Yeah, not so much.

Honestly? My entire leg — thigh, knee, calf, ankle — was all pretty much a column of uniform width. And at the bottom of that column, a very large, round loaf of bread that had, at one point in time, been my foot. On a good day everything was visibly swollen. On a bad day I had to go to a store on my lunch break to buy shoes that would actually fit my feet.

You're so much more aware of your body fluids when you're pregnant, probably because there's so much more of them. Even if you're not typically a sweaty person, expect to schvitz on the regular my gestating friends. If you are a typically sweaty person, may God have mercy on your soul.

Like hemorrhoids, constipation is very common during pregnancy (and, as mentioned, a contributing factor to hemorrhoids: your body is just one enormous betrayal factory, basically). Being constipated under normal circumstances is uncomfortable, but when your body is also lugging around literally another body inside of it, in addition to all that backlogged poop, things get super uncomfortable.

It's just upsetting. We're good friends, my vulva and me. I'm used to seeing her every day. Then, one day, she ghosts me for months. It's unsettling. And, not to get overly personal here, but it's even more unsettling when you're "getting intimate" with your partner, and then he pops down to "say hello" and you can't see neither your vulva nor your partner.

Nausea. Constant, sometimes painful, always deeply irritating nausea. No joke: nausea is a big reason I'm not having another child. I experienced 24 weeks of nausea with my second baby, and then my body had the bloody audacity to turn out to have gestational diabetes. So when I could finally eat something without gagging, I was told, "Yeah, you can have lean proteins and veggies. But don't worry, you can treat yourself to some sugar-free dark chocolate sometimes."

Oh boy! Really?! How did one girl get so damn lucky?

So. Much. Hair. In addition to growing all sorts of new hair, your body really doesn't shed too much when you're pregnant. The result, for a lot of people, is a head full of glorious, thick, shiny locks. The result for me was basically me wanting to hire a carnival barker to advertise me as the Incredible Hirsute Lady and charge people two bits to gawk.

I was awake all night and my bloody gums often made it look like I was feasting on human blood. (Which, incidentally, would have been a-OK with my gestational diabetes diet.) Yes, bloody gums is a thing, too. Not for everyone, of course, but some people get to look like Lestat on the regular.

Because your pregnant body is all, "Make all the mucus!" a lot of it winds up coming out of your nose (if it can make it past your swollen sinuses, that is.) It's call rhinitis of pregnancy, and it's just as sexy as it sounds. So at this point you're wheezing, waddling, hairy, bleeding, barf-y, constipated, sweating, swollen person who can't sit down or see your vag and your bag is full of crusty tissues because your nose won't stop running.

Oh, and you smell like a barnyard. Or, like, a combination of a high school locker gym, my beloved New York City's hot-summer-day smell, and mediocre chicken soup.

I learned long ago not to question pregnancy cravings. Just like everything else about pregnancy, they're weird, you can't always explain it, and they're going to happen whether you want them to or not. You have no real control. Still, one doesn't feel good about eating, say, milk steak with a side of raw jelly beans.

Not enough to change underwear, mind you, but enough where you are sitting in your embarrassment, thinking about everything that has brought you to this point in your life.

How can one possibly encapsulated everything that is going on in pregnancy that leaves them feeling ill-at-ease and uncomfortable. There's just so much and sometimes all of it happens all at once. So, rather than delve into the depths of how physically and spiritually drained we are, we leave it at, "I'm uncomfortable."

You're welcome.