During Pregnancy | 11 Things You Wouldn’t Do

Before you have experienced pregnancy, it is all too easy to roll your eyes at women who, you think, have let pregnancy get the better of them. After all, how can you possibly foretell what pregnancy will truly be like, and how you will react during pregnancy with another person growing inside of you.

Before the pregnancy, you probably imagined yourself heavily pregnant, jogging through your local park, stopping at an organic cafe to grab a green smoothie for the stroll home. In reality, however, the nearest you get to jogging is your there’s-a-baby-on-my-bladder fast paced walk to the bathroom. In fact, the pregnant you is nothing like what you imagined. Here are 11 things many pregnant women swear they wont do in pregnancy… but do anyway.

During Pregnancy #1: Worry About Everything

In your pre-pregnancy life, you looked on with a mix of disbelief and horror as your pregnant friends wept about sleepless nights spent worrying about their developing baby. These women seemed to be on constant alert for disaster, waiting for everything to come crashing down around them. Now it’s you who lies awake at 3am, searching internet forums to find reassurance that your baby will be ok. And that obsessive worrying won’t harm your unborn child.

During Pregnancy #2: Become A Baby Bore

You’ve seen it countless times, your wonderful, intelligent, feisty friends suddenly turn into baby bores as soon as the little blue line appears on the pregnancy test. You swore it would never happen to you, you would be different and stay true to yourself throughout pregnancy and motherhood. But then you get pregnant, and found out how tiring it is. Most of your spare time is spent sleeping, and the few waking hours you do have away from the office are spent obsessively reading about pregnancy, birth, breastfeeding and motherhood.

When your friends ask what you’ve been up to, you can tell them in great detail about the stages of labour, advise them on potential breastfeeding problems, and let them in on the secret to avoiding stretch marks. But if they want to strike up a political conversation, or ask if you like a new band, the conversation hits a dead end.

During Pregnancy #3: Cry At Everything

You can spot a pregnant woman on television not by her bump, but because she’s the one in tears. Apparently pregnant women cry at work, weep during arguments and sob during commercials. Not you though, until you became pregnant yourself. Why must they put such adorable babies on nappy commercials? How are you meant to hold it together through that?!

During Pregnancy #4: Get Pregnancy Brain

In your pre-pregnancy life, you probably though the pregnant women were simply pretending to have pregnancy brain. If they were colleagues, you may have thought they were doing it to get out of their workload (and been annoyed when yours increased). Now you are pregnant, however, you may have noticed your own brilliant mind starting to fade some what. Maybe it’s time you apologised to the pregnant women you accused of putting it on? If you can remember who they are, and what you were meant to say to them when you get there.

During Pregnancy #5: Give Up Fashion In Favour Of Stretchy Pants

It’s true, there are some beautiful maternity clothes available. Some of the high fashion stores have maternity sections in the latest trends, and there are plenty of maternity designers creating stylish and flattering outfits. But they’re just not as comfy as yoga pants. Every morning, you waddle over to your wardrobe and gaze longingly at the beautiful polka dot maternity dress you spent a small fortune on. And yet, every day your hand reaches out for those stretchy grey yoga pants.

During Pregnancy #6: Do The Breathing Thing

Before you fell pregnant, you probably thought the sight of pregnant women doing those intense breathing exercises was a bit odd. The humming, the loud exhales and the warrior-like facial expressions do look a little strange. Now that you are pregnant, however, you’ve discovered that the price of a bit of humiliation is worth it when faced with the prospect of giving birth to a baby. If the breathing is supposed to help, then you will practice those breathing exercises during every available second.

During Pregnancy #7: Exploit Your Bump

Not getting a seat on the train is rubbish. Sorry, was rubbish, it doesn’t happen to you now because you simply gaze longingly across the empty seats while rubbing your belly and within minutes you have a seat. You can also get out of heavy lifting this way. And you’re allowed to take naps whenever you like, and are guaranteed the comfiest seat wherever you go.

During Pregnancy #8: Break The Rules

Despite spending a large proportion of your waking hours reading articles telling you what you shouldn’t do during pregnancy, you aren’t an angel. You wanted to give caffeine up, but you were just sooo tired. And eating only healthy food is fine in principle, but it’s hardly realistic when you spend most of the day craving chocolate ice cream.

During Pregnancy #9: Cancel On Friends

Your friends are your family, you’ve been through everything together. You swore you’d never miss Friday night cocktails (mocktails, thank you very much), lunch dates or movie nights. Then you fell pregnant, and fell asleep on the sofa, and missed everything. And not just once, you’ve slept through almost every social event for the last month.

During Pregnancy #10: Be Irrational

You are NOT going to be one of those irrational over the top pregnant women you see on television. Certainly not. Well, not all the time anyway. I mean, if someone does something ridiculously offensive like filling in a spreadsheet wrong, buying the wrong type of bread or making an offhand comment, then yeah, maybe you’ll lose your cool. But only because it’s a totally normal reaction to such a catastrophe.

During Pregnancy #11: Fall Into Unhealthy Habits

You are definitely, definitely going to eat only healthy foods, drink only filtered water, exercise every single day and give your baby the temple-like body he deserves. Until you actually become pregnant, that is. Then you’ll spend your days eating cookies on the sofa, falling asleep just thinking of the gym, and throwing up every piece of fruit that passes your lips. Why is it only the junk food that will stay down?