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Pregnancy can get very cliched with morning sickness, nausea, mood swings, the waddling motion and just about anything that you’ve constantly heard and seen. But guess what, all that you have gathered from other pregnancy stories does not put you in the same boat. No one could guarantee that you will have a similar experience – that is to say, when someone has no pregnancy complaints, and you wish you had a similar one. Or you think someone had an easy delivery, and you hope yours will be just as easy. Think about the probability of having a similar experience among a million pregnant women! Every pregnancy is different with variations. Some women could be on the extremes with what they go through.
A woman who has had a rosy pregnancy might not identify with another who had a tougher one. Not until something happens in the middle of her pregnancy. This woman tells her tale of how beautiful her pregnancy was until something unexpected happened to her.
Her first pregnancy was great. No complaints whatsoever, and she never understood why everybody else was complaining about their pregnancies. She had no bitter experiences ranging from morning sickness to excessive weight gain. She shone throughout. Her body didn’t really look like she was pregnant but for the football-belly. So she was during her first pregnancy.
With the second one, she still carried forward most of the beautiful experiences, but with a few unexpected changes. While she had no morning sickness, handling a three-year old was no less than a morning sickness. She had gained an optimal thirty pounds but managed to exercise a bit. She still carried the glow as in the first pregnancy. But buying and moving into a new house when she was five months pregnant, meant things took a little toll on her, and she was counting the days to her due date so that she could be done with the ordeal.
When it was her third pregnancy, this woman had a little wave of nausea in the first trimester, but she successfully held it back. However, this was not what bothered her more than the notching pain in her lady parts at the beginning of the second trimester. There was no burning sensation or irritation, but a shooting pain that would recur everytime she stood for too long, sat in the same position for too long, climb into the car, or spread her legs.
She thought she would give it time, but as months passed, the pain got worse. Then there was the baby weight pushing down her pelvic floor. The sharp ligament pain bursts stayed on, and they felt abnormal though the doctor said it was normal to feel so during pregnancy. If the intensity of the pain was to be explained, it was as good as “getting kicked in the crotch and bruise the pubic bone severely.’
It was something she could not discuss with anyone. Certainly not when she went to fetch groceries and standing for 15 minutes was an impossible feat. She would choose those motorized shopping carts leaving the onlookers surprised at the outwardly seemingly perfectly healthy woman resorting to motorized shopping carts. It was something she could not discuss with her neighbors either. So she looked up the internet where she found scores of other women sharing a similar story. She figured out that her condition was called SPD or symphysis pubis dysfunction. SPD is a benign-but-excruciating condition whereby the ligaments relax too much and cause pubic bones to separate.
This is just one of the cases that marred her pregnancy experience. Talk to a million pregnant women and they all will have their tales to tell. You will be surprised that those who had had rosy pregnancies were, for a change, initiated in to the misery club of pregnancy. But then, it’s how women learn to empathize with the pains of their folk. It’s how one woman might identify with the other who had a similar experience, the oddity of meeting whom might be entirely zero, but with enough stories doing the rounds on the internet, it’s more likely you will bump into the virtual someone who could relate to you.
So yes, esprit de corps, ya preggos out there!
