5 Things No One Tells You About Pregnancy

When I was pregnant with my first baby (and before, because I was weird like that), I'm pretty sure I read every.single.book geared toward expectant mothers. I learned about all the pregnancy-related medical conditions, the mood swings, the heartburn, the boob leakage. I thought I was prepared. But there were a few things that none of these "informational" tomes prepared me for. So, dear readers, if you are currently/have ever been/or ever plan to become pregnant, you may want to take a gander at the shocking side of incubating a human being, according to me. Because, y'know, I'm like this renowned expert and stuff.

#1: You Might Grow a Beard. Yeah, you're laughing, but I'm dead-ass serious about this. When I was pregnant for the first time, I sprouted a few coarse black hairs on my chin. (I didn't notice them until late in my third trimester, which makes me wonder how long I unknowingly walked around in public as "The Bearded Lady.") The bad thing? They didn't go away. Worse, with my second pregnancy, a few more hairs popped up - that also stuck around like a bad habit, even after Cameron was born. And now - you guessed it - I've amassed even more chin pubes with this pregnancy. Yes, I'm admitting it here: I have a beard. Not that I don't use an arsenal of hair removal methods to take care of it - the title of my blog is "Fighting OFF Frumpy," not "Helplessly Succumbing to Hormonally-Induced Ugliness" - but still. I'm pretty sure that if I let it grow, I'd end up looking something like this:

Hmm, not so bad ... I think a beard makes me look more intellectual. This could work for me.

#2: Your Feet May Get Bigger. This one sucks big-time for girls like me whose feet were already, oh, not on the dainty side. Before I had children, my feet were a size nine. Not a bad size, mind you, but still a little large. Since I've had kids, though? Yeah. Size ten or better. CLOWN FEET, people. The worst thing about this is the choice in shoes. Number one, nobody stocks cute shoes in size Sasquatch. And number two - if they do stock cute shoes in that size, they're not so nice once you get them on. The shoes that look good on a size six or seven foot look like pontoon boats on a size ten-plus. Damn it.

I'm waiting to miraculously wake up someday with my decent-sized feet back, but alas, it hasn't happened yet.

#3: Pimples Can Pop Up in Weird Places. Unless you're some flawless-skinned freak of nature (in which case, I hate you; get out of my blog), you've had a zit on your face at one time or another. And you can most likely identify with finding one on your chest or back every once in a while. But when I'm pregnant, I find pimples in the strangest places - like inside my ears. Just under my jawline. On my neck. On my inner thigh. WTF, body? Haven't you punished me thoroughly enough? Oh yes: and a bonus weird pregnancy-induced (at least for me) "thing?" Skin tags. Example:

They're just harmless little flaps of skin that appear in random places, but ugh - who needs 'em?

#4: Your Butt Could Possibly Expand, and Become Stuck That Way. ... Because mine did. Even after I lost the baby weight I gained with my first two, my hips and ass were always wider than before. I guess that's what they mean by "childbearing hips" ... but I think "pear-shaped" more accurately describes it. At one point I weighed less than I had pre-Cameron, and still couldn't fit into my old jeans without a massive and embarrasing muffin top, much like the one featured in this picture:

(Photo credit: jonlarge)

#5: Your Nose Could Grow, Pinocchio! I guess "Pinocchio" isn't a really accurate description because your schnoz doesn't really get longer ... it just gets ... fat. And I have no idea why, unless it's some cruel cosmic conspiracy to make me look even more awkward and unkempt and chubby. (As if the pimples and chin hair weren't enough.) It looks something like this*:

*photo-edited exaggeration ... but not by much, I swear

Thank God it doesn't stay big, like your feet do - but why it has to get big in the first place remains a total mystery to me.

So anyway, there you have it: a little glimpse of the grosser side of pregnancy. If you're lucky, you're one of those skinny-armed skinny-legged basketball-under-the-shirt pregnant girls who "glows" and has beautiful hair and remains un-stretchmarked. If that's the case, you probably won't fall victim to these weird afflictions. (And if you are one of those girls, you know what to do. And if you're unsure, read the sentence in parenthesis under heading #3.)

Do tell, my friends: what weird fates have befallen your body in its pregnant state?