What Not to Expect When You´re Expecting

I´ve been pregnant for almost three months now. The following are things people have told me will happen that have, in fact, not happened at all.

1. You´ll have that pregnant woman glow. If they meant the greasy sheen of a day old pepperoni pizza under a heat lamp, then yes, I glow. I haven´t had acne this bad since I was 14 and told people I was repeatedly bitten by a spider. As there are no real arachnid threats here on the island, I don´t have any good excuses besides evil hormones.

2. You won´t show for the first few months during your first pregnancy. This is a load of bollocks. I had to go buy my first pair of fat girl pants at week 8. As I have never owned fat girl pants, this was a bit of a shock. Since then, I´ve been told that I´m looking pretty big for someone at four months (this was at month 2) and I´ve been asked repeatedly if we´re having twins. (To the best of anyone´s knowledge, we are not.) Probably the best compliment I´ve received lately was yesterday when a student (an adult, mind you) told me I wasn´t looking quite so fat as the last time he saw me.

3. Morning sickness is a matter of willpower. The other day I leaned over to pick up something off the floor and was surprised when a half masticated apple and accompanying stomach acid launched itself  out my mouth. I wasn´t even feeling nauseous. When I am feeling sick, I puke until I feel like my face is going to fall off. If I could stop myself from being involuntarily bulimic, believe me, I would.

4. Even though your body is changing, your husband will still find you attractive due to your newly acquired big boobs. Well, the boobs weren´t a lie. As someone whose bra size used to include the word ALMOST, I feel like I woke up one day and swapped rib cages with Dolly Parton. The trouble is, there are two types of men in this world. There are boob men, and there are butt men. Due to the irreversible  trauma of seeing topless, saggy old women on beaches as a child, Ruyman has always been a member of the second camp. Terms of endearment these days include a skeptical glance at my midsection followed by the words, Are you sure that´s normal?


5. Pregnancy is one of the few times you get to eat whatever your body wants. Right now, thanks to my earlier crack about my complexion, my body would really appreciate a piece of pepperoni pizza. Does such a thing exist on the island? Not a chance. Even if it did, the nutrition Nazi that is my diabetes nurse would never approve. So instead of eating peanut butter and sweet pickles with wild abandon (no sweet pickles here either and the peanut butter is crazy expensive), I spend my time counting, weighing, measuring, and logging everything that goes in my mouth. And whenever food goes in my mouth, a needle goes into my arm. The alternatives to behaving myself include stillbirth, super fat baby, and infant with diabetes. None of them are high on my list of desirable outcomes. 


6. Pregnancy is a magical experience. Unless magical is a gross misspelling of miserable, I have yet to find this true. I simply can´t believe women do this multiple times ON PURPOSE.