Nipplegate

I am writing this post in hindsight, with a good night’s sleep, and the nausea behind me in an effort to get real and be honest about the crazy that can come with pregnancy.

Being pregnant is awesome and terrifying at the same time. It’s a crazy juxtaposition of being thankful to finally have this thing you have wanted since you were little and have prayed for over the course of many years, and then feeling like a psycho person, experiencing emotions you have never felt and pain you didn’t know existed. It’s like you are thrilled this baby is coming, but this pregnancy thing you just want to give back or pass on to your husband to do.

Thus, I give you the story Bryan and I laughingly refer to now as Nipplegate. It was around 8 weeks into the pregnancy. Hormones were unpredictable, inconsistent, and just rude in general.  I would feel fine one hour and depressed or angry or weepy the next.  After a long and exhausting day, accompanied by hours of nausea (which NEVER hit in the morning for me, but rather at some point between 3:00 and 5:00 in the afternoon, and would last until I fell asleep that night), I was finally crawling into bed for the night. I had gotten into the habit of wearing a sports bra to bed because my breasts were so swollen and tender that not having some kind of support was way worse than the annoyance of sleeping in a bra. As I was tucking myself into the covers, my hand grazed my chest, and I let out a small “Ahh”, signifying that something had caught me off guard. Bryan innocently asked, “What’s wrong?” and I said, “Something is stuck in my bra”. Reaching in to retrieve said object, I immediately began WEEPING. Y’all- ugly cry, face in hands, full on weeping.

My poor husband. He yells, “What is it?! What’s wrong?!” And slowly, I yelled through tears, “It’s my niiipplleeee!!! Waaah.”

This was a new low.

The weird thing which felt so foreign to me was, in fact, just my boob, scaring the buh-Jesus out of me. I was so swollen that I didn’t even recognize my own body. Poor Bryan just sat there and rubbed my back, probably trying not to laugh while at the same time likely TERRIFIED of whoever this person was who had taken over his wife. He tried his best to comfort me and grappled for the right words because, oh my gosh, how do you respond to that?

I tried to regain my composure and explained to Bryan that this moment had been like a light bulb going off for me. While I can laugh about it now, this was the instant that it hit me like a ton of bricks- this baby train is going, Mama, whether you like it or not. We are used to having relative control over our bodies. There is a cause and effect, natural rhythm to how we feel. Bloated? Eat less salt. Dehydrated? Drink more water. Headache in the morning? Drink less wine the night before, fool.

But this- this was something foreign and new. My body was changing before my eyes. I was feeling bloated, had sore and huge breasts, and had an aching tailbone from where my body was shifting to prepare for this growing baby. All of this was happening within my own skin, and there was nothing I could do about it.

I was completely, 100% overwhelmed by it all.

I don’t say any of this to complain about this pregnancy or to discourage anyone from becoming pregnant. I’ve just been asked by so many people to tell them “the real version” of what this is like, and I want to be honest about the reality of this process. I hope to help others to know what it is like, and I want to remember these details one day when Nipplegate is a distant memory.

There is a happy ending to this story because, you know what? It all worked out fine. I stopped crying, got a good night’s sleep, and things were okay again the next day. There will be moments during pregnancy where you feel completely overwhelmed and very isolated. You’re the only one carrying this baby and you’re sacrificing your sense of normalcy and control to bring this human being into the world. You will just have to take a couple of deep breaths, do the next right thing, and keep on trucking. Seeing this baby’s fingers for the first time and watching it kick on the ultrasound this week made all of this insanity worth it.