10+ Things We Wish We’d Known Before We Got Pregnant

Pregnancy, even if it only lasts for around 9 full months, is a lifelong commitment and nothing short of a miracle. The longest ever recorded pregnancy was 375 days, nearly 100 days over the average of 280 days. Carrying a child is not a one-size-fits-all journey. Some parts of it are widely talked about — morning sickness, increased urination, smell sensitivity — but then there are the other things that no one mentions.

Keeping it real is something we at Bright Side believe in, and here are 17 honest tips women wish they knew before becoming pregnant.

• Baby kicks don’t feel like butterflies. They feel like something crawled across your skin quickly, but from the inside. chrisP__bacon / Reddit
• I wish someone had told me that no, your body does not magically go back to normal once the baby is out. You have weeks of healing, your breasts are still in baby mode, and you have a whole new set of problems now. Also, pooping will be terrifying. I don’t know WHY people insist on visiting right after delivery. I am tired, I am busy with this baby, please come in a month when I can at least have some sort of routine. Davis1511 / Reddit
• The funniest joke of all: You stop being able to sleep way before the baby gets here. Everyone loves to tell me to “sleep now while I can,” but pregnancy leads to unexplained insomnia, and I’m a total wreck already. tibbymoon / Reddit

• That everyone has an opinion on what you do while pregnant and how you want to raise your child. black_lilies / Reddi
• That cravings aren’t just food. I craved dirt, particularly beach sand. The smell of the beach was excruciating. I just wanted to shovel handfuls into my mouth. I never ate dirt or sand, and the craving went away when the baby was born. A friend of a friend told me she craved freshly poured asphalt, so in a way, I’m glad my craving was just dirt.
  DoxieBalls / Reddit

Pictured above: Mud cookies, made of dirt, are often eaten in Haiti during pregnancy.

• I wish I’d heard the term “mother’s apron” before I had one. Like, there are warnings all over, “Your body’s going to change!” and some specifics on how, but everything I read and heard reassured me about how it would all mostly go back eventually. I’m still pretty bitter. metonymimic / Reddit
• I went into pregnancy expecting the morning sickness, being tired, sore, all that good stuff. What I got was that the combo of my hormones and the vitamins I took made my butt turn the toilet seat blue. I’m not kidding. Turning the toilet seat blue is a pregnancy symptom. dirtyberti / Reddit

• The stuff that stays with your body afterward. I developed allergies after I had my second. My feet definitely got bigger. Hormones are no joke. Shakenbake1811 / Reddit
• Miscarriages are not spoken about enough. No one tells you how much it’s going to hurt, nor the fact that your hormones will take ages to go back to “normal” and how much it affects your mental health. traceyjanie21 / Reddit
• I wish I’d known to go to a pelvic floor physical therapist sooner! Better to prevent issues than fix them later. junkyardcorndog / Reddit

• Parents before you get pregnant: “It’s wonderful, you HAVE to do it!” Parents 10 seconds after hearing you’re pregnant: “Ahahaha welcome to hell! No sleep for you, prepare to age decades with every passing month!” WafflesAreEpic / Reddit
• You can order one but get 2. YourAverageTiredDad / Reddit
• I went partially blind in one eye. Apparently, temporary blindness can happen in pregnancy, but my eyesight never returned. (Also increased my shoe size by one size, and developed year-round allergies.) raising***withtrees / Reddit

• You will never again have a relaxing day to yourself. You might have a day or even days away from your child. But you will be thinking about them, worrying about them, and missing them. I yearn for a day to myself and can never enjoy it because I feel this absolute tug in my heart. acraig652 / Reddit
• Hair loss! After I had my kid, I lost a ton of hair. I would pull fists full of hair during my showers. I thought there was something wrong with me because no one told me about this. Went to Google. Totally normal, and it happens to everyone. It grows back eventually, and you’ll go through an awkward baby hair phase. sm1020 / Reddit

• During labor, the “water breaking” is not one rush of liquid. It’s continuous and can occur for several hours. It’s messy and incredibly awful to deal with. It feels like peeing, but you have 0 control over anything and if you tense up, then everything is a much more painful and weird feeling. Nobody ever told me that, and I was VERY surprised to find out for myself. notgrass87 / Reddit
• How comfortable maternity pants are. I was stubborn the first time around and didn’t want to switch over from my regular clothes. Once I had to, I regretted those extra weeks of discomfort all for vanity. Interesting_Sea_7593 / Reddit

What’s one pregnancy symptom that scares you the most? Do you believe we romanticize pregnancy through the media, or do you think all aspects of it are pretty well-known? Let us know in the comments.