Pregnancy Is So Much More Than Just 9 Months

Today, someone asked me if I planned on having any more children, and I paused before replying to her.

“Well, maybe,” I said, pulling down my shirt over my still-lingering stomach, a subconscious habit from four pregnancies. “But I really wish I was better at being pregnant!”

I was joking, but not really. Because that’s the truth. While I love the idea of a bigger family, and I dream about having a clan of teens playing at the beach some day as opposed to my current gaggle of young children, the truth is, I kind of suck at being pregnant.

And sometimes, I hate myself that I would ever consider limiting the size of our family for that reason. After all, it’s always worth it, despite the swelling and the pounds and the inability to roll over or breathe, right?

But before I could beat myself up too much, I thought a little bit more about what those nine months of pregnancy really entail — and I realized something: pregnancy is so much more than “just” nine months.

Pregnancy is in the months of worrying and waiting and taking tests and holding your breath and telling yourself you won’t test this time, but doing it anyways.

Pregnancy is in the months or weeks or years spent quietly smiling for the other mothers it happens to, the ones you want to be happy for but also feel a little bit like your own heart is breaking, and why not you, too?

Pregnancy is in the months of dripping and bleeding and feeling like your body parts are quietly and not-so-quietly working hard to rearrange themselves, like a scarf draped over your “real” body.

Pregnancy is the months lost to postpartum depression, a fog you feel like you’ve looked back through to see your baby through forced smiles and exhaustion, months that cannot be counted in days on a calendar alone.

Pregnancy is in the months spent digging through your closets and drawers, sighing a deep inward sigh at jeans that seem like they will never button again and heck, who even wants to wear jeans ever, ever again anyways?

Pregnancy is in the years of your life forever marked by the months spent growing and gestating, when time is measured by the memory of pregnancy. Hmmm, let’s think, we bought the car when I was pregnant with which kid, again? Oh, yeah, that’s right, we planned that vacation and then I got pregnant, remember?

Pregnancy is in the tears and prayers and breathless phone calls that come when you least expect it, a hurry and flurry to buy diapers before you meet the child you may not have carried in your body, but have carried in your heart for all of time.

Pregnancy is in the nights of frenzied texts and Google searches for fevers and rocking, rocking, rocking.

Pregnancy is in the hours that feel like years, adjusting to a life you wanted but may not have expected.

Pregnancy is when days matter, begging your baby to stay in and keep developing, when the smallest challenges become the biggest victories.

Pregnancy is milk pumped, formula mixed, judgments cast, pride and confidence built step-by-step, like a stone wall constructed piece-by-piece through hard work on a path many have walked before, but you must still journey.

Pregnancy is friendships built and helping hands extended and knowing nods in the grocery store over baby carriers and unwashed hair and toddler tantrums.

Pregnancy is a shifting relationship, years spent rearranging and circling and walking on stones and being the first to say sorry and realizing that sexy comes in different packages.

Pregnancy is holding a brand-new baby in your arms and seeing an entire lifetime flash before your eyes in an instant, diaper changes and driver’s training and college graduation and all the threats and fears of the world swirling together in a first cry that pierces your heart with instant realization.

If pregnancy weeks were measured in the time that it feels like to go through them, how many of us might admit that we feel just a tad bit older than the number assigned at our births? How much does our soul age, in leaps and bounds, in the months we expand, in the nights we don’t sleep, in the minutes our worlds are consumed with worry for another? If we could put a number on love, how many lifetimes have we led just watching our children sleep?

Pregnancy might last just nine months, but it is so much more than that.

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