I really wish people talked more about all of the weird physical stuff that can happen when you’re pregnant. I feel like there’s a lot of silence around it for reasons I don’t quite understand.
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At a dentist appt recently, I mentioned that I never had a cavity until after I was pregnant. The dentist said he often "jokes" that people lose 1 tooth for every pregnancy.
i think you'll find there isn't as much silence when you seek out community for it. like if you posted this on tiktok, youd get 1000 responses about peoples stories
i hear that. it's also that if it's your first time, you wouldn't have necessarily been in these social spaces where it's being discussed. like i feel like ive been hearing about how X is taboo and no one talks about it, but lots of people do talk about it. but go ahead! discuss it!
I’m on some more text based groups on places like Reddit and Discord. I think part of my objection is I had to go looking? I feel like we should tell people about more of this stuff beforehand, as part of sex ed.
Autoimmune issues are more common in women. Pregnancy is a stress on the body. (Illness is also) and these stressors can trigger autoimmune. They’re unsure of the mechanism behind it although they’re looking into female specific hormone cocktails.
I had an ocular migraine when I was pregnant. I woke up from a nap and was missing about half of my vision and everything was wavy. I thought I might be having a stroke. The doc was like, oh no, this is a normal pregnancy thing. I had no idea.
Not just during pregnancy, but has anyone told you about delivery and aftermath? I was surprised to pull out chunks of hair after birth. And my hair composition has never been the same.
I’m just shy of 17 years away from my delivery but happy to try to help with any questions. Pregnancy, for me, was not easy to achieve, survive, or resolve (except that second trimester, when I was Wonder Woman)
One problem is the medical field is VERY blind to women in general. Most medicines are male tested even today.
Also contraception and pregnancy is seen as a "woman's problem" which is why male birth control pills are only recently coming to market. We don't know because it's not profitable to care.
I gave a 5 minute PowerPoint at an early lockdown zoom gathering about “weird shit that happens to your body when pregnant,” and I think I terrified the entire party. And I didn’t even get into the rare weird shit!
This exactly. I think a lot of women are quiet because every pregnancy/birth experience can be very different? And there are some with “wonderful” pregnancies who are then reviled for saying so. No one wants to sound ‘negative’ so then there’s a privacy there unless you are close friends
The reasons for silence seem to be the weird social shaming about women having bodies at all combined with the social pressure to pretend childbearing is holy and thus perfect.
The oddest for me was how achy my hips got -- loosening of ligaments so pelvic bones could spread out for giving birth. But the hair loss was unexpected too.
Yes, that's because you see things how they are. Pregnancy is freakin' weird, and acknowledging that doesn't mean you love your kid any less, but Most People don't get that.
I mean, sort of? Not really. If our society actually did expect that, paid prenatal leave would be a thing, on top of paid maternity leave. As it stands most employers expect you to just squat behind the copy machine and get back to it.
Yeah: Somehow it’s treated as a biological function that is most natural/wholesome if it does not receive institutional interference in the form of support. Can’t spoil that journey by making it too comfortable.
Well, and it’s only in the last few generations that it was even acceptable to be visually pregnant in public / on tv / at work (at least in “polite society.” You were supposed to not talk about it and certainly not hint that sex might have happened about it. We haven’t undone the damage of that.
It wasn't until this year when my daughter was already 10 that I learned that the reason I have had multiple procedures on my leg since my veins gave up during pregnancy is that 90% of women have vein issues after a pregnancy. 9/10!!
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like... there are decent odds having a baby will give you an autoimmune disease. i didn't know that til it happened to me.
Also contraception and pregnancy is seen as a "woman's problem" which is why male birth control pills are only recently coming to market. We don't know because it's not profitable to care.
I like David Cronenberg and I’m sort of fascinated by how weird things are getting, but it’s really not the experience anyone prepared me for.
I mean, anytime people are selling authenticity is sus but it’s extra insidious in the maternity space.