Ever since I was a little girl I dreamed of being pregnant one day. I thought feeling a life grow inside me would be the most intimate bonding experience. I dreamed of the day I could eat whatever I wanted and not worry about how much weight I would gain. Boy. I. Was. WRONG.  

Note: I should acknowledge that many women do enjoy pregnancy, but this wasn’t the case for me. It seemed like all the beautiful maternity photos on social media were a misconception of what pregnancy is really like.  The only way to possibly explain my experience:  

it felt like the slowest death sentence.  

Below are 7 weird things that I didn’t expect to happen during pregnancy – 

1. You will probably HATE your baby’s father the entire pregnancy.  Just seeing his name pop into my phone notifications made me need to throw up, and the sound of his voice angered the hell out of me.  At the time I had no valid reason to hate him honestly, I strongly believe it is just a natural biological reaction for some women as the same thing happened to my aunt when she was pregnant with my cousin.  

2. Your nose will work like a bloodhound… to your disadvantage. I remember unreasonably disliking my coworker because I could smell her breath. It bothered me so much one day I called in sick and stayed home crying because I could not stand the thought of going to work and smelling her morning wrath.  

3. The nausea is abrupt and terrible. You know when you’re drunk or sick and you feel your stomach bouncing around before you throw up? Not how it works when you’re pregnant. The food just comes up without warning. Your doctor will tell you it will probably go away after the first trimester. LIES. I threw up morning, noon, and night until l I was 32 weeks along. Unfortunately, I will never forget the sight of scrambled eggs on my living room floor. And according to the old wives’ tales, you will have more morning sickness if you are having a girl. MORE LIES… I had a boy. 

4. You may develop life-threatening allergies. I was eating shrimp (as I always had) when I started having heart palpitations and chest tightness. Luckily it passed when I took an antihistamine. My doctor confirmed at my next appointment that it’s not uncommon, especially if you had a slight allergy to it previously. You should advise your doctor if this happens to you because if you have a C-Section, they have to modify their cleaning process to avoid iodine.  

5. Your eye prescription may change dramatically. My eyes got so much worse I was getting terrible migraines daily. They were so bad one day I couldn’t get out of the car by myself. I don’t know how I drove home (that’s a blur) but once I was there I sat in the car and called my mother crying, and as she helped me inside I threw up all over the driveway. I’m sure the tenants in the neighboring apartment loved that. However, a few months after having the baby my eyes went back to almost normal, which my optometrist told me would likely happen. 

6. By the last trimester, you are probably peeing no less than 7 times a night. I was waking up every hour to pee because I carried my son very low and he was on my bladder the whole time. I’m sure you can imagine how annoyed I was when I heard “catch up on sleep now because you won’t get any when the baby arrives.” 

7. And as you can tell by the stories above, you will cry. A LOT. To be honest I didn’t even know why I was crying most of the time. I blame hormones. But if you’re crying at the most ridiculous things like I did (like bad breath), I promise you will look back at parts of your journey and laugh!