My pregnancies were nothing shy of miserable. Thirty-nine weeks long of non-stop vomiting, a world of nausea I never knew existed, and the exhaustion, whoa baby. When friends ask me the best part of it all, my response is always the many people who open the door for you, smile at you randomly, let you skip the line, or, my personal favorite, avoid you like you have the plague. The ones that just move out of your way when they see you coming, classic.
As much as I hate to admit this, it is the truth. Six months postpartum with my first, I sat bawling in my husband’s office holding a positive pregnancy test. Scared to death. I had just quit breastfeeding three weeks prior, finally starting to feel alive after birthing my nine-pound three-ounce baby via c-section. Yes, you read that right. How does someone have a nine-pound baby while puking daily for nine months straight? I have no idea. The human body is incredible.
There I was six months later, six months pregnant, pushing my freshly turned one-year-old son in the grocery cart. Utterly exhausted, getting sick in the parking lot, unloading my firstborn and diaper bag, trying to muster up the eye strength to read the grocery list in my hand. Some of the random smiles remained, but I was amazed at how quickly the avoidant strangers became those with something to say now. I felt like a walking spectacle.
“Oh, you are going to have your hands full!”
“Have fun with all that! Ha!”
“You know what causes that, right?”
Now, at first, these comments put me in a crazy headspace. Terror. Nervousness. Negativity. I remember when I was pregnant for the first time with our son the pure joy that followed seeing the blue plus sign after months of negative tests. We told everyone close to us right away. This second pregnancy was different and remained so for a few months. I partially blame the fear instilled in me by complete strangers. People mind you, that had no business commenting on the size of my growing family or body, and certainly didn’t have business telling me what an inconvenience my children were.
Have you ever heard the saying, “Be kind, you never know what someone else is going through?” I found myself wanting to scream this every time someone made a comment at the grocery store. There was no way these strangers knew our reason for deciding to have children in the first place. You see, my husband and I met a little later in life. We got married in our thirties, both perfectly accepting a future with or without kids. What I wasn’t prepared for was a life possibly without him. The first year of our marriage was something I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. He fell ill quickly after our wedding, and all our newlywed travel plans were taken over by trips to the doctor, med trials, and watching my husband become a shell of himself. I’ll never forget the months of discussions leading up to the decision to try for a family. He wanted a child, a legacy, and I couldn’t think of possibly raising a child alone if things didn’t get better. Not knowing what the future would hold, we had our son, and almost right around his date of birth, my husband started responding to treatments. My husband was healing, my son was the cutest thing I’d ever seen, and now another baby was on the way. What blessings. What miracles, truly.
Fast forward to today, I’m pushing my now two-year-old son and one-year-old daughter into the grocery store as I do routinely once or twice a week. I can almost guarantee someone will come up to us and tell me my hands are full. Yes, yes, they are. They are full of a grocery list of items I’m going to buy to feed my amazing, healthy husband and children. They are full of tiny hands who need me every second of every day. I’m exhausted and incredibly happy. So please, kindly move out of my way.
