Pregnancy Is 9 Months Long, And Other Blatant Lies Moms Are Told

9-monthsWe’ve already discussed how, even in this so-called modern age, for some reason pregnancy invites otherwise intelligent people to spew old wives’ tales as if they’re in some tiny village in the old country. And yet, that’s not the only way in which truth is stretched as far as your swelling abdomen. There are plenty of other bits conventional wisdom almost everyone accepts as “facts,” until our own experiences show them to be an enormous pack of lies. Or, well, things that are only sometimes true.

1. “Morning” Sickness
Yeah, no. That’s All-Day, Anytime It’s Inconvenient Sickness to you. And by the way, it has zilch to do with the baby’s gender.

2. Nine Months
Did you know that childbearing women also have the ability to do math? And when we do some super complex (not-even-long) division, we might discover that 40 weeks is 10 months. Even if, technically, those first two weeks were before we were fertilized, everyone still counts them, which means that when we hit the nine-month mark, it’s all the more frustrating that we’re still pregnant. Especially when we’re asked every five minutes if we’ve had the baby yet.

3. You Can Eat for Two

Who else felt like you just learned Santa Claus wasn’t real all over again when the doctor said you should gain only 20 pounds? So cruel.

4. Your Hair and Skin Will Be Great
For some of us, this is absolutely true, though I suspect it might also be due to those football-size prenatal vitamins. For others, all the excessive sweating our overheated bodies are doing leads to oily skin and hair. Gorgeous!

5. Sleep Now, ‘Cause You Won’t Sleep Later
Well, a) our bodies have become so unwieldy we can’t sleep (particularly if we used to be back or stomach sleepers); and b) it’s not like there’s a bank in which we can store hours for later. It’s just not going to help.

6. Childbirth Classes Are a Good Investment

No joke, every single one of the eight mothers in my childbirth class had a C-section. I really wish I had spent that money on a post-natal doula, a lactation consultant, or a month’s worth of takeout.

7. You’ll Never Remember Your Labor
Those details are as etched into our minds as the collateral damage is etched into our nether regions.

8. Your First Kid Is Guaranteed to Be Late
This is sometimes true, but a terrible thing to count on. We can do math, but strangely, those babies can’t.

9. Nursing Will Help You Lose All the Baby Weight
How many celebrities have credited breastfeeding with helping them get back to their “perfect” bikini bodies? Er, maybe breastfeeding combined with strict diets and daily personal training. But as you may have noticed during pregnancy, feeding someone else from your own body makes you hungry. Dieting while you nurse can damage your milk supply, and you can’t exactly hop back into your exercise regime right away. Enjoy being extra squishy for the foreseeable future.

If you’ll let me be sappy for just a moment, for all the lies, there are a lot of good surprises too. I laughed more during pregnancy than I ever have before. And yeah, there’s that little guy I got at the end of the 10 MONTH deal. I guess he was worth the wait.

(Image: Shutterstock)

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