Needless to say, no two pregnancies are the same. While some women get to enjoy only the glow and all the beautiful things it entails, others might have to deal with quite a few unpleasantries, such as fatigue or morning sickness.
But these two are just a couple examples—and rather common ones, too—of things that soon-to-be-moms have to endure. Apparently, the pregnancy can also affect their vision, breathing, even shoe size, as members of the ‘Ask Women’ subreddit pointed out. They shared their insight after one user asked the mothers in the group what side effects of pregnancies don't get talked about the most that surprised them. Scroll down to find the rest of their answers on the list below, where you will also find some of the OP's thoughts that she shared during a recent interview with Bored Panda.
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Lightning crotch.
Due to the relaxin hormones opening the hips, I had EXCRUCIATING pubic symphysis starting in 2nd trimester. SHOOTING nerve pains throughout the vaginal/pubic bone area. Impossible to get comfortable.
I told my OB in tears and his response was to laugh.
What happens in the days/weeks after birth. Everyone is so excited to teach you about the actual birth and how to raise a newborn, but zero on how to care for a mother’s body after birth.
Maybe it’s because I’m surrounded by aging women who don’t speak about bodily functions, but I was horrified to find that I was incontinent for the first time ever. When my nurse had to literally kneel next to the toilet to check things out while I urinated and help me prep my diaper. My first shower when I felt my deflated stomach. The liberal amount of blood, sweat, and tears shed (the sweating was really bad for me). How through all of that you have to keep yourself nourished enough to keep a tiny human alive. And in time, my body wished to do it all over again.
The uterus going back to its normal size and shape in 3-4 days, midwives measuring it every day, the abdominal cramps during the process...
Being so out of breath during third trimester. Everyone talks about baby pressing on your bladder but it was her taking up all my lung space that got me. Shivering uncontrollably a few days after birth. I think it was the amount of blood I lost/my iron levels. It was crazy and scary!
Shivering is your body in shock from pain only woman face that amount of pain it's not normal for humans to experience that much pain so we shake durning and sometimes days after labor I shook for almost a week
The 22-year-old redditor told Bored Panda that she started the thread after having a conversation with her grandmother. “That day I was out with grandma and she was asking me if I'm still sticking to my plan of having kids by the age of 30 and I said I moved it to 31 or 32 to put my career and financial independence first,” she shared.
“I started thinking about what my mom told me she went through as she got pregnant with me at a young age and other things I have noticed during her pregnancy with my brothers. My grandma would also tell me her own story and I noticed there were differences other than those side effects you would normally relate to the generational gap.”
“I also thought, doctors have their own opinions on pregnancy other than the normal, traditionally heard of experiences,” she added. “I wanted to know other women's experiences since I didn't have friends who are currently or were pregnant. I knew the best way to ask was anonymously through Reddit.”
People talk about cravings but no one talks about the food you used to love that you now can’t stand. I used to love everything Italian and now it’s a foggy memory.
That your immune system is lowered so you catch every cold known to man. Also because of this, I got a bunch of warts and I’ve never had them any other time in my life. They were gone quickly after giving birth.
Other bodily changes like hair/nails being stronger (but weaker after birth), skin tags, darker skin patches and more freckles, swollen and bleeding gums, larger feet, sweating, heartburn, snoring, back pain, muscle cramps. Your body changes so much, it’s insane!
“A lot of the responses surprised me and some even got me second guessing my ideas on getting pregnant myself,” the OP admitted, discussing the response she received from the online community.
“There were a lot of things there that I have never heard of. Feet growing, hating food you used to love, eyesight getting worse, and the worst out of all of them… pubic symphysis. These are the things my mom and grandma never experienced, or didn't bother telling me.”
The redditor pointed out that there were some common side effects among the redditors’ responses, too. That might come as no surprise considering how many women have to deal with the common ones, such as nausea and vomiting, for instance, affecting roughly 70–80% of pregnant women.
“Others were more personal, or something that just entirely depended on the person and their body,” the netizen said. “This helped put my mind at ease, but I must say that even with these negative side effects, I still can't wait for the day a little bundle calls me mom.”
Milk Fissure. My boobs swelled up in the last week or two of pregnancy. They started to leak some. All of a sudden my shirt was soaked. I ran to the bathroom and discovered a hole in the side of my boob about 2 inches away from my nipple. I stuck a kotex pad in my bra. It filled up. I switched to an overnight kotex pad. Explaining that to my doctor was fun. He sent me to a breast surgeon who diagnosed me with a milk fissure. He said the pressure was so great that my body found a way to get rid of the fluid (i.e like a boob volcano). I thought for sure I’d be an awesome baby feeder but alas, I struggled to breast feed.
This is absolutely horrifying. A bodily fluid getting overproduced to the extent that it RIPS OPEN holes in your skin in order to flow out to reduce the internal pressure >_<
It's not just morning sickness. It's all-the-time 40 weeks of sickness.
Increased shoe size.
Edit: For those wondering, the hormone that gets released in your body to spread your bones apart and shift things around to make space for baby, it doesn’t just target your torso to work. It gets released throughout your whole body. So your pelvis and ribs spread, then settle back to normal, because there’s no pressure on them now that baby is out.
Meanwhile, the bones in your feet spread apart because they’re carrying your entire hundred to two hundred plus pounds around all day, but they keep doing that after pregnancy too. It’s not like you stop walking around after baby is born, so the size increase is generally permanent, and usually happens again with more pregnancies. I went up a half size with each kid. Once you get to 3 or 4 it seems like the bones don’t spread any further apart. I know one lady who had 15 kids and her feet grew a size and a half, then quit.
The OP told Bored Panda that even considering the possible side effects, she finds the entire journey of pregnancy an intriguing experience. She also shared that one of the things she finds interesting about this time in a woman’s life is the hormone activity, especially that relating to forgetting the pain of childbirth.
However, the thing she was referring to is known to be a popular myth. The idea that women are biologically programmed to forget all about the pain of giving birth is not true, but many moms say that holding their child for the first time does make them forget about the hardships they went through before that moment.
How suddenly complete strangers are now your doctor and tell you that you shouldn’t be drinking that one latte you treat yourself to a week lol
I'd tell them not to worry about the caffeine as the vodka dilutes it. XD People really should mind their own business.
Hemoroids
I didn't see vulva swelling mentioned yet. Yes. You just read this.
I had a superhuman sense of smell. One day I came home from work and my husband had already starting making a stew. I asked him, “Why did you decided not to peel the carrots?” They were already in the pot and I couldn’t see them. How did I know they weren’t peeled?!?
Another time I was at the extreme opposite end of the house from the kitchen — up the stairs, through a door, and across a large room — and I could tell he was slicing a cucumber.
I have a superb sense of smell already. It became award winning while pregnant. I used to cry through the supermarket, I swear if a person hadn't showered I could smell them 3 rows over. This set off my morning, noon and night sickness too. Fish dear God no, still can't stand the smell. My husband would cook, the smell of everything was horrendous.
“I'm pretty sure the sample I got from my post wasn't even a sliver of the population of mothers but they were very interesting and insightful,” the OP said, adding that she hopes those taking care of moms-to-be raise awareness for these body-altering side effects, as they can be heavy both mentally and emotionally.
To start with, my vision is terrible under normal circumstances, but during my pregnancy, I had to go to a retinologist every month and a half or so. I started seeing glowy things in my peripheral vision, and iirc he said that the pregnancy put extra pressure on my eyes, and my retinas were already at higher risk of tearing due to my eyeball shape. Once my son was born, things went back to normal.
It was my optometrist who made that referral. My OB had never heard of nor seen it, and none of the pregnancy books brought it up.
How even perfectly normal, uncomplicated, “easy” pregnancies can absolutely f*****g SUCK. I have 2 kids and I love them endlessly, but being pregnant just f*****g SUCKED. I was always crying, barfing, hungry, aching, burping fire, about to pee on myself, waking up every half hour—at any given point during my pregnancies, something just sucked.
That you don't get stretch marks until AFTER the baby is born. Like shrinkage marks.
That is not entirely true, many women are different. My stretch marks appeared durning my first pregnancy, with my other pregnancies the same ones just stretched out again. My mum had four of us and does not have one stretch mark in sight. I think it's just down to skin type. My sister has none after having her son last year. My mum would tell me that having stretch marks was a sign that you were not fit enough. She's an odd one for sure
THE INSOMNIA
Oh yes. You want to rest before having your baby and you just can't, whatever you try.
Breathlessness, especially after eating. In later pregnancy I felt like my lungs were compressed which they obviously were. Had to talk myself down from so many panic attacks because I thought I couldn’t breathe.
All of these are making me think of the rise in abortion bans. These are all terrible for those choosing to have a baby, I can only imagine how it must feel for those women forced to carry a baby to term.
Nobody really told me that I was going to be living off of Tums because of the heartburn.
The vivid a*s nightmares!! The whole time I was pregnant I was constantly having nightmares about my home being broken into or someone was trying to [hurt] me.
Eats the calcium out of teeth, more body hair, one side of your belly hangs more than the other. The drooling. Hemorrhoids,
omg the drooling..... currently pregnant and just got into my third trimester. Plus pregnancy induced carpal tunnel 😖 my hands are simultaneously numb, tingly, painful, swollen and itchy. It really affects my ability to sleep because I can't sleep on my back so I have to constantly turn over to give each arm a break. Just gotta make it a little longer 🫠
My surprise was becoming itchy all over. And I don’t mean itchy around my expanding belly, I mean itchy EVERYWHERE. Stretching barely helped and it was so bad that it used to wake me up at night.
I had cholestasis. It's due to your liver not processing bile correctly, as I understand it. Random itching in different spots all the time. I scratched till I bled. I got up in the middle of the night to soak in oatmeal baths. People kept telling me it was dry skin.
Lack of iron causing bizzare cravings, I craved ice like there was no tomorrow, kept eating like entire bags of ice every day, mentioned it in passing to my midwife and she panicked and rushed to take my blood, turns out my iron was like insanely low
When my grandma was pregnant with my mom's oldest brother, she craved red clay. Every time they passed it in the car, she'd comment how tasty it looked. My grandpa finally stopped for her to taste it, and that was all she needed.
The things that grew on my skin from pregnancy that have never gone away.
I have a single hair that grew on my chin when I was pregnant with my first. I plucked it throughout my pregnancy and it didn't return after my son was born. It re-appeared when I was pregnant with my second child only this time I was not so lucky. The bloody thing keeps coming back.
Nose bleeds. I thought everything was messed up but it seems like a normal occurrence
The nose bleeds were awful with my first child. I was glad it didn't come back for my second.
In third trimester, when baby is head down and it feels they they are scraping their fingernails across your cervix. Yeeeoocchhh!
Also, my tailbone clicked every time I took a step in the last month.
My eldest spend the last 8 weeks with a butt cheek on either side of my ribs. It ended up permanently bending them. + The last 5 weeks inside (and 3 weeks after she was born) she had hiccups, jolting into my bladder every single time, and making sleep damn near impossible.
Maybe not an awful side effect, but I developed this one patch of hair on the back of my head that went waaaay curly, when before all I had was regular, wavy hair. It’s never gone away, and my daughter just turned 24.
Oh wow, reading that reminded me that I had that too, I just forgot and it went away a few years after my last child. I had a massive, ferral looking Spot in the Back of my head, couldn't brush it, nothing helped, it looked Like a single Dreadlocks until I cut my hair real short and oiled it every couple of days. That caused other problems but well. Thanks for the reminder.
severe hyperemesis, your hips turning into jello at the end and the pigment changes in unwelcome regions
Stuffy nose. I had all pregnancy and found out I need treatment after. For some it goes away on its on.
Blackened/darkened nipples. Wasn’t prepared for that.
Mine never darkened, but one did go halfway inverted! Made feeding tricky sometimes, but it had mostly sorted itself out in a month or so. I call it my weird nipple. Always off doing its own thing, trying to hide.. 😅
Note: this post originally had 37 images. It’s been shortened to the top 30 images based on user votes.
Absolutely adored being pregnant. I wish people would tell you if you don't like your midwife - change immediately. I didn't listen to my gut and she almost killed my baby and I because she was a lazy cow missed signs of eclampsia. I now tell people to avoid her like the plague. My friend had her too and she ended up with 4th degree tears inside and out because the midwife insisted she push when she wasn't ready. Met my friend after she gave birth or I would have said avoid this one.
You don't get a choice in many countries. In the UK you get whichever midwife is available and it could be multiple different people on different visits.
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Here's a 'fun' post c-section thing no one mentions. There can be quite a lot of nerve damage from the surgery leaving numbness around your scar. The real surprise is several months later the nerve damage sometimes starts to heal which causes INTENSE itching, which you can not scratch because the skin surface is still numb. This can go on for months.
Oh yes !! This, exactly this. Like a phantom limb, but it's under your belly skin. Also my scar is still healing 2 years after.
Load More Replies... Absolutely adored being pregnant. I wish people would tell you if you don't like your midwife - change immediately. I didn't listen to my gut and she almost killed my baby and I because she was a lazy cow missed signs of eclampsia. I now tell people to avoid her like the plague. My friend had her too and she ended up with 4th degree tears inside and out because the midwife insisted she push when she wasn't ready. Met my friend after she gave birth or I would have said avoid this one.
You don't get a choice in many countries. In the UK you get whichever midwife is available and it could be multiple different people on different visits.
Load More Replies... Here's a 'fun' post c-section thing no one mentions. There can be quite a lot of nerve damage from the surgery leaving numbness around your scar. The real surprise is several months later the nerve damage sometimes starts to heal which causes INTENSE itching, which you can not scratch because the skin surface is still numb. This can go on for months.
Oh yes !! This, exactly this. Like a phantom limb, but it's under your belly skin. Also my scar is still healing 2 years after.
Load More Replies...