The letter we should all get.

To my dear pregnant friend,

Congratulations on your pregnancy! I know that you have been trying to get pregnant and I am so happy that it happened for you. You are going to be a great mother.

I heard that you have not been feeling very well and it seems like a distant memory when you had that rush of happiness from seeing the two line strips on your pregnancy test. I heard that you are feeling nauseated and weak.  So here is my little advice to you:

Please do not be so hard on yourself and ask for help. There is nothing you can do about the nausea. Yes, you can take nausea pills but they will probably just make you drowsy, and you can only drink so much fuzzy drinks before the sugar rush becomes a bit too much. Take this time to tell your loved ones that the smell of raw chicken is too much for you so you can't cook and ask for help. Little things such as a friend bringing you a hot meal will make a world of difference. Tell yourself that for the next 4 months, you are going to be weak and that's OK. One day, you will wake up and you will feel a hundred times better and you will be able resume back to your normal routine. 

I hate seeing women being so hard on themselves because they become weak. It is not a weakness! You have a human growing inside you that needs your energy to survive. Sacrifice your power for their heart to continue to beat, for their bones to become stronger, and for their eyes to learn how to blink. 

Don't be so hard on your weight gain. Yes, some women gain more weight than they need to for pregnancy but you have all the time in the world to bring your body to its normal weight gain. No, you are not going to look like a glowing pregnant women from the movies.  We all learned now that that was a complete lie. You will also not look like your college years with the perfect hair, high heels and size 4 dress. So, just let it go and focus on you and your baby's health. If you are concerned about what you are eating (because let's face it, sometimes the junk food is the only thing we seem to digest in the beginning), express your  concern to your doctor. Nothing beats that relief when your doctor tells you "that's okay. That's normal." It is also a relief to let your doctor know early on, in case you can hurt yourself. You will all of the sudden have this sense of power to change your eating habits for the good. I promise. I also promise that you are beautiful.

When the time comes to go to the hospital, take a deep breath. If you are doing a natural birth, God bless you.  If you are going to take the epidural,  God bless you. If you are going to do a c-section, God bless you. 

When you see your baby, you will want to go through this all over again. 

and it will be worth it; a thousand times over.

Love,

Mariam