Tag Archives: motherhood

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Then You’re Showered With Gifts

At some point in the pregnancy, you might get lucky and have someone throw a shower. Then you start putting on clothes to attend and criticize everything you put on because each thing makes you look fatter than the others. At least at the hair salon before hand, people said I looked small for how far along I was. I took comfort in their obvious lie for the sake of my self-esteem. Eventually you just realize that you’re almost 9 months pregnant and nothing will make you look skinny for the next year unless you’re blessed with Jessica Alba genes. I’m not; I’d be more ok with it if I were.

It’s hard to express gratitude at times like that. There are so many people and so many gifts. It’s very overwhelming when you realize the love and support you have from your family, all your family. The idea that they have to show up to an event to show their love is false, the thought is the most important. With this love and support, the day becomes overwhelming. To me, it was probably the most overwhelming point so far in the pregnancy. Luckily I didn’t have to be center of attention, that would make the situation much more anxious than it would’ve been. And I made away with only one person touching my stomach, which I’ll let slide because she’s her.

Even more overwhelming than the ritualized event, is when you see the car packed full when you leave. It then becomes, “oh crap, where am I going to put all this stuff”. You think about all the clothes you’re going to need to wash. (Take comfort, baby clothes are small and you can generally fit most of them all in one load.) Then you think of all the stuff your husband is going to have to put together, and avoid reading instructions, because that’s what men do. It was a long but rewarding and productive weekend, and now we can sit back and just wait for this little person to grace us with his presence. Hopefully soon, I’m done being pregnant. I feel like I’ve run out of room in my body for him, or I’m just really uncomfortable and hopeful. At this point, I’m sure everyone feels that way.

In the end, it’s worth it. More important than the gifts you received at the event, you realize that you have an incredible support system of people that are going to love their new family member. The more love that surrounds your little bundle, the healthier and happier he’ll grow up to be. Plus, imagine all the advice he’ll have to sift through the rest of his life. He’ll be an individual that grows into various generations and cultures, and that with love is priceless for your child.

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At Least The Bruises Made Me Symmetrical

I hate needles. Hate is even putting it nicely. I’ve even refused Novocaine for minor things at the dentist for the sake of avoiding watching that needle get near my mouth. When I see people getting needles in person, I cringe and refuse to look and often get a look of passing out. I’m not ashamed… ok maybe a little ashamed to admit that I even get queasy seeing needles on TV. I suppose there are upsides to this, like being an IV drug user is completely out of the question and cheaper medical visits. I would rather pain and misery of not getting one than go through the 2 seconds it takes to have the needle go into any part of my body I can see. I got away with the tattoo merely because I couldn’t see it getting done, and it seemed like a good idea at the time.

So a month or 2 ago when I went to do my 1 hour glucose screening, or otherwise known as “one more thing to make a pregnant person feel uncomfortable”, I was concerned with getting in and drinking that miserable stuff that is responsible for me never eating orange popsicles or drinking orange soda and getting my needle and being done with it. My doctor’s office is fantastic, and when test results get posted, I get it in my email and I don’t have to worry about a thing. Results came back and I hit 2 points over the max. I freaked out until it was pointed out that if there was a problem that someone would’ve called. Sure enough, no one called and nothing was mentioned of it after a few visits with my midwife. That was until last week when she realized that she sent lab orders for the 3 hour test and forgot to tell me.

My first thought jumped to “but I did everything right. I did everything wrong the first time and I was fine.. but this time I did everything right.” You can’t help but to stop and analyze every little thing you did or didn’t do or didn’t do enough. “Oh it was that glass of soda I had because I just really wanted it and figured it was ok since I haven’t really had soda.” Then you look at those meticulously picked out 5 potato chips next to your egg salad sandwich and think that you messed this up. Hopefully I’m not the only neurotic person who did this, but by looks of forums I’m not. I vowed to walk more, drink nothing but water and stick to egg whites and dried toast. Then I thought of my beloved fruit salad, and how much sugars were really in that. I went crazy, I really did.

Per my normal self though, I sucked it up and resolved that Saturday I would get it done. When it came down to fasting, I ate my last helpings of diet popcorn and started my fast 12 hours before like I was told. An hour later I realized that this 3 hour test was now “the most miserable test you can make a pregnant person go through.” Soon after I slowly realized that in support of my fasting, my husband had decided to fast too. I didn’t say anything and smiled to myself going to bed. The next morning at 8 a.m., he was up and ready to go with me. First of all, my husband being up before 11 a.m. is a miracle so this was historic. Then, he sat down in the office with me for 3 hours encouraging me that time was only up. I drank my nasty orange syrup and closed my eyes while they stabbed me with their needles. My arms bruised, like usual, but at least they matched. And I waited.

I wasn’t a patient waiter. I logged onto the website every hour to see if the results came back that day. My husband was just as happy as I was to not be fasting anymore and spent the day catching up on our eating. It felt good. Finally the results came back and I was cleared as being completely perfect. Apparently most people flunk the hour one, and have to do the 3 hours. I found it a waste of time, but you can’t be too careful when you’re responsible for another life. I would’ve rather taken the test and passed than not and have complications with my child. Unfortunately that means I just have a fat baby or the due date is wrong, which I hope is the latter. Don’t sweat these tests, they’re there for a reason.

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The Breast Thing To Do?

Admittedly, I giggled writing the title. Some days I think I’ve never matured from high school. Back to the topic at hand: breasts, well in this case breast-feeding. With my first son I didn’t breast feed. The idea of having someone attached to my nipple several times a day actually disturbed me, plus I worked way to many hours to even consider breast-feeding as an option. This time around I’ve decided to give it a try, despite the idea of it still disturbing me. Before I get an applause from those fanatics of lactation, the sole reason for this decision comes down to the fact that I’m cheap and this is the cheapest way to feed a child. It just so happens it’s incredibly healthy for them.

I have problems with breast-feeding more than just the idea of it making me cringe. The idea that my husband can’t be hands on in the most bonding experience of a newborn upsets me. It doesn’t upset me enough to want to become a cow that solely attaches to a machine to make milk, but enough that I consider it. There was two of us that created a child, why shouldn’t both of us be able to adequately bond with it. Plus, that means I’m the only one crawling out of bed every two hours to make sure he’s fed. I like the shared duty idea.. because I’ve grown fond of sleep lately and would like to be able to enjoy at least four hours of it.

I also don’t think that there’s anything wrong with formula feeding your child. My first-born was formula fed and outside of bad genetics, grew up just fine. I don’t think that there’s really much of a difference nutritionally between the two. I understand how breast-feeding provides for immunities and such, but when you get down to the real vitamin and mineral content is there really a difference? Obviously not really, as like I said my first-born grew up just fine and I know more people who formula fed than breast-fed and their kids are perfectly fine too.

In my lovely state of Massachusetts, they have recently banned the formula give-aways you would get in the hospital after giving birth to your child. Sorry, they didn’t legally ban it. It just so happens that all the hospitals mutually agreed to voluntarily stop providing this to patients to force.. sorry, encourage breast-feeding to new mothers. They say these freebies encourage mothers to skip breast-feeding and formula feed their children. I’d hate to break it to the world, but news flash: if a mother doesn’t want to breast feed, she’s not going to do it. In fact, forcing her into something that’s uncomfortable for her is probably worse for them and pushes them more towards formula feeding. We also can’t forget that, and I know that this might be a complete shock, that some women actually can’t physically breast feed. There are some mothers that adopt their kids, use surrogates or just have various other medical complications with breast feeding. So let’s have the great idea of making them feel less like a real mother. Because only real women breast feed right?

I don’t like being pressured into anything. Ever. It doesn’t work for me. I don’t want to fail at breast-feeding and have swarms of lactation crazy women saying “I didn’t try hard enough.” Yeah, that’s going to do wonders for my self-esteem. This idea that a group of people can come together and tell me, “yeah, I know if you work this might be hard for you. And there are places online where you can buy other people’s breast milk if you can’t offer your own.” Thanks guys! I love the idea that my only options are my breast milk or some stranger I don’t even know’s breast milk. This idea actually disgusts the tiny bit of feminist in me. Next all women will be forced out of work because them being home is the best thing for their child. I heard the 50’s were such a great time for women. I like advice on how to raise a healthy child. Advise me to breast feed all you want, but my boobs are my business.

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And I Thought A Turkey Was What Everyone Wanted for Thanksgiving

It’s Friday again, and this week I decided to skip ahead and embarrass myself with the story of how the 18-year-old me told my family they were going to have another grandchild.

I had every intention of inviting my mother out to eat at the hotel I worked at to tell her. At first, I just got too busy taking every shift my bosses would let me take in every part of the hotel to make money that I knew I’d need for my bundle of joy. Then it was getting too late and I figured by avoiding it this long, I would’ve made the situation worse for us. Not only would I have shamed them from getting in that position to begin with, I hid it from them for so long. I knew I had to do it, but we were all young and stupid once.

Originally my first son’s due date was on Christmas Day. Soon they realized he was a month older than they thought and gave him the due date of November 29th, the day after Thanksgiving that year. In my gut, and I told everyone, that my son was destined to be born on a holiday. I knew he’d be that “look at me I’m here” personality. (I’d like to say, 10 years later he still is that personality.) I didn’t think women had instincts that were right about that, so I agreed to Thanksgiving dinner with my family and since my huge stomach couldn’t be hid at that point, I realized I could just say “don’t hate me, it’s Thanksgiving” and be done with it. Of course, that’s never how things work out.

At 4am Thanksgiving morning, contractions came 5 minutes apart for 2 hrs. After being examined I wasn’t ready and I just walked around, running up and down stairs before realizing I had to make the call. Shortly after something I won’t mention happened, but a sign you’re about to pop a kid out, I called my parents and while the conversation does sound like something out of a sitcom, I assure you it’s 100% true. Everyone still laughs at me for it, but I’m me.

“Mom, I’m pregnant, I won’t make it to dinner.”

“Well we knew this would happen, just come by and we’ll talk about it.”

“No, mom…. I can’t, I need to go to the hospital. He’s coming.” I informed her where and went off to face the culmination of these last 40 weeks happen.

It wasn’t the blow out I expected. I realized I was stupid in not just saying something sooner, and my mother held my hand when my first-born son came into the world. Aside from my brother considering killing my son’s father, nothing eventful happened. 1  hour after the phone call, there was a new child in the world unaware of anything that happened before that point in time. Thankfully, we all realized that nothing before that really mattered. Everyone was happy, and while my family still never let’s me forget my stupidity, I think they let it slide now that my son is running around amusing them. Plus, I did tell them pretty much as soon as I found out I was expecting again. Maybe that gave me brownie points.

I don’t regret it. He made me learn a lot even before he could speak. I learned that I wasn’t the settling sort, and did everything I could to make him proud. I didn’t want him growing up in a studio apartment eating rice and whatever food I could get from the state. I wanted him to be proud. Next week, my epiphany and how my life changed from there.

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The Advantages the Second Time Around

I’ve decided my midwife doesn’t lie to me. She told me “you’re going to show sooner, you’re going to be bigger, and it’s not going to be like your first pregnancy at all”. She was right, and I appreciated her honesty and not making me think that I was just getting really fat too soon. She tries not to laugh at my husband, who is guilty of being neurotically overprotective normally and more now that he’s responsible for keeping me extra safe to keep his 2nd child perfectly safe. I have to admit it’s a bit endearing when before I ingest anything, he goes on Google to “make sure” everything’s safe. I won’t complain, it’s this sort of neurosis that keeps me in massages and homemade fruit salad.

Lucky for me, I’m told the second time labor is generally much easier. I like the phrase “generally”. It gives me hope that maybe, just maybe, I can sneeze and there he is. My midwife informed me that if I could do it once without an epidural, the second time I won’t likely need one either. No, I don’t have a moral reason for not wanting one nor do I think anyone who has one is less of a woman or a baby when it comes to pain. My reason is more childish: I hate needles. The fact that I hate needles is only worsened by a lack of faith in a medical professional to be that close to my spine without either killing me or paralyzing me or some other unpleasant side effect because I happened to have the doctor who’s working off a hangover. Yes, I’m aware of how irrational and crazy this sounds, but you won’t convince me to change my mind. The unfortunate side of me being irrational and crazy is that I’m also incredibly stubborn.

The biggest advantage is that you know what you’re walking into. You know that your plan doesn’t always pan out the way you planned it, and you lack that anxiety of “what do I do now?” Even better, you don’t have that anxiety of “will I be a good parent?” If you didn’t kill the first one and they ended up basically decent, you’re in good shape this time around. That’s what I keep telling myself anyways. It comes back to you, every part of the labor and first year of being a parent though it sometimes comes back slowly. My midwife informed me when I told her I was afraid I’d forgotten the pain, that I never really forgot and it’ll come back to me quick. I hope she’s wrong on that front though, I would like to never remember how painful it was. If Michelle Duggar is still in pain with the amount of children she popped out, I don’t think there’s any hope for the rest of us.

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Maybe I Can Convince You Now Is A Good Time

I sympathize with people who don’t feel like the process of pregnancy is a blessing. The child is a blessing and worth it, however the process to get there is always less than ideal for most women. I repeat this a lot, and today will be no exception, but people who think pregnancy is a cake walk either is incredibly lucky or lying to themselves. Even the easiest pregnancy has issues, I saw this with my first pregnancy. It wasn’t too miserable, I felt mostly good, and aside from usual aches and pains I had no real complaints how it progressed. It wasn’t flawless, but it was easy enough where when my husband finally convinced me it was time to expand our family I hoped things would be just as fine.

Then it happened, and it wasn’t like the first time at all. The first trimester I’m pretty sure I just slept through, because I remember being that tired. The second trimester hit me, and it was a tease. I felt full of energy and things were good. I slept fine through the night, I kept up with my son’s baseball games and practices fine and things seemed pretty well. I think the second trimester only exists to give you a false sense of relief, only to smack you in the face the minute you enter into the home stretch. Then the third trimester hits and you’re big and only getting bigger. You can’t sleep, because who can really sleep well with a 20 lb. stomach that encases a child that thinks midnight to 4 a.m is the perfect time to kick you all night long. If you sit or lay down too long, every joint in your body feels like you’re 80 years old with arthritis. If you spend too much time walking around, your feet swell up so much you can’t even take off your shoes, and your knees and ankles feel like you’re 80 years old with arthritis. In fact, I’m pretty sure I constantly feel like an 80-year-old with arthritis lately. Also don’t discount how miserable those contractions are, and remember them because when you’re actually in labor they are a million times worse.

I understand the people who don’t quite feel the joys of pregnancy, because sometimes the pregnancy is more tiring than raising a child. Don’t feel bad for feeling miserable or feeling anger towards all your pregnancy books/websites for lying to you about how amazing pregnancy is. Don’t feel like you’re somehow ungrateful for the miracle growing inside your or that you don’t deserve it. Going through it is worth it, and sometimes it helps to remind yourself of that every time you wish that your child would just come now. That doesn’t mean you can’t try to convince your child now is a good time, I know I’m not giving up hope he’ll decide he’s ready or that the doctor was off by a month so I can get back to feeling like me.

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If I Close My Eyes, It Didn’t Exist

It seems appropriate for my first week of “whatever snazzy title fits a teen mom Friday”, that I start from the beginning. It’s always harder to understand the ending if you never learned the start, and I don’t think that the way this story starts is much different from the way any of these sorts of stories start. I’m sure the closure of that “my story isn’t unique” is something that would relieve both the reader trying to understand or currently in those shoes and myself as the writer of the story.

High school isn’t a fun place to be. We’d like to tell ourselves how fantastic it was to tell our children the lies of glory days that never really existed. Even the most perfect of the popular ones had a hard time, and I’m pretty sure they’d be lying if they denied it. Whether you put pressures on yourself or let people around you influence you, sometimes even the strongest seems to cower under the pressure. Even the most chaste of your classmates were giving in, and if you even made it to Senior year without giving in, it was a miracle. In looking back, this reinforces a belief that people are fools to think abstinence is the way to teach teenagers about sex, because the more informed they are the better off they are going to be. Teaching abstinence isn’t going to prevent teenagers having sex anymore than anti-drug “Just Say No” programs or anti-bullying programs prevent drug use and bullying. I think as adults, people forget these truths.

The worst part happens when you find yourself in a bathroom with a pee-stick in your hand and realizing that in 5 minutes, your life had completely changed. It’s not enough to walk the school halls with your secret nestled away in your brain while trying to forget it happened. It was a mistake, the test was wrong. I’d never had regular periods, that was what was affecting the test. 5 months wasn’t too excessive to be without, it will go away if I don’t think about it. It doesn’t go away though; eventually you need a plan.

My plan was simple, to just run away from the fact. I saved up my extra money from work, and worked more hours than I probably should as a high schooler. My graduation money had finally brought me to the amount I needed, and shortly after I had moved out. My parents couldn’t kick me out if I was already out when they found out, right? All the TV shows of that time with that situation had the parents kicking their stupid slut of a daughter out, while I didn’t really know anyone else in my shoes. If I had known then what I know now, things would’ve ended up completely different I imagine. It turns out, I didn’t give my parents enough credit and even today have a close bond with their little surprise child. I’m lucky though, not everyone is that lucky.

In this first part of the story, I hope people understand that sometimes things need to be talked about to your kids. I also hope teenagers realize that instead of running, they should try to talk it out with their parents. You never know how it’s going to turn out, and parents are never short of their surprises. Parents love their kids, good parents love them no matter what.

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Things I Learned From the News Today

Before I get started, after some thought and convincing from friends, I’ve decided to tweak my format a bit. While I’ll still keep my Monday, Wednesday, and Friday format, the topics will be changing. Monday and Wednesday will still exist as usual, with whatever I feel the need to discuss that day with the recently new focus on current happenings in my life and as a parent/expectant parent. However on Fridays, I’ve decided to focus on my experiences as a teen and single mother. It was brought to my attention that I shouldn’t be wondering where a role model for people in that situation is; I should be someone to step up and be the role model. The only real way to make a change in the world is to be that change. I’ve preached it enough, I should stand by what I say and do it, otherwise what’s the point in asking other people to. My hope is that eventually after sharing my experiences I’ll have enough attention and readers where I can give advice to other people in that same position. With that said, if I do get attention of people in need of honest advice, I’ll be setting up an email for questions or anything else. I’ll answer to the best of my ability on my Friday blogs or a return email or both, depending on what the person wishes. I hope that this succeeds or even helps at least a few people who find themselves in a situation that still is looked down upon in our day of “acceptance”.

Now… to the post.

What I learned from the local news today: Apparently it’s been studies that spanking a child could lead to adult mental illness. I understand that real abuse can, that’s already something that has been proven. But really? A spank on a misbehaving child could lead to mental illness? I’ve done a study too about not spanking your kid. From that study I learned kids that didn’t get spanked also grew up with a mental defect: It’s called “entitled spoiled brat that doesn’t follow rules”. I was spanked, my husband was spanked, everyone I know my age or older was. We weren’t hurt, the sound was the scary part, and it was never done in anger. I think kids need the fear of God in their parents to stay in line, whether you actually spank them or just threaten them and scare them out of their behaviors. It does work. I’m definitely not saying that hitting your kid is something you should do often as a main punishment or to abuse them. But I also think when people complain about how out of control their kids are and how out of control these other kids are growing up to be, we need to reconsider something that has worked in the past. Besides, this could easily be one of those studies like “what causes cancer this week?” Eventually we’re going to learn that cancer is caused by something predestined in our own system as a result of our genetics, and likewise we’re going to learn that kids that were spanked once or twice growing up isn’t the reason they had mental illness but that they were just genetically short-sticked.

What I learned from Anderson Cooper coming out: I don’t think anyone’s shocked, and I’m certain that most people will still love him. I know I do. I also don’t think this is real news, we need to stop focusing on what celebrities are gay. It’s not our business anymore than it is our business that we’re straight. They don’t walk down the street and debate if I’m straight, why should I debate their sexual orientation. I do acknowledge that people like him and Matt Bomer who are normally private about their personal life needed to speak up to show they weren’t ashamed of who they are, but what does that say about our culture that they need to tell the world and be branded as the “gay actor” or “gay journalist” to get people to not be ashamed of who they are and get bullies to accept them.

What I learned from Fox News: This next bit doesn’t just apply to Fox News, all the news organizations are guilty of this. However, I witnessed this on that channel so they get credit in the title. They were doing a segment on a Syrian activist’s funeral in which the Syrian government may or may not have bombed. (It’s not my place to say either way, it’s irrelevant to the point.) They show a clip where the body is being paraded through the center in celebration of the activist’s work, when all you see is an explosion and smoke and chaos. I remember growing up and they wouldn’t even show the bodies that were uncovered in Iraq from Saddam Hussein’s genocidal regime. All the bodies were blurred out, and they spoke over as they scanned the area. The blurred images were enough to show how awful of a person he was. Flash forward to last Olympics when the luger died on impact hitting a pole on the way down his track. It was live, so seeing it once couldn’t be avoided. For the rest of the night and week, we rewatched this image so many times that it was stuck in our minds. When did we arrive at a time when the news was worse for our kids to watch than an R-rated gory horror movie with sex and violence? The news should be just that, a source of information for current events. They shouldn’t need to show us horrific images to get more viewers. Let’s get back to reporting the news.

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Some Things Always Stick With You

My last post took me back about 10 years ago, upon discovering I was about to become a statistic or rather a few statistics. As I mentioned last time, I don’t like to be labelled. But here I was 18 staring at a test staring back at me with the realization that I wasn’t going to be able to avoid any labels anymore.  To this day, I’m not sure if it was the label or the experience that terrified me the most though I’m pretty sure it was the label. I was fortunate that I had a stable enough job even as low paying as it was and was well liked, so they didn’t mind letting me work all the overtime I had the energy for both before my son and after.

What amazed me was that I went to look for books and articles in parenting magazines for something I could relate to, and I found nothing. What’s worse than thinking you’re alone, is realizing that you have nothing to prove you wrong. Logically, I knew even from school that I wasn’t the only teenager who ended up in this place of pending motherhood. I read magazine after magazine hoping to read an article about someone my age or even someone alone in the process to write something I could relate to. Instead, I found articles about how to include your partner or how adulthood changes when you become a parent. What about me? What about how much more difficult it is to be a teenager and become a parent, whether you’re 15 or 18 like I was. Or at least something that didn’t make me feel like I was less than every other parent out there wanting to do what’s best for their child. Even now all I really see is that you get a TV show about being a pregnant teen and realize that the “role models” are terrible for other teens that find themselves in that mess, and worse that it sets a bad example for those teens who step up and make something out of their situation. Why can’t they show that not all teen moms are train wrecks waiting to happen (or currently is). Some of us work our butts off to do the best we can and go to college and try to succeed in life. This applies to single mothers, they shouldn’t feel like they need to give up on their life and work minimum wage or not at all.

Even in today’s age, I think single and teen mothers are seen in a negative light. Prominence of them doesn’t mean acceptance. Someday I can hope that just because the situations aren’t ideal, doesn’t mean we should ignore it like it doesn’t exist. These parents need just as much relatable information as every other parent does without the fear of judgement about the situation they are in. They get enough judgement from people in the real world, they don’t need it from so-called parenting experts. I hope someday someone with the means to offer such a publication should reach out. I’m all for prevention, but sometimes even all the prevention in the world, you need to accept things do happen.

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From Behind Those Thin Walls

I remember having problems growing up with my “lady week”. Finally during a doctor’s appointment with my pediatrician, my mother asked her about it. Rather than referring me to the OB/GYN office, I remember the doctor saying “no need, she’ll never have kids anyways”. It didn’t shatter me as much as I’ve seen people on TV shows when they are told this. I never dreamed of being identified by who I was associated with. I wasn’t “_____’s girlfriend”, I was Brianne. So the idea of not having to be defined by who my children were or who my husband was, actually relieved me. Marriage and children weren’t a priority in life, it wasn’t something I aspired for. I aspired to be a writer, write some short stories and plays. If I got married and had kids, then fine. If not, I didn’t think it would be something earth-shattering to me.

Then, I had my first son and that changed. I realized my problem wasn’t with having kids; my problem seemed to be getting along with kids that weren’t mine. It does give a certain purpose, even if you’re 19 and a single mom. He was a blessing, and I treated him as a miracle because he was never supposed to have existed. Even though the doctor was obviously wrong, when my husband and I started talking about having kids I began to worry that maybe she was right and my son was just a miracle child. I made sure he knew that it might not happen for us, and 2 months after stopping the pill we were excited to announce that we were expecting.

Since then whenever I come across a show where people are having fertility problems or other complications with their pregnancy, I get sad and feel guilty. I wasn’t even supposed to have one, and now I’m on my second perfectly easy and healthy pregnancy. I’m reminded of this when I overhear things in the doctor’s office. When I see tears on a woman’s face because she was just told that he baby was either going to be born with problems or not even make it that far. Or the idea of having to terminate a pregnancy because of complications. This makes me feel guilty too, and I know it’s nothing I can control. But it doesn’t make me feel less guilty about the idea of “what makes me more worthy to have an easy time with it, when these nice seeming people have all these complications”.

I usually take a deep breath and decide not to question the good things. Every pregnant woman or mother or especially a combination of both has enough to worry about. Feeling guilty for things that are beyond  your control just adds stress to one of the most stressful times of your life. Plus, I’m sure they would rather not have “pity” for their situation either. We should just be thankful for the good things in our life, because it could always be worse.