Jenny True - You Look Tired: An Excruciatingly Honest Guide to New Parenthood

Im going to be a good mom? What the fuck do they know? They dont know me!

KRISTEN,mom of two

When I was five months pregnant, in an attempt to cheer myself up, I took myself out for a pedicure. This is how that went.

JENNY: Hi! Do you have time for a pedicure?

TIFFANY (peering at me): You want lip wax?

JENNY: Ha, ha! Do I need it?

TIFFANY: And chin wax?

JENNY: WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT.

I have never been one for taking care of my skin or doing my hair or brushing my teeth. But I will occasionally take myself out for some kind of treatment. I have had a couple of facials. I have sat in a mud bath. I once nearly fainted in a Russian wet sauna.

This is all to say that if you care about how you look or feel, pregnancy can be a challenging time.

I remember, ten or more years agobefore partner (hereafter known as Strong Jawline, or SJ), before child (hereafter known as Gargantubaby, or GB)driving up Dolores Street in San Francisco in my manual Toyota Corolla and seeing a woman walking down the sidewalk on the other side of the street. I couldnt figure out what the fuck she was wearing. It was jeans, but at the top was fabric? It was attached, but it looked like a scarf? It was bunched, ruched, but it made no sense. Then it hit me: The woman was wearing maternity pants, but she wasnt pregnant. She was wearing maternity pants as a fashion statement.

Ive lived in the San Francisco Bay Area since 1998, after four gray years in Evanston, Illinois. The temperate breezes and ocean air of San Francisco, discovered during a college internship, were a balm. So were the weirdos and freaks, the people who threw on living room curtainsor nothing at all!and stalked out their front doors in the morning, ready to protest for peace in the Middle East or just ride around naked on a bicycle.

I moved as soon as I could after graduating, and for almost twenty years, I hopped from one crap apartment to the next, moving in and out of relationships and jobs, dating men and women, getting married, getting divorced, working as a freelance writer, a full-time editor, and a part-time babysitter.

Then, in my mid-thirties, I found myself single and living in a beautiful one-bedroom apartment across the San Francisco Bay in Deep East Oakland.

I had so much potential then. I had finally broken free of some horrible thoughts about myself and was making Good Choices. I was traveling to faraway places to learn about different cultures and peoples. I had fantastic neighbors and was involved in my community. I was gaining so much perspective and compassion for my fellow humans, understanding more deeply my privilege and my small place in the world.

Then I turned thirty-nine. Id always been ambivalent about having kids, but I also thought theyd just sort of happen. They didnt! Cue biological clock ticking, and a brief spate of focused dating. Almost immediately, I met SJ, a beekeeper and a gardener. The next year, I was living in his house in San Francisco with our baby, two strollers, and an acute sense of whiplash.

For those people with access to prenatal care WHY IS THIS NOT EVERYONE, the no. 1 thing you need to understand about your pregnancy is this: Your ob-gyn might be a very nice person. They might have gone through childbirth personally, even multiple times. But their jobtheir priorityis not your comfort. Its your safety. Which means their mind is on worst-case scenarios (yours may be, too!). They will not be volunteering information about your pregnancy unless you show signs of something serious, such as:

Gestational diabetes

Hyperemesis gravidarum (extreme vomiting)

Preeclampsia (a potentially fatal condition)

A sudden need to wear patterns

So, the incredible truth is that theres no profession for guiding a person through the nearly yearlong process of being pregnant, even though our bodies will change in bewildering, yet predictable, ways as we gestate another human being. Besides doctors and nurses, professionals in the pregnancy/postpartum world focus on the birth part (midwives, doulas) or the part where your baby needs to eat (lactation consultants).

Who does that leave us with? The village. The problem? THE VILLAGE ISNT TALKING.

(MAYBE THE VILLAGE IS BUSY RAISING KIDS AND GLAD THAT PREGNANCY IS IN THE REARVIEW MIRRORBYE, FELICIA.)

Here is some basic information, which a professional, if there were one, would be able to help you anticipate and prepare for:

Your temperature will be permanently elevated. Like, you will have a fever for ten months.

Being pregnant feels like youre playacting pushing your stomach out, but you cant bring it back in.

If you didnt have a moustache already, you have one now. Also a beard.

Your nails and hair will grow faster than mold on a plastic-wrapped vegetable.

You will be hungry as fuck. Sore as fuck. Tired as fuck. Your boobs will ache. Your gums may bleed. Your skin may itch. You may get headaches. You may get acne. The skin around your eyes may swell. Your feet and ankles and hands may swell so much that you cant wear your shoes or gloves or rings. You may get cramps and stretch marks. You may get a linea nigra on your belly, and your nipples may darken. You may get melasma, or the mask of pregnancy, on your face. You may get heartburn, and, toward the end, breathing may get harder and you will definitely need to pee thirty times a day.