Really, I do.

I miss being amazed at what was happening to my body. I’d seen so many family and friends experience it and I had so desperately wanted this. When my turn finally came – not without its own set of struggles and heartache – I was equally thrilled and terrified. Could my body actually do this? How would it feel? Was I capable of growing life inside me?

Fortunately the answer was yes, twice over. Every day, I was enthralled and amazed at how my body knew what it was doing, cultivating these balls of cells into bones, limbs, organs – life. Those first 20 weeks or so, as I expanded and expanded and expanded, and couldn’t get enough food into my body fast enough to extinguish the bottomless hunger and refute the fatigue, I actually doubted I was really pregnant. Maybe it was phantom? Maybe I really was just a greedy pig?

But as my expanding boobs and protruding pooch finally met in the middle, making me look less like a three-ton whale and more rotund like an actual pregnant person, I felt special, even glamorous. I imagined the life growing within me shone out through my skin, my eyes, my smile. My hair and nails never looked finer. And then I started feeling that baby move, confirmation that there was someone in there, moving and all too often, hiccuping. Hello baby, I’d say in my head, rubbing my belly, trying to connect with this thing inside me. Every thump in the ribs, every hiccup was a grateful reminder of this miracle in the making. It was, surely, the most beautiful experience. Though I’m not religious, this was the closest I’d ever felt to it.

I miss that.

Hey, don’t worry, I’m definitely not feeling clucky. That ship left the dock eight years ago. Quite frankly I’m too old and way WAY too tired to ever EVER do that again.

Because then I remember the heartburn. I remember the tossing and turning at night. I remember being oh so hungry but not being able to fit enough food into my stomach which was then situated precariously close to my throat. I remember how the muscles in my neck and back became increasingly thick and immobile. I remember how foods I had loved were either forbidden or became strangely unappealing. I remember exhaustion like I’d never known before (but quickly knew in the weeks following their births.) I remember how, especially with my first, I wasn’t just pregnant in front – I was pregnant all over! There was not a part of my body that did not expand. I remember the strange, dull ache in my loosey-goosey groin muscles. I remember the leg cramps (which have never left me since.)

My husband remembers me being a bitch for 40 weeks and 3 days the first time around, and then again for 32 weeks the second time. “When do I get my wife back?” he would sigh.

I remember contractions, my insides deciding they were going to repeatedly squeeze and contort themselves to force that thing out from inside me. I remember how medical it all was. I remember all the prodding and oozing and the machines that went beep and, ugh, that one nurse who had too much perfume on. I remember how frightening and weird it was that these people were cutting me open, putting my intestines off to one side and extracting a baby, all while I couldn’t feel a thing. My husband distinctly remembers how they counted all the swabs and tools as they closed me up.

So, yeah, maybe I don’t really miss being pregnant that much. Or at least, I choose to remember the magical parts.

Every mother has their own pregnancy and childbirth story. This is mine. And let’s not forget the prize at the end of the journey – the babies.