::snort::

[marag]

So, sixbeforelunch posted a link to this news story about Angelina Jolie. And she excerpted the following bit:

“I'm very happy,” said the Oscar-winning actress. “Like most women, I love being pregnant.” She added that pregnancy makes “you feel like more like a woman than you've ever felt. You just feel like everything about your body is there for your baby.”So

Comments

[amilyn]

I was VERY VERY lucky. We got pregnant on our wedding night. no fuss, no interventions, just...*poof*. I felt good, never had nausea, had very few aches and worked till the very end of the pregnancy. I adored it and was fascinated and it was like having my own, in-body science experiment and I made myself a maternity jumper that was made of fabric that looked like a Holstein cow (see icon for drawing of same). It's very easy to adore being pregnant when the pregnancy is smooth and comfortable.

Also, my perspective on being pregnant was strongly impacted by the fact that both my husband and I were adopted as infants. Neither of our mothers had ever been pregnant. We have no stories in our lives of, "When I was pregnant with you..." or "I was in labor for..." I yearned for a real connection to the biological making of a family, for the chance to look like someone for what I saw as a magical event of being able to be part of EVERY stage of the process, not just to have appeared on the planet at age 3 or 4 days without any stories to connect to the time developing before that and without any connection to anyone whose DNA I carried. My family had some stories of their ancestors, and while my family definitely IS my family...their ancestors are not my ancestors and their "coming to America" stories are not the stories of how I ended up here (though they are neat as the stories of how my family members ended up here and thus in the same place as me).

I am now in contact with my birthmother (since I was 18) and she has shared stories of her Quaker ancestresses driving a cart from Pennsylvania to Boston to vocally and publicly protest the treatment of Quakers in Boston...and then returning home safely. THOSE were my people. Those are people I came from. That is a heritage that informs who I am.

I am LUCKY. Being pregnant was easy for me physically. Getting pregnant was TOO EASY for us (we couldn't STOP getting pregnant even when we tried). Even my deliveries were easy (again: LUCKY and I know it and I'm grateful). But being pregnant and producing biological offspring gives me something different to what it gives some people. I now have kids and a family who are physically, genetically part of me. I have kids who do things like what I did as a kid, who remind my mom of me, and who prove that there were "weird" things about me that were just WHO I WAS and that are innate to my makeup rather than abberrant.

I certainly don't expect anyone else to share my joy in The Tummy, in the movement of this...life that's actually part of me, but that was my experience. And for those who don't get to have that wonder, I am sad for them, but don't resent them. I would not, however, in ANY way fault anyone (you, for example) for resenting that I got it so easy.

*hugs*