Pregnancy is weird

A good friend of mine is pregnant with her first baby, and she’s been texting me all manner of questions — some tricky, some humorous, some embarrassing, and some downright weird. Case in point, here’s what she sent me this morning: “Is it normal that I wake up craving scrambled eggs, but then when I actually see the eggs, all I can think about is how the chickens laid them and didn’t know they wouldn’t become baby chicks, and then I can’t bear to eat them after all?” I’m not sure which category that question belongs in, actually. Perhaps all four of the above.

Pregnancy can be a very weird time for our bodies and our brains. When my sister-in-law was pregnant, she dreamed that she laboured and gave birth, but the baby was a cat. Someone told her that was perfectly normal because she’d only had experience with pets giving birth up until that point, so didn’t have context for what giving birth to a baby would be like. But then I dreamed I was giving birth to a cat, too. And I’ve never seen a cat have kittens. So who knows? Is the “I gave birth to a cat” dream a universal thing among pregnant women? (Look, if you’ve had that dream, I want you to email and tell me so because I feel like I need to conduct some non-scientific research here.)

Pregnancy cravings are also very weird. All I wanted when I was pregnant with my oldest child was McDonald’s Chicken Caesar Wraps. They don’t exist any more, sadly. But I used to get to work in the morning already thinking about them, and as soon as it was lunchtime, I’d be out the door and in the drive-through. One day I wandered back into the office in a fuzzy post-Chicken-Caesar-Wrap haze and my boss ran up to me, worried. “Where did you go?” she asked. “Um, to get lunch,” I replied, confused. “But it’s only 10.30am!” she exclaimed. Yep.

Pregnancy makes us do things. Like put our handbags in the cupboard with the cereal boxes, and cry over TV commercials. Pregnancy made me think that Kath & Kim was the funniest thing I’d ever seen in my life, and I wet my pants laughing at it one night. (Actually, Kath & Kim is hilarious, pregnant or not, and I’m not ashamed that I think so. Also, it’s on Netflix now, so go put your feet up and binge-watch it.) Pregnancy makes us wear elastic-waist pants and get stuck in the bathtub and wear jandals every single day because proper shoes are just too hard to deal with.

And I’m not even pregnant, but now I’m thinking about chickens and eggs and whether the chickens know, when they’re laying eggs, that I’m going to eat it for breakfast. See, pregnancy weirdness is catching, and I might be off eggs for a while.

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BUMP & baby is New Zealand’s only magazine for pregnancy and early babyhood. Our team of mums and mums-to-be understand what it’s like to be pregnant in this connected age, and that’s why BUMP & Baby online is geared toward what pregnant women and new mums really want to know.

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