pregnancy

You're pregnant, and you’re worried. I get it, I have six kids! So I'm answering common early pregnancy questions so you can worry less.

There’s nothing worse than taking a pregnancy test when you don’t want to be pregnant.

It’s especially bad when you don’t know who the father is.

Last year, this is the exact situation I found myself in: 23, single, not on contraception, and with a late period. I was nothing short of panicked.

After finding the least expensive test that CVS carried (by the way, can we talk about how expensive pregnancy tests are?!), I went home to find out my fate. After locking myself in the bathroom, I turned the shower on to drown out the noise of my thoughts. I waited five minutes and then peered at the stick, leaning as far away from the sink as possible in case it showed two lines.

I breathed a sigh of relief as I saw one clear line on the screen.

I quickly tossed the test in the trash, turned off the shower, and hopped in bed with a bottle of cabernet.

I couldn’t believe the medical system and several of my peers had me obsessing about my food consumption. I was experiencing food shaming during pregnancy.

Friends call — once or twice a month — to tell me that they are pregnant.I’m no longer over-the-moon happy for them; I’ve become jealous.

Trying to conceive puts enormous stress on couples. We could go to the gym and achieve huge physical feats together as we started climbing the rock walls.

I’m not even a mother yet, but I’ve never felt as disparaged in my life as I do now, as a pregnant mom-to-be. To be shamed while pregnant is so upsetting.

The shame was overwhelming. Why was my body broken? What had I done to my baby? I began to spiral into self-loathing. Gestational diabetes felt like a failure.

A lot has been written about what not to say to a pregnant person. Being on the opposite side of that, I’ve learned pregnant people make mistakes, too.