My Asshole Is Bleeding

Essays on Truths About Pregnancy and Motherhood

Surrender

Is pregnancy worth it? Yes—100%, which is why I’m pregnant with my second. But can pregnancy be brutal? Absolutely. Those truths are not mutually exclusive.

Nobody ever tells you pregnancy is a marathon where the terrain is obstacles. Halfway through, you realize what you’re really doing is a triathlon you didn’t train for. And the catch-all? You can’t stop. Everything is already in motion. You have no choice but to surrender your body.

I want to address that surrender—the letting go, the acquiescing to biological reality, the act of allowing nature to run its course. Until this point, you’ve probably felt a decent amount of control over your body. What you eat. How you exert yourself. The body-flattering clothes you couldn’t imagine living without.

But now? It’s no longer your choice how you feel. You’ve surrendered control in ways that can’t be understood until you’re living inside them.

Your body becomes a vessel for something beautiful. And with this new phase comes drastic change—change you simply can’t mitigate with fewer calories, fasting, or going just one pant size up.

This is the reality of motherhood. This is sacrifice. This is a temporary transformation in service of a permanent shift. If living life were easy, bringing new life into the world would be, too. Despite its bleakness, everything in this world costs something: time, money, energy, and sometimes your body.

So, yes—my asshole is bleeding from constipation and the return of my hemorrhoid. Switching from my right side to my left in bed is more complicated than a five-point turn. My heartburn doesn’t let me eat a brownie past 6:30 pm. The tattoos on my stomach are stretched and embossed with stretch marks. I say no more times than I can count.

The truth about pregnancy and motherhood is important. Despite what we see online, it’s not glamorous. It’s not fear mongering. It’s not selfish. It’s work.

This is one of many unhinged essays I’ll be writing in the My Asshole Is Bleeding series.