Pregnancy Was the Hardest — and Greatest — Thing I've Ever Held On Through

I used to think pregnancy was an easy thing. Eat a little more, sleep a little longer, be looked after, be given way to — and slowly welcome a new life into the world. Then I got pregnant, and found out how naive I’d been. A dormant season? Not at all. It was a hard campaign that wore out body and mind together.

What saddened me more was that in the culture I live in, no one seems to seriously tell us how bitter, how exhausting, how difficult pregnancy is. Everyone announces the good news; almost no one names the struggle behind it. Everyone offers blessings; few really understand what a pregnant woman goes through each day — the physical torment, the emotional collapse, the psychological tug-of-war. We grew up hearing “mothers are so great,” and no one ever told us how much a mother had suffered.

It turns out that carrying a life has never been a romantic thing. It’s real, heavy, chaotic, painful. And precisely because of that, we deserve all the more to be seen, understood, and respected.

After I got pregnant, my body was like an old machine that had been run too hard, its parts failing one after another. The organs inside me seemed to be holding a chaotic meeting — every one of them with its own complaint. Constant hiccups; a throat that always felt blocked; the urge to throw up with nothing coming. A stomach growling with emptiness while my head fought off the smell of food. Gas racing through my intestines, my belly bloated, sitting no good, lying down no good. There was never time to focus on any one symptom, because a second later they all rushed in and bombarded me together.

Nausea, hiccups, queasiness, dry heaving, bloating — all at once, without a shred of mercy. I’d be starving, and one whiff of anything would send me running to the bathroom to retch. A few spoonfuls of congee would come back up before they’d even digested. Not eating left me shaky and faint; eating left me terrified of the next moment. It wore me down to nothing.

Throwing up was never as simple as “feeling a bit sick.” It’s a total, whole-body collapse. Not ordinary queasiness — more as if the food, the stomach acid, the tears, the mucus all came bursting out through your mouth and nose at once, mixed together. Every time, it felt like someone had grabbed hold of my insides and was pulling them out of me, bit by bit.

In the second trimester I was diagnosed with gestational diabetes. I started pricking my finger to check my blood sugar, and even a little food would send the number climbing; nothing I did brought it under control. Eventually the specialist put me on beans and boiled vegetables — red beans, mung beans, black beans, brown rice, every single meal — until I was nearly depressed from it. Every day I had to take a deep breath before sitting down at the table. It wasn’t a question of being hungry. It was that there was nothing to look forward to in the food, and no pleasure in it at all. I grew low and unstable, and I fought with my husband over meals again and again. I truly felt I was on the edge of depression in those weeks, and all I could do was force myself to keep going.

At a routine checkup, they found my blood pressure had spiked to 180. The doctor warned me on the spot that I was in danger and could be taken in for a cesarean at any moment. I was practically marched into the hospital — admitted immediately, put on medication and an IV. For days I had my blood pressure taken over and over, and every reading left me holding my breath. That was when I understood that pregnancy is no small matter. It can even be fatal. In the end it stabilized, but I will never forget those days: the fear, the helplessness, lying in a hospital bed listening to the fetal monitor beeping.

Late in the pregnancy, I woke one night to a stabbing pain. My fingers were numb past feeling, my whole hand as if an electric current had run through it — I couldn’t even grip. It was carpal tunnel syndrome; the doctor said the swelling of pregnancy was pressing on the nerve. From then on I lived with that prickling pain every day. That kind of constant wearing-down slowly makes a person emotionally fragile too. I often sat up in the middle of the night and looked down at my belly, aching and sore and full of grievance — how had pregnancy turned into this?

Gestational diabetes made me realize how bad my eating habits had been. Heavily seasoned, high sugar, high oil, with no thought at all for what my body actually needed. Pregnancy forced me to learn to eat with reason: is this what I want, or what I should have? The shift was hard, but it was also where caring for myself began.

What broke me most, though, was the gap between what I’d expected and what came. I thought pregnancy would be easy, and instead it was chaotic, difficult, even lonely. But I came to understand that this isn’t weakness — it’s growth. Growth has never been easy, and growing into a mother is a crucible for body and soul at once. And that holding-on inside the pain was the first time I ever saw my own resilience.

At the beginning I was very lonely, because no one understood me. I’d get up in the middle of the night starving, in all that misery, while my husband slept soundly beside me — I was angry enough to want to smack him. All I could do was pray to heaven that someone would feel what I felt, would talk with me, would ease the weight of it. My husband didn’t understand at first either, but he changed, and he began keeping me company. The time I remember most clearly is when he took me to the park. We looked at flowers, rode the little train, sat in the sun. That day felt like a brief escape from the heaviness of pregnancy. Understanding and company are the medicine that heals every grievance.

I put far more into carrying this child than I ever imagined I would. It was like sitting a long exam, working every day to answer each question well: control the blood sugar, manage the emotions, get through the discomfort, look things up, listen to the doctors, learn how to protect the small life inside me. I wasn’t “lying around enjoying myself.” I was doing everything I could to hand in a perfect answer — a healthy newborn.

I worked at eating right, bite by bite. I worked at finding some happiness. I worked at believing I would make it through. I longed for the day to come sooner, longed to have my body back, longed to sleep properly and stop counting off days on my fingers. Yes, pregnant women really are remarkable — not because of how much pain we can take, but because we’re willing to grit our teeth and keep going, quietly, for a life we haven’t met yet.

Pregnancy is nothing as simple as “there’s a baby in your belly.” It’s a full mobilization: the body suffering, the mind under pressure, and most of it seen by no one. And yet that journey was the first time I came to know my own body this way, to feel how precious life is, to understand the weight of the word mother.

So if you’re pregnant now, or about to begin this journey, please don’t be afraid. The pain is real, but you can prepare for it. The hardship is certain, but it doesn’t have to be lonely. Remember that learning ahead of time, caring for yourself, and allowing yourself to be fragile are required courses on this road.

And if you’re her family, her partner, her friend — believe me, what she needs has never been “go rest.” It’s “I’m here with you.”

Understand what she is carrying. Respect how strong she is.