What is Pregnancy Like?
See this flat belly and those big boobs? This is called the first trimester.
What is pregnancy like?
Said no one ever. Instead insert any-and-every kind of assumption possible about my experience.
Well I'm gonna answer the question I wish you asked me.
YOU: “Mikka, what is pregnancy like?”
MIKKA: “Well, since this is my fourth pregnancy in the last 10 months, pregnancy has been my default state and let me tell you- it’s definitely an altered reality! Here goes...
………...
Ya know that moment at Burning Man... When you suddenly wake up and start to gain consciousness?
As you begin to recall the many nights/days of random substance use on zero sleep...you conclude that you must have gone way too long without consuming food or water because there is now a pit in your stomach that has somehow transformed the foreign feeling of hunger into an odd, familiar experience of extreme nausea. You wonder: ‘Maybe the drugs caused my digestive system to work in reverse?’ In fact, your body feels so deprived of nutrition and hydration, that in your delusional state, you’re actually not sure if you are on the verge of death...or are imagining the body you left behind.
Finally consciousness enters your physical body. It’s hard to comprehend what could have happened to you recently to result in feeling like a truck ran over you, and left horrible pain in the weirdest of places. You wonder: ‘Did someone punch both of my boobs in the thunder dome-Who the fuck would do that?!’ The most intense pain of all is coming from your bladder, which feels as if it will explode any minute. As you muster the energy to finally open your eyes, your extremely heightened senses kick in and the awful, intense stench of human enters your nose. You look over to see the once-attractive, yet-now-extremely-smelly, mangled human in a similar state passed out next to you. Turning away in disgust, you curl into the fetal position on your other side, hoping to disappear back into sleep, hide from your own senses and pretend you never woke up… only instead to be immediately hurled into a state of compulsory vomiting. You quickly remember this is the normal wake up routine. When you finally collapse in exhaustion, of course you question every choice you could have made to result in this. You wonder: ‘Is it really worth trying to stay alive?’
………
Every time I leave the blissful state of an unconscious pregnancy nap and wake up to the reality of being pregnant, I get a flash back to that moment at my first burn in 2010, an experience I swore I would never repeat. I never could have imagined this would be the closest memory to my current everyday reality, yet with zero substance-fun-filled memories from the night before.”