Soha Ali Khan: I am going to miss being pregnant
Here, she lists the nine things that had become a part of her for nine months.
Soha Ali Khan, who has looked radiant throughout her pregnancy, says she will miss being pregnant. Here, she lists the nine things that had become a part of her for nine months. Over to Soha...
“I know that I’ve complained a lot about this last leg of being pregnant — the aches and pains, the lack of sleep, the hormonal blitzkrieg — but I realise that I am going to miss being pregnant. Perhaps not the heartburn or the hair inexplicably growing in downy patches around my ears, but there are things that I have grown accustomed to over the past nine months.
Placenta brain as a get out of jail card: A heady hormonal hurricane really does leave you distracted and unfocused but the upside is that it’s a great excuse for slipping up. Left the keys in the door? No harm done. Forgot to boil the water before making tea? It happens!
Rolls and Somersaults: I watch my bulging belly distend and collapse marvelling at the magnitude of the engineering enterprise underway below the surface. It is an intimacy that is unreal.
Extra calories: A definite perk of being pregnant is guilt-free weight gain. You may not be eating for two, but in the third trimester you can happily chow down 500 extra calories a day.
Glow girl: I bemoan the nausea and the swelling but one symptom of pregnancy I have loved has been that of clear smooth skin. Post pregnancy, as the nausea and swelling disappear, sadly so does that glow!
Niceness: Everyone fusses over you when you’re pregnant. Total strangers smile at you (although I admit this is not exactly a new phenomenon in my life). They fetch you pillows, offer you their seat, their sandwich. Sometimes I drop things on purpose just to see people who would ordinarily never do it, bend down and pick it up for me.
Attention: Foot rubs, shoulder massages, my favourite foods being prepared, the air conditioning set to a temperature of my choice… all that is coming to an end and I will soon have to turn off my own bedside light which is tragic.
Naps: Sleep has always held a status bordering on sacred in my life. But now I don’t have to sneak off to have a snooze even if it’s just after breakfast — you can’t judge me, I’m pregnant!
Camaraderie: You know when you pose for a photograph you automatically suck in your stomach — for months now I can just hang loose and flaunt that bump — the bigger the more beautiful.
You are special: Every week Kunal and I have marvelled at the growth of our miracle inside me — from two cells to the size of an apple seed, then an apple and so on until today it’s as big as a pumpkin — a pumpkin with ten fingers, ten toes and a heartbeat. Soon I will be a non-pregnant normal person again and I can’t help but feel blessed and privileged to have had this experience, to have carried this precious bundle over nine fleeting months until it was ready to embrace the world.