For instance, fun fact: during my last couple weeks of being preggers with Linus, I experienced Bell's Palsy on my left side of my face. My husband called me "Stroke Face" until it cleared up about a week postpartum. I couldn't move the left side of my face, nor could I hear out of my left ear very well. According to UpToDate, the risk of Bell's Palsy is 3 time greater in pregnant ladies than in the normal population, so it's somewhere around 4 to 10 cases per 1,000 people. Still rare, but definitely a thing that can happen.
Another rare and horrible thing that can happen when pregnant is that antibodies attack your nerve cells and may leave you blind if they attack your optic nerve. Apparently that happened to the wife of someone around here. So, she got pregnant 12 years ago and has been legally blind since then!
Another awesome thing that happened to me was that I became hypothyroid. Just during pregnancy. Yup. I had to start levothyroxine the day after I went in for my first prenatal visit, and had to up the dosage sometime during the 2nd trimester. I was exhausted all the time without the drug, and being hypothyroid is associated with a number of complications, including miscarriage. After I gave birth, I stopped the drugs, and my thyroid function immediately turned to normal. This isn't nearly as horrible as having stroke face nor going blind.
Of course, gestational diabetes and preeclampsia are commonplace. I have a number of friends who had to change their diets significantly for much of their pregnancy because of these issues. For some people, the diabetes or high blood pressure doesn't go away after you deliver!
Also, colds and allergies become the worst things in the world AND you can't really take anything for them. I remember using my neti pot nearly every day because my sinus cavities were constantly inflamed for a long time.
Cavities. I, luckily, didn't have any issue with this. My cousin's wife who eats all organic, vegetarian, very healthy, off-the-land, pioneer-woman sorts of meals (think nuts and twigs) ended up with a gazillion cavities when she was pregnant. She doesn't even eat anything with sugar added to it! Dental issues are so common, and your teeth can loosen up because of the relaxin in your body.
Rectal or uterine prolapse after delivery can occur. That's about as disgusting as it sounds. Literally, your rectal or uterine muscles just don't have the tone that they once did and just fall, turning inside-out. Your rectum can droop outside of your anus and your poop can get stuck inside of your body. Yeah. That's a thing. Enjoy your body, ladies.
There are a million more gross or horrible things that can happen during or after pregnancy, and every pregnancy is different. Much of pregnancy is really disgusting -- swollen feet, acne or melasma or other skin conditions, super bad constipation, the need to pee every minute of the day, the aches and pains (oh man, my hips hurt SO bad, especially in the weeks following delivery), the exhaustion because you can't sleep because your gigantic and in pain....
So, until you're ready to put up with your body being a war-zone and until you've found someone who will actually love and support you when you are the grossest person around, take your birth control pills.
More reading:
- http://www.scarymommy.com/things-they-dont-tell-you-about-your-pregnant-body/
- http://www.scarymommy.com/the-many-stages-of-grieving-your-pre-pregnancy-body/
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