By: Elizabeth Hansen

Being pregnant with my first child, I have received a lot of great counsel and advice from my own mother and other women who are mothers in my life. While all of their advice was great, a lot of it didn’t answer some of my, apparently, misconceptions.

Whether you have kids, are currently expecting, or want to have babies in the future, I hope you can relate to and find some humor in my list of first-time mom misconceptions!

1. As soon as you get pregnant, you will have a cute baby bump.

You can almost always tell when you see a pregnant woman from her baby bump, which always brings a smile to my face. I always assumed that pregnant women were noticeably pregnant basically the entire time after about the first month of getting pregnant. Wrong. A lot of first-time moms don’t start showing until a good five months into their pregnancy, some a little sooner and some even later! I’ve heard this changes for when you get pregnant a second, third, etc. time. But with your first baby, you’ll have to endure the aches, pains, sickness, tiredness and more without having any glorious baby bump to show for it. But, it’s all worth it.

2. Everyone gets crazy, random morning sickness.

In my experience, the most common go-to pregnancy symptom everyone talks about is morning sickness. I thought it was going to happen all the time, but it didn’t, and it didn’t just happen in the morning. The only time I threw up during my pregnancy was at 11 p.m. For women who do have morning sickness, it happens at varying levels. Some women are even diagnosed with a condition called hyperemesis gravidarum, which is when they have extreme amounts of nausea and vomiting. Don’t compare yourself to others as far as morning sickness goes. Figure out what it means for you. For me, I had a lot of heartburn and certain foods made me feel sick, but I only actually threw up once. Don’t feel like less or more of a pregnant lady wherever you fall on the spectrum.

3. You don’t need to start consuming more food right away.

I thought I would need to start eating more food right away, but that is not the case. During a normal, healthy pregnancy, a woman should gain anywhere between 25–35 pounds. And don’t really even need to start thinking about putting on this weight until your second trimester starts. As much as I wanted the baby to be an excuse for eating lots of extra yummy food, it doesn’t go that way. The baby doesn’t even really start gaining weight itself until the last couple months of the pregnancy! Man, this baby grows a lot slower than I thought J. But I am glad I learned about this early on from my doctor. You don’t want to be putting on more weight than you need to, because whatever weight the baby doesn’t take with it at birth stays with the momma. It’s less about eating more and more about making sure you are eating healthy foods and creating healthy eating habits for after the baby is born. Keep checking up with your doctor to make sure your weight gain and eating habits are on schedule with your baby’s growth.