Hannah recently shared about words used in the HG communty that trigger and upset her.
Anytime someone has said that “it will all be worth it in the end” or “the baby makes it all worth it,” it’s so discouraging and shame-inducing. It makes me feel like I’m already a terrible mother for thinking anything else or for struggling in the first place. It makes me feel like I should have come up with that idea or something. I should know better and shouldn’t be complaining. It diminishes the experience of an HG pregnancy to a flat, robotic sentence.
How the words “worth it” trigger during and after HG
It has nothing to do with being worth it or not – the point is that HG is debilitating. That’s the end of the story. The future baby is in a whole different category (another planet even). Of course, the baby’s value is extremely high, but in no way is its value connected to HG in any way.
One of the main things I always remind myself when people say stuff like that is that it doesn’t have to be “worth it.” Plenty of other moms go through easy, or at least easier, pregnancies and have healthy babies to show for it. HG isn’t the price to be paid for a healthy baby. It doesn’t have to happen in order for pregnancy to be viable, so it doesn’t have to be “worth it.” It could have been easier and still produced a healthy child and that’s what I have to remind myself on a constant basis.
HG isn’t the price to be paid for a healthy baby: these words trigger me.
~Hannah
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