At 32 weeks pregnant with my first child, I've realized that my expectant belly has turned me into a magnet for unsolicited advice (not to mention unsolicited hand-me-downs). Some of this counsel is sweet. Some is offensive. Some makes me want to stab the advice-giver in the eyeballs with the salad fork I left unused because she put the fear of toxoplasmosis into me before my microgreens arrived.

Yet no piece of advice gets under my skin like one: Oh, it goes, but you should revel in your pregnancy!

I've heard it from co-workers; I've heard it from dear friends. I've even—god help me—heard it from men. And sure, it seems innocuous enough. But the more my belly grows, the more this sentiment begins to chafe.

After all, I can't bend to complete key tasks, like putting on shoes. I can't simply order what sounds good; first I must run the entire menu through a mental threat-assessment test, eliminating anything that might involve undercooked eggs, unpasteurized cheese, or sprouts. (Not that I miss sprouts.) Constant exhaustion wears like cement blocks on my feet. Yet I can't sleep. My body, possessed from within, simultaneously has been claimed as part of the public domain: Strangers believe it their right to grope my belly while commenting on its shape and size and making reference to how I'm "carrying," as though this were a skill, like plate-spinning. Determining the safety of any beauty product, food item, or activity requires Olympic levels of Googling. Zika is a thing. Getting into and out of bed involves reflexive grunting and painful contortions, yet is a never-ending imperative, as the need to pee is constant (though often merely a false alarm).

I miss wine.

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Then, of course, there's the minor fact that this is all but a prelude to parenthood, and all of the unfathomable, life-altering responsibility that entails.

And let us not forget that between here and there lies childbirth.

Also between here and there, rages an unyielding torrent of information on how to do all of this becoming-a-parent stuff perfectly (and how to screw it all up); I feel compelled to consume, process, and assess every word, so that I might arrive at a comprehensively informed philosophy. Complicating things is the fact that, for every argument in favor of any given school of thought, there is an equal and opposite one against. Home birth or hospital? Attachment parenting or benign neglect, à la francais? Choose once; ruin them forever!

How could I not be worried, uncomfortable, overwhelmed?

Yet to mention any of these discomforts aloud is to find myself quickly redirected towards the cute, the cozy, the positive. What are you craving? Where are you registered? It's as though my swollen belly has squeezed out any room for complexity, much in the way it's done with my bladder. But why should putting voice to my frustrations in any way negate the very real, very frequent moments when I do revel in the miracle going on within?

Pregnancy is one of the most physically and psychologically upending times in your life; why would you think you'd be nothing but happy?

My pregnancy was a surprise—once the shock faded, I realized, a profoundly happy one—and I know how lucky that makes me. So many women go through so much in the hopes of experiencing this wonder about which I'm so quick to complain, and I feel humbled in the face of that. Every time I feel a kick from this little life inside me, this entirely separate person, I feel giddy, a private reassurance that's totally unlike anything I've ever felt. Hey, mom! Just checking in with a quick womb report: I'm all good in here!

As someone who spends an inordinate amount of time in my head, I'm awed by the way pregnancy has uprooted me, pulled me out of the analytical and replanted me into the realm of the physical. The minutia of modern life makes it hard to remember that we are, at our most basic, animals, creatures of the earth, but pregnancy makes it impossible to forget: I'm constantly amazed at the things my body is doing, all on its own, and by the surprising comfort I take in the frequent reminders that something greater than me is in control. Sometimes I find myself gazing at my belly pondering this marvel, and it is all I can do to keep from yelling aloud: There's nature happening in here! Indeed, pregnancy is the wildest trip of my life, and often, I do revel in it.

But the suggestion that this is all I should feel, that it's somehow unseemly or wrong to admit to feeling anything other than bliss or #blessed is insulting, at best.

My favorite is when it's a man saying this, as happened recently at a party, when an acquaintance asked how I was feeling. "Oh, you know," I said. "Excited, exhausted, uncomfortable."

"Awww, you should be loving every minute of it!" he replied.

Oh yeah? I wanted to say. Call me when you have a populated uterus.

I refrained.

The patent obnoxiousness of this mansplainer—or any man presuming to tell any woman how she should experience her pregnancy—notwithstanding, when it's a mother offering a similar sentiment, somehow, it's worse.

Sadder.

Usually, the conversation goes like this: I yammer about the latest prego-related indignity to strike. She nods, then says: "I really regret not making more of an effort to enjoy every second of my pregnancy."

I get it: Pregnancy is a not-that-often in a lifetime kind of thing; it makes sense that a woman who has handed down her last pair of elastic-paneled maternity jeans would feel a pang of rose-colored nostalgia for the experience.

But also, I want to ask: Why? Pregnancy is one of the most physically and psychologically upending times in your life; why would you think you'd be nothing but happy? What would that prove? The implication that it would be somehow better for these 40 weeks to sound a single emotional note, as opposed to the beautiful—if cacophonous—symphony of reality, strikes me as deeply sad.

Sad, but familiar. There's something in this idea that smells like the guilt and shame we're left with when we hold ourselves against the unrealistic expectations that are a woman's constant companion, whether in matters of work, life, physical appearance, or Marie Kondo quotient. Be perfect, but don't look like you're trying. Have it all, but do everything with a serene, uncluttered balance.

And here, the impossible goal seems to be to flatten ourselves into two-dimensions, like those cardboard cutouts of themselves that school kids send out with their relatives for photos that show them, smiling, at places they've never been. "Flat Me," that project is called.

A woman's complexity is rarely rewarded in our culture, yet it's telling that when our bodies have bloomed, literally, into the fullness of our power is when the pressure to recede is the strongest. And that expectation continues well beyond pregnancy: Motherhood is another glorified state marked by strangely simplistic expectations, placing women on a stoic, selfless, desexualized pedestal. So strong is the pressure to smile that those who suffer from post-partum depression are shamed into silence.

One of the aspects of pregnancy I revel in most is the intensity: the highs, the lows, even the smells. Everything is amped up; some for the good, some for the bad. (Oh, sweaty man at spin class; I know you had onion soup last night, and I hate you for it.) But the lows don't take away from the highs; on the contrary. Every taste of bliss, wallop of frustration, and ugly cry serves to remind me that something truly awesome is happening. To me and in me. To be pregnant is to be in the business of creating life. Life. It's the furthest thing from two-dimensional. And that is something worth reveling in.

Follow Shannon Kelley on Twitter at @Shannon_BKelley

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