They sucked.
Morning sickness that exists at all hours. I’m already hyper-flexible, so that extra stretch that your body gets in prep for the birth just made everything hurt. Pre-term labor with Kid 2 started around 5 months, so I had off and on contractions but carried him to term.
Everything in your abdomen gets shoved out of the way to make room for baby. By the end of both gestations, it was hard to breath.
Just, no. Glad I have the replicants, but, no. Not remotely wonderful.
Yes, I did. I wasn’t a big fan of labour and delivery, though.
I spent about five years being pregnant. There were minor inconveniences, but I had good pregnancies, good labors. I didn’t mind being pregnant 99% of the time.
I was not a good pregnant woman.
I know some people love it - but that wasn’t me. Bone tired. I’d get horrible colds and couldn’t take anything. It was awkward and sometimes painful. Sleeping was difficult. It felt like my skin across the top of my stomach was so stretched I’d split open at the end.
Early on, morning sickness. Later, can’t sleep anyway but sitting up, laying on your back the baby crushes your internal organs, tummy is straight out, and side - well, that works for other people.
Yep, all of this for me too. Easy pregnancy, easy labor…but once was enough for me.
Pregnancy was hard work for me. Quite early on I found I was breathless all the time (all those internal organs that usually have a cavity to hang out in were being shoved up against my lungs), and that makes everything feel like it’s hard to do. 30 weeks of morning sickness in my second pregnancy. Constant, absolute exhaustion. Mood swings like a crazy person - several times I literally laughed so hard that I broke down howling, tears running down my face and sobbing uncontrollably. No idea why. Both pregnancies ended in hypertension, hospitalization, induced labour, stuck babies and one required an unscheduled cesarean at 2am.
I enjoyed being aware that there was a baby growing inside me, and feeling that closeness, experiencing kicks, watching the bump grow. It’s just that all those lovely things came with a whole lot of demanding stuff that was pretty horrible to deal with. I would have loved to have had another baby, but I’m kind of relieved that I don’t have to go through another pregnancy.
Loved being pregnant with both, though with my first I was practically spherical by the 8th month. I could’ve done without that. The labor was the hardest part with him (33 and 1/2 hours, if you don’t include passive labor), followed by a big fat seizure. My daughter was a breeze - walked in 7 cm dilated and walked up to recovery 5 hours later.
I’m curious how many of the easy pregnancy group are tall. I think the fact that we have more room in our torsos and baby isn’t pushing our spleens into our throats makes a big difference in feeling good overall.
I’ve been blaming my small stature (5’4) for my discomfort in pregnancy. I chose to ignore the fact that my great grandmother had 11 children, all single births, and was tiny… Probably not even 5’0.
I expected to hate it based on the endless bitching by every gestating woman I’d ever met, but I loved like 90% of the time. The hormones were mostly amazing for me. I had A Very Bad Major Life Event happen and I kind of just grinned through it and had a “C’est la vie” attitude, which is NOT my normal default. It’s not like I didn’t stress, but it ate me up a lot less than it would have before. Even now I feel differently about things, like it did permanent changes to my body in good ways (not just stretch marks and c-section scars). I didn’t like meat much before and now I adore it, for example.
I guess the word is content. I was content most of the time and could cope with challenges better than pre-preggo days.
Yeah, it did suck when I got overwhelmed with being tired or hunger or having to pee every five minutes, but it wasn’t a real problem most of the time.
eta: I’m average height
I certainly had things I didn’t like (joint pain, food restrictions, worries from a previous miscarriage), but all of that was overshadowed by the excitement of the process. As a biology nerd, I was totally fascinated by the process and seeing and feeling the changes. The fun of planning for a baby added to the overall good feeling.
That was my first child. I’m not sure any of that would be quite as exciting the second time around. I’d probably be a lot more aware of the pain and inconvenience.
Forgot to add: I’m taller than average (5’7")
I’m only 5’2” and didn’t have many physical issues. Not much morning sickness, heartburn etc. Just some bad headaches. My issues were all physiological (for me) and developmental (baby).
As a data point, I am 5’6", so neither tall nor short. I wasn’t bothered by breathlessness, heartburn, or feeling like I would split open.
Plenty of other things bothered me, but not those.
5’7" - but I was pre-eclampsic. So I gained 60 pounds. I weighed 127 pounds before I got pregnant, and left the hospital with a seven pound baby and 135 pounds - or something ridiculous like that - it was almost ALL water.
And then breastfeeding was the best diet ever. Three months later I was the thinnest I’d been since college. (Then eating the rest of the mac n cheese from the kids bowls and always having cookies in the house added weight. And now, menopause).
The first trimester I was so sick all the time that I lost 10 pounds. Being a teeny person (5’4" and 105 pounds) I couldn’t afford to lose any weight, especially pregnant. I did really enjoy the second and third trimesters. I never did get heartburn or swollen ankles. I worked until 2 weeks before the due date. Then I painted and decorated the nursery. I loved the nesting part of being pregnant. I only gained 20 pounds while pregnant, and my daughter weighed 8.
I had a totally uncomplicated pregnancy, and didn’t even have morning sickness, and I hated it. I went a little crazy, for some reason. I had all the emotional symptoms of bipolar disorder, and I am not exaggerating. If I had been in my early 20s instead of my late 30s (and thus too old for the onset of bipolar disorder), I might have been diagnosed with it. As it was, everyone knew it was caused by the pregnancy, somehow, and tried to be patient with me, but I exhausted people, especially my husband, who was almost as glad as I was when it was finally over.
I “snapped out of” my crazy remarkably quickly after I had the baby, even though I was considered at high risk for post-partum depression-- I had a chat with the on-call shrink in the hospital just to make my OB happy. I was really even-keeled afterwards, except occasionally when I hadn’t slept more than four hours out of 30, which happened a few times.
My mother died before I had children, so I only learned that no morning sickness runs in our family 'til after my first- when my auntie told me how pleasant her sister was when expecting. The last two weeks with both were pretty uncomfortable, but being sexually insatiable up until then was a real plus. All that improved blood supply and all. This doesn’t apply to all- I told a male co worker about it as an attempt to console hm for an unplanned pregnancy and it was not true for his wife, which was awkward.
Pregnancy was fine. Children were fine. Teenagers going through puberty while I was going through menopause was NOT fine. (I was 33 and 37).
GRANDkids are phenomenal 
Yes, although the pregnancies weren’t without their pains. No periods! Constant heartburn. No periods! My pelvic area stretching like the jaws of life. As a skinny woman and 5’ 3" I was pregnant (fat) from head to toe but no periods! (Which were absurdly painful and after having two babies I can say were sometimes worse than labor.) But I was immersed in the process and amazed at every change. I felt like I communicated with my babies as they grew and sometimes the outside world was a distraction. Labor and the first few months after are for another thread (and not as glowing) but being pregnant was a privilege to experience for me. I guess I “nested” the whole time.
In the grand scheme of things, being pregnant was great. I only had one, so who knows if others would have been as good, but my single data point is definitely positive.
No morning sickness. Heartburn only if I ate fried foods, so I avoided them. No real discomfort till the last couple of weeks, and some of that was probably psychological, since my rotten daughter decided to delay her arrival, the brat! Plus she took up gymnastics in utero, rearranging my internal organs in the process.
Honestly, the worst part involved horror stories from other people. When a woman is carrying her first child, she doesn’t need to hear how your cousin was in labor for 47 hours in a blizzard with wolves circling the cabin in the woods. Just wish her luck and offer to babysit some day (even if you don’t mean it. 
) I had to laugh at one woman who insisted I was having a boy. She kept talking to “Peter” which was the boy’s name we’d picked. No, we didn’t want to know ahead of time.
I worked up to the end, much to the consternation of my coworkers, especially when I passed my due date. I went to bed on a Wednesday, woke in the wee small hours when my water broke, gave birth mid-afternoon on Thursday, and was back at my part-time teaching job on Monday. It impressed my boss and confused my students a bit. Couldn’t be helped - I had to get back to work. I was lucky enough to find a fabulous day care that would take a 3-week-old baby so I could return to my full-time job. (I’d been hired before I started to show, and not only did I feel a little guilty for deceiving them, but I didn’t have time to accumulate much leave, so being off meant no income for us. Husband was a full-time student and not working.)
One of the weirdest things I dealt with - my husband and I did a lot of mall-walking in those days. It was cheap entertainment, since we were broke. We were stopped outside of a bookstore by a woman who looked adoringly at my massive belly and started telling me things about my baby and her pregnancies as her husband and kids looked on. When she finally left, my sweetie and I looked at each other with the same question: “Do you know her??” No idea who she was, but at least she didn’t insist on touching me and telling me terrifying tales.
I really loved it. I was lucky in all respects. I had pregnancy tiredness, but nothing else. No morning sickness, no bad back, a little anaemia and the iron pills weren’t pleasant but no big deal. Got quite big towards the end but was cycling a week before birth. Well, I was 22.
I also loved the feeling of my body being “useful” in every single thing it did. My heart beating made another person’s heart beat and that other person was my baby. Some women are freaked out by feeling the baby kicking - I loved it.
Labour was all levels of hell, but pregnancy was fabulous.