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When I was pregnant, I had lots of mixed feelings about it.

On the one hand: I was really excited. I wanted to have the baby. I couldn't wait to be a parent. I couldn't wait to see what happened next. I did everything I could to make sure things went well and did all the prenatal care things. I even did prenatal yoga, which Baby J seemed to like too. Every day I got more excited to finally meet him.

On the other: I have never been one to embrace my curves -- since I have never had many of them, this had never previously been a problem. I generally prefer the way I look when I'm at the low end of the healthy weight-to-height spectrum. My own particular preference in terms of body image pertains only to me (there are other people who have quite different bodies, and these bodies are often quite beautiful). I think it's safe to say, though, that most people know how they personally like to look -- and try their best to maintain that. It was hard, when I was pregnant, to give up that control.

Obviously: pregnancy is a beautiful time, and it deserves to be celebrated.

But I don't get our culture sometimes, and I know my own ambivalence partially reflects my context.

While pregnant, I became hyper-aware of the images I saw. While maternity clothes emphasized the growing baby within (hooray!), magazines emphasized how much weight women gained, and how quickly they got back to their prepregnancy sizes.

People treat you differently when you're pregnant -- it's as if you're some kind of sacred vessel -- and it's weird. Suddenly, you're supposed to be so much more pure -- try sitting at the bar area in a restaurant, even if you're not drinking -- and I often didn't feel that pure. In fact, despite what everyone said, I often forgot I was pregnant as I went about my daily life -- even in the last month or so.

It's really strange, and obviously, no two people are the same.

This weekend, at Babies R Us, Freckles and Baby J and I were looking through some random cards, and I found one, that perfectly (and hideously) expressed my own warped mind and experience:

A lacy white camisole that you could touch through the cardboard floated across the front. When the card was opened, you could see that inside it had turned into a huge pair of "granny panties." "You're in for some changes," the card said.

I wanted to smack the card's designer over the head with it.

Motherhood is about so much more than the size of clothing -- it's about sheltering a new life inside you and then helping that new life through the world. It's about love, and dirt, and the raw, essential substance of life -- and also about mistakes, and laughter, and exhaustion, and relief -- and I'm only five months in.

The card, to me, implied that when we're pregnant, all we are is an expansion of flesh -- as we are at the same time desexualized as human beings. I have felt that way before -- and though I know that it's wrong (wrong as in not correct), it makes me sad to think that, of all the things someone could send to someone else embarking on this amazing, weird journey, they'd decide to send them off by basically saying: "so, you're pregnant. You know you're going to get fat, right?"

Yeah, quite possibly, but you're also going to get so much more.