'The physical discomfort and mental anguish of carrying a baby were awful'

Maybe I’m not supposed to say it, but the physical discomfort and mental anguish of carrying a baby were awful, writes Heidi Scrimgeour.

I’m a pretty honest, tell-it-like-it-really-is kind of mum but there’s one thing I’ve always been afraid to say out loud when it comes to my experience of motherhood. It’s this: I hated being pregnant.

I cringed as I wrote that, such is my discomfort at confessing to the one thing that ‘good’ mothers aren’t supposed to feel. We have drummed into us that motherhood is a gift which many are denied and thus any admission that having a child isn’t boundless joy from its inception is somehow deemed a transgression of the laws of motherhood.