Samantha Hanratty opens up about her first trimester

when Yellow shirt army Star Samantha Hanratty found out she was pregnant, and she was ecstatic — as anyone who’s seen one of the star’s TikTok uploads can see. But like many people who are pregnant, Hanratty quickly came to grips with the reality of pregnancy, which isn’t always as blissful as we might imagine.

In a subsequent TikTok, Hanratty was much less cheerful, as she lamented what she thought was her pregnancy and how different that image was from her early pregnancy experience. The video was heartbreaking to watch.

“I want to be like Hailey Bieber,” Hanratty said. “She looked happy and radiant…and then there was me.”

“I had this expectation that it was going to be hard, but it was going to be so beautiful,” she added. “I would be… radiant. I’m not.

Hanratty, who was 10 weeks pregnant when he recorded this TikTok, said he had been in poor health and had been to the emergency room twice, passed out and vomited on set – a lot of.

“I just want to play a role well,” she said through tears.

The first three months were difficult

Wow, this is so relatable. Look, we’ve all heard (and some of us know) that pregnancy is really hard on the body, and the concept of morning sickness is fairly common cultural knowledge. But we don’t often talk about how emotionally draining this experience can be.

“People don’t talk about early pregnancy enough,” says Gayane Aramyan, a perinatal and postpartum therapist in Los Angeles. parents. “The reality is that the first 12 weeks are a very vulnerable time.”

The first trimester of pregnancy can be especially difficult because many of us secretly get pregnant during this time.

“Even doctors say things can happen (like a high risk of miscarriage), so most people don’t tell anyone or very few people that they’re pregnant,” Alamyan said. “Because the pregnancy is so secretive, they lack the sense of community to connect with other people and share the difficulties or isolation of pregnancy. They also don’t get any feedback or real support, so they” often start to think there’s something wrong with them , because all they see on Instagram are happy, joyful pregnancies, when they might be going through something completely different.

We don’t often discuss the gap between pregnancy expectations and reality. Of course, we all know that when we find out we’re pregnant, we’re likely to experience a lot of sickness and exhaustion, but the stories of “radiant, happy” expectant mothers are so common. If this is not our personal experience, it is hard not to feel disappointed or even feel like a failure.

Pregnancy images and reality on social media

In our social media-driven world, ideas about pregnancy have shifted—for the better in many ways. For example, we are finally having open conversations about infertility, miscarriage, postpartum and maternal mental health.

At the same time, the Instagramification of pregnancy in many ways deepens this “glow” narrative of pregnancy. We see happy pregnancy announcements, gender reveals, and maternity photos.

Yes, we see raw confessions and long captions that hint at the realities of morning sickness, bloating, fatigue, breast pain, and all the rest of it… but it’s hard to shake these images and the blissful, peaceful beauty they often convey.

Hanratty mentioned Hailey Bieber, who just gave birth to her first child—it makes sense that the celebrity’s image shaped some of Hanratty’s expectations for her own pregnancy. After all, Bieber announced his pregnancy in a beautifully shot video while looking incredibly chic.

Yet the reality of early pregnancy, especially for those struck by severe symptoms, is often decidedly less glamorous — even, I suspect, for someone like Bieber, despite what social media would have us believe. After all, these images are a reflection of a moment in time, not the entire experience.

Many of us know this, but when we’re living through pregnancy, it can be hard to separate our understanding of the one-dimensional picture social media presents from our tendency to play the comparison game. Hanratty is not alone.

“I absolutely believe that there is increased stress during pregnancy due to the influence of social media,” Aramyan explains. “Before, people were able to compare themselves to their neighbors, their colleagues, and the people in the village they lived in. Now, we can compare ourselves to millions of people from all over the world just by using our phones, and it’s not healthy.”

Hanratty’s struggles, not only with the physical challenges of pregnancy (it sounds like she’s really going through it!) but also with unmet expectations, are so relatable. Of course, pregnancy hormones and the mood swings they cause certainly don’t help.

So if you’re expecting, take the time to show up for yourself, respect your body and your own journey, and most importantly give yourself some grace.