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The pregnancy glow is a thing. A flood of hormones and increased blood flow can make your skin shiny or rosy.

Or give you acne. Or spots on the skin.

Here’s the hard truth, friends: You might not feel glowy at all. Every single pregnancy — even subsequent pregnancies of the same person — is a unique snowflake and the idea that you’ll glow from the moment of conception is a dangerous myth.

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Your radiant self might feel less like luminescing and more like puking. The first indication that you’re about to get two blue stripes on a pee stick could be an aversion to anything that smells remotely like food — or your partner’s shampoo, or freshly mown grass. Suddenly the sound of the cat purring too loudly when all you want to do is nap for five minutes brings on pregnancy rage.

They tell you it will all even out by your second trimester, when you’re finally telling people you’re growing a human. That is when the glow is most likely to turn up, except when it doesn’t. Maybe that’s why there are fewer images of a pregnant Virgin Mary. Maybe even her halo couldn’t make her gleam.

Just because you’re not glowing doesn’t mean you’re already parenting wrong. You can feel miserable and still be excited about Baby’s arrival. You’re probably even more excited, if it means your body will stop betraying you.

An old wives’ tale says a person who glows while pregnant is going to have a boy child, while those who look like crap will probably have a girl … because a girl is stealing your beauty. I would like to have some words with those old wives who probably, now that I think about it, were fed that malarkey by their husbands.

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You’ve got brand new stretch marks, spider veins, and your skin won’t stop itching. Your concentration is shot. Hair is growing in strange places and you’d love to take a break from waddling, but hemorrhoids make sitting your least favourite position.

Your best bra doesn’t fit and neither do your shoes, let alone squeezing those cankles into a pair of boots. Between your belly and the swelling, you probably won’t see your ankles for weeks anyway. If you have a child already, you can avoid the embarrassment of a pedicure by getting them to paint your nails. Oh, they’re only two years old? Fine, it won’t be perfect, but at least they’ll be occupied for a few minutes. Don’t fall asleep, though.

Finally, if you can’t muster a glow, try mustering a force field to fend off unwanted belly touches from neighbours and strangers. You got this.

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