'Yellowjackets' Samantha Hanratty Gets Real About Her First Trimester—'I Was Going To Be Glowing, And I'm Not'

The actress posted an emotional video about her unmet pregnancy expectations.

Fact checked by Sarah ScottFact checked by Sarah Scott

When Yellowjackets star Samantha Hanratty found out she was pregnant, she was overjoyed—anyone who has seen the TikTok the star uploaded of the experience can see that. But, like so many pregnant people, Hanratty was quickly thrown into the realities of pregnancy, which aren’t always as blissful as we’re led to believe.

In a subsequent TikTok, Hanratty is considerably less joyful as she mourns what she thought her pregnancy would be, and how that image differs from her first-trimester experience. The video, is gut-wrenching to watch.

“I want to be like Hailey Bieber,” says Hanratty. “She looks so happy and glowing…and then there’s me.”

“I had this expectation that it was going to be hard but it was going to be so beautiful,” she adds. “I was going to be like…glowing. And I’m not.”

Hanratty, who was 10 weeks pregnant at the time of recording this TikTok, shares he’s been constantly sick and weak, has gone to the ER twice, has passed out on set, and has thrown up—a lot.

"I just want to get to a good part,” she says tearfully.

The First Trimester Is Hard

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

“People don’t talk enough about the first trimester,” Gayane Aramyan, LMFT, a perinatal and postpartum therapist based in Los Angeles, tells Parents. “The reality is that the first 12 weeks are a very vulnerable time."

The first trimester can be particularly hard, as many of us are pregnant in secret during this time.

"Even doctors say that things can happen (e.g. miscarriage risk is high), so most people don’t tell anyone, or very few people, that they are pregnant," Aramyan says. "Because the pregnancy is being kept a secret, they lack that sense of community to relate to other people and aren’t able to share how hard or isolating it is. They also can't receive any feedback or real support, so they're just left alone with their thoughts. Often, people start to think something is wrong with them because all they see on Instagram are blissful, happy pregnancies, while they may be experiencing something completely different.”

We don’t often discuss the gap between pregnancy expectations and realities. Sure, we all know we may experience lots of sickness and exhaustion when we find out we’re expecting, but that narrative of the “glowing and blissful” expectant mother is just so pervasive. It’s hard not to feel disappointed, or even like we’re failing if that’s not our personal experience.

The Image of Pregnancy on Social Media vs. Reality

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

At the same time, the Instagram-ification of pregnancy has, in many ways, deepened this “glowing” pregnancy narrative. We see blissful pregnancy announcements, gender reveals, and maternity photoshoots.

And yes, we see raw confessions and long captions alluding to the realities of morning sickness, bloating, fatigue, breast soreness, and all the other stuff…but it’s hard to shake those images and the blissful, serene glowing aesthetic they frequently convey.

Hanratty mentions Hailey Bieber, who just gave birth to her first baby—and it makes sense that the image of this celebrity shaped some of Hanratty’s expectations around her own pregnancy. Bieber, after all, announced her pregnancy while looking incredibly chic in an artfully shot video.

The reality of early pregnancy, though, especially for people who are hit hard with symptoms, tends to be decidedly less glamorous—even, I suspect, for people like Bieber, despite what social media leads us to believe. After all, these images are just one moment in time, not a reflection of the entire experience.

Many of us know that, but when it comes to living out our own pregnancies, it’s hard to untangle that understanding of the one-dimensional picture social media presents from that tendency to play the comparison game. Hanratty is not alone here.

“I definitely believe that the pressure of having a glowing and blissful pregnancy has intensified because of social media,” Aramyan explains. “Before, people were able to compare themselves to their neighbors, co-workers, and the people from the village that they lived in. Now, we can compare ourselves to millions of people from all over the world, just with our phones, and that isn't healthy.”

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

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

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Read the original article on Parents.