What Tay Lautner Wishes Someone Had Told Her Before Getting Pregnant

Tay Lautner is expecting, and she’s talking openly about her experience so far on a solo episode of The Squeeze. She goes deep on the parts she’s been sitting on for months, the parts that surprised her, and the parts she almost wasn’t going to share at all.

Tay knew she wanted to be open about this chapter, partly because hiding a growing belly on a weekly podcast was never going to last, but mostly because staying quiet felt like a disservice to the community she’s built around mental health and real talk. When she and husband Taylor Lautner announced on social media, she wasn’t prepared for the response. “My phone that day was blowing up like crazy and I’ve just never experienced anything like that before,” she says. Out of hundreds of messages, she got one mean one. The rest was pure love—and it made the decision to keep sharing feel right.

Here’s what she has to say about her pregnancy with baby “Taylor Cubed.”

Why she told people early

Tay broke the “don’t tell anyone yet” rule with absolutely zero regrets. After watching close friends navigate miscarriage from both sides, she made a decision early: the people in her corner needed to know. 

“I didn’t want to have to make the call and tell them that I was pregnant and I miscarried. I wanted them to know of the pregnancy already so that I wasn’t having to deliver two types of news to them,” she says. Thankfully, she didn’t have to go through that, but she’s glad the support was already in place.

Asking for help is important

Tay reveals how unprepared she was, and how unprepared the people around her were too. Her TikTok algorithm caught up fast once she was pregnant, but going in, she had no real frame of reference for what her body and brain were about to go through.

One of her closest friends, who has not been pregnant, sat her down early on and said something along the lines of, “tell me what you need, because I genuinely don’t know.” And she’s thankful for that conversation. “It was in that moment I was like, oh my gosh, you’re right. Like I actually had no clue what happens to your body.”

If you’re the first in your friend group to be pregnant, don’t wait for people to figure it out. Voice your needs. And if you’re the friend on the other side, ask for help. You can’t assume you’ll instinctively know what to do. “If you are pregnant, don’t expect your friends to know. Don’t put that kind of pressure on them because they will fail. They will. I failed as a friend to some of my pregnant friends because I truthfully had no idea,” she says.

An honest take on the first trimester

Like most women, the first trimester was hard. Food aversions had Tay surviving on toast, grilled cheese, and butter noodles for almost three weeks straight, all while waking up multiple times a night because the hunger was relentless. “I’m normally a hungry girl. Now being pregnant, the hunger? Who was going to tell me about this hunger?” she says. Thankfully, Taylor stepped up as chef, cleaner, and emotional anchor. Friends came over and sat with her while she held an ice pack and tried to get through a popsicle. She wasn’t always up for conversation, but just having people in the house helped. “Even having them in the kitchen while I’m in the living room—it just did something to me,” she says.

Body image

Tay describes standing in front of the mirror during her first trimester and feeling completely disconnected from the body positivity she’d always had. She’d never once looked at a pregnant woman and thought something negative. But looking at herself at 10 weeks, she felt the opposite of the grace she usually extends to others.

“For the first time in my 29 years of life, I have hated my body, which I hate saying, but it’s the truth,” she reveals. She spiraled a little, questioned whether body positivity for pregnant women was even real, and cried to Taylor about it. A girlfriend told her she needed to share it, because she’d never heard anyone actually say it out loud.

Tay says that she stopped looking at the scale at OB appointments. Now, Taylor comes to every one, and they make eye contact when she steps on, a silent agreement that the number doesn’t get to take up space. And she bought new clothes—jeans that fit, activewear that wasn’t her husband’s. “We are not meant to fit into our clothing. Our clothes are meant to fit us,” she states. Once she leaned into that, things got a little easier.

Where she’s at now

Tay is currently in her second trimester, has more mental bandwidth, and is finding her footing. The first trimester fog has lifted enough that she can look back and process it. Hearing the baby’s heartbeat for the first time left her without words, even recalling it mid-episode, she tears up. “This is just a beautiful thing, and it comes with a lot of low lows and a lot of high highs,” she says.

She’s been filming content since week six (weekly symptom updates, the random things that helped, the honest moments) and is ready to start sharing it. She’s also clear that The Squeeze isn’t turning into a pregnancy podcast, but this is her life right now, and she’s not going to pretend otherwise.

To hear the full episode and all of Tay’s thoughts on pregnancy, listen to The Squeeze wherever you get your podcasts.

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