My pregnancy experience

A raw reflection

Hello everyone,

Today, I am bringing you my raw pregnancy experience. Over the past 3 years, this newsletter has been my outlet for getting to know my body and my condition, and for exploring the women’s health space together. It is only fair that I reflect on my pregnancy here.

I also want to say that this won’t be everyone’s experience, and I am aware that some women live pregnancy very differently. This is a positive pregnancy experience, so if you are in any way worried about the process, I think it will help you feel at ease. I go through the relationship with my body, my symptoms, thoughts on my career and my husband. I walk you through my worries about connecting with my baby and giving birth.

A pivotal shift in my relationship with my body

All throughout my teenage years and 20’s, I never trusted my body. My periods weren’t coming, I had a lot of body image issues, and my body was not responsive to exercise or diets. I somehow felt at war with it because it was unpredictable. I would say the relationship with it has improved over the past 5 years, but I would lie if I said I fully trusted my body. Hence, I prepared for pregnancy as I would for a marathon. Read all the books, took all the supplements, did all the work. To my surprise, getting pregnant was easy, and all throughout the 9 months I have been pregnant, I have been in awe of what this body is capable of. Early on, I was just waiting for the miscarriage or for the 12-week scan to tell us something was wrong. However, as we progressed, things fell into place, and I somehow felt that everything was ok with her. I have this deep feeling that she will be a healthy baby and that somehow things will work out for the best.

If you are there thinking, “Oh, that must be nice, I am an overthinker”, trust me! I was, and still am, a very nervous, agitated person who overthinks and overprepares for everything. This came as a surprise.

This made me think that pregnancy is such an inward experience. For the first time, whatever goes inside you is more important than what is happening around you. This is where I realised we become disconnected from our inner selves as we go about our busy schedules, careers, social lives, and hobbies. Pregnancy makes you stop and look inwards; it makes you connect with a deep evolutionary reason for being alive. It made me connect with being a woman and a central part of creating life. I am not saying every woman’s purpose on earth is to have babies, but you can’t deny nature. I don’t know if this sounds too spiritual or weird, but this experience has been a beautiful way to connect with myself. I don’t know how I would feel if things got complicated, but I can only imagine the hurt that women feel when they miscarry because of this deep-rooted connection to creating life. I send you a warm hug.

It wasn’t all smooth sailing

I don’t want to paint this picture of perfection and being on a cloud whilst growing a baby inside me. I am sure the taxi driver who had to take his car for cleaning after my vomiting episode saw a different version of my pregnancy.

I had a lot of transitional weeks. I can only look back and describe it as times throughout ALL trimesters where I did not feel good. I vomited, I felt sad, I cried, and I was very tired. However, they lasted for 4-5 days, and they came around every month. It was not a constant bad experience. My guess is that she was going through her own growth milestones that required more of my body’s energy, both physical and emotional. I am currently going through one of those moments (34 weeks pregnant). I cried because the dog stole and ripped one of the baby’s mittens and had a meltdown over my husband's snoring. Not my best week.

I am a half-full cup type of person, and I do believe that changes a lot of my perception of this experience. One big mindset shift is that these episodes are normal and mean your baby is growing. Most of the time, we experience discomfort or pain, which comes with worry about worst-case scenarios, but only at this moment in our lives is it actually our body accommodating to another life.

Body image

I have always had a body image problem. Growing up in Eastern Europe does a lot of tricks on your mind, and for most of my life, I was at war with how I looked. Over the past 5 years, I have invested considerable time in improving this relationship, and I have reached a point where I love how I look and feel in my own body. However, for anyone who has experienced this war with their ownselves, knows that the fear of losing it is always there. Pregnancy was certainly one of those worries where I felt like I would put on 25kg and not like what I see in the mirror.

My body surprised me again; I have gained weight, but my face and body have not changed much. I am one of those people who stayed the same but with a bump. I am in complete shock. It just shows me how much at war I was with my body, how much I expected it to act at its worst, as I was not expecting that. I don’t know how I will feel postpartum, and I will definetely let you know, but my goals for this year are to approach it from a place of love and respect for my body. My plan is to make space to keep this relationship and this trust with my body, and no matter what it will look like post-partum, to learn to love it.

My husband

I am so privileged to have an incredible man by my side. The love he has shown me throughout these 9 months has been incredible, and my trust in him has increased considerably. We are very vulnerable whilst pregnant, so our senses are even more attuned to seeking validation and safety. Having someone who shows you that will change the experience of pregnancy considerably. Letting your partner know how your brain works is very important, as this experience is new to them as well. They might need to make a bigger effort to make you feel safe.

I believe it’s crazy that we meet someone randomly, be with them for a few years, and then create a human being from scratch together. That blows my mind, and with that comes a lot of insecurities about making the right choice. For me, this time has confirmed that I made the right choice, and I am excited to share this chapter with him.

My career

I have been working in Health Tech for close to 8 years now. Being a Nutritional Therapist has been my side gig for the past 4-5 years. I still have a full-time job, and I love it because I get to create digital products (mainly apps) to help people stay healthier. I have never felt the need to leave my full-time job because it aligns with what I love: helping people get healthier. I also associate a lot of my worth with my job and success. It’s also part of the Eastern European hyper-achieving mentality I grew up with, but I love it and don’t want to change it. Going into maternity leave and taking a step back from “achieving” and “progressing” scares me. I am a bit scared about losing my identity and my trajectory of success. However, part of the inward connection I described earlier also makes me feel that things will be all right. I really want to take my PCOS business to the next level and make this my next successful chapter in my career. We will see how that goes with motherhood, but my plan is to work on products that can help women navigate this condition more effectively, so your feedback will be an incredible support.

Giving birth

Well, well, well… she has to come out somehow, and there are only two ways.

I did not think about birth at all till I was about 28-30 weeks pregnant, and then I started panicking a bit because I had NO CLUE how to give birth to a baby. In this process, I actually recognised a strength in my character: I prepare, and I figure things out. I rarely sit in panic or sadness. Guess what I did? I started reading all the books under the sun and preparing: meditation, breathing, yoga, TENS machine, perineal massage, and I can keep going…Maybe I go overboard sometimes, but my way of coping with uncertainty is to prepare and understand the science and the truth. Do you see why I write this newsletter? I am sure you, who are reading this, share the same mindset, as you wouldn’t be reading this newsletter otherwise.

There are A LOT of traumatic labour stories out there, and selective hearing is probably a good idea. I am still slightly scared (I am sure this is universal), but I feel equipped with the choices and knowledge of how I will navigate birth. I will tell you about it, so we will see if this is a bunch of bull*** I am telling myself. So far, I am planning a vaginal birth and hoping I can cope with the pain to have an unmedicated birth. However, I am VERY OPEN and PREPARED to accept an epidural or a C-section at any point during labour. I don’t care much for having a perfectly natural birth, as I believe in medicine and its advancement. Whilst I hope this connection with my body allows me to do this as God intended, I am also perfectly aware that things go wrong, and we now have tools to make life easier.

I had the pleasure of speaking with a few women who loved their labour experiences, and one in particular echoes in my mind all the time. She said:

I would love to experinece labour and the first 2 months of my baby’s life. I have never felt more powerful as a women than when I was giving birth.

Connection to my baby

This is where I don’t know what is normal. I feel this deep connection to something, but I don’t talk to her or see her as a person yet. I somehow have more visions of her being a teenager than a baby. I am not a child person. I do not find them cute or interesting, even though I have noticed I find them a bit cuter in recent months. I don’t have negative feelings towards children, but I also don’t seek their company. Both my husband and I will be in the furthest corner possible at a kid’s party. This slightly worries me about how I will connect with her. Coming back to this intuition and trust, I think it will be an instinct to love her and feel connected to her, so whilst there is a worry, I am not overly concerned. I have already briefed my husband on postpartum depression symptoms, just in case I experience them.

I think this is it. I really hope this has resonated with some of your worries or thoughts. Overall, I don’t think pregnancy should be such a scary experience that women have to go through. I look forward to writing my birth story, and I hope it is as positive as this article.

Francesca