I'm A Pregnant Mess + I Have A Lot to Teach You
Babe, it’s been torture not being able to tell you until now, but here it is. The biggest news of my life and the second huge announcement of THREE this month…
I’m pregnant!!!
My husband, Rick, and I are blissfully excited to welcome our very first child into the world this late Fall/early Winter. The pregnancy was planned and we're crazy psyched about it!
Now that you know, let’s get into the nitty gritty of it, shall we?
You can prepare for pregnancy, but you can’t know what you’re going to get until you get it. And even if pregnancy is far from your mind (or you're a guy), I bet you'll be able to relate in some way.
We can prepare as much as we can for change, but when it comes, we're so often sucker punched in the face by the intensity or difference of it. Either there were whole areas we didn't consider or what we did consider wasn't what we thought it would be.
Today, I'm going to share a bit of my experience over the last few months to let you in on my mess, and how I worked my tools even when everything was out of my control. I'm hoping it'll help you when change next throws you for a loop!
What to Expect is NOT What You Get
You can read all you effing want about what's going to come your way and still not be prepared for it. I logically knew the things that might happen to my body. You know what I didn't know, though? How I would emotionally react to those things. Here's some of my bag of fun I've been through since March:
Morning Sickness
Bloating like WHOA
Acne worse than I've ever gotten it
Lactose intolerance (I've always been sensitive, but now it's full-blown!)
Aversions to foods I love (leafy greens, coffee *gasp!*)
Exhaustion. Like. REAL exhaustion.
Some of these symptoms have come and gone already (thank GAWD morning sickness left the building), but being so completely out of control with my body is brand new. Since coming back into recovery, I've done a lot of work on control, but man, does pregnancy have a way of showing you the deeper layers you have yet to reach.
Surrender has been my tool of choice through all the symptoms and unknown of being pregnant. I'm a big believer that there's something out there guiding me exactly where I need to go and that everything we're dealt is meant to help us grow as human beings.
When the unexpected hits, I flail a little bit, then I start looking for what I could be learning from it. The morning sickness gave me a profound sense of gratitude for my intentional eating skills. The acne is teaching me to love myself no matter what I look like on a deeper level. And the lactose intolerance is teaching me food acceptance and empathy for my clients who have strong sensitivities or allergies.
Always look for the lesson. And hey, it's ok if you tantrum a little about it first.
The Pregnant Woman I Wanted to Be, And Who I Am
I imagined that I'd be one of those calm, glowing, serene pregnant women, full of gratitude and super present through it all.Turns out that's not me.
I had no idea that pregnancy would take my anxiety to a level it hasn't been at in years. Looks like worrying about myself is under control, but worrying about a little human that I'm creating? That's a whole other bag of worms... or angry, ravenous, poisonous snakes.I'll be minding my own business, eating my lunch when BAM! the thought crosses my mind that I'm not supposed to eat what I'm eating. Cue: anxiety spiral of "I effed everything up."
What I realized is that I don't have the tools or knowledge to do this journey by myself, nor do I have the time to gain them. So I did like I told all my clients to do: I got help.
I hired a partnership of doulas mainly for emotional support, but also for their vast array of knowledge and experience. It's going to help so much to have experts at just a text away as well as understanding, compassionate women guiding me through the whole experience.
Even though my tendency is to bear down and push through it myself, I'm really challenging myself to reach out and allow myself to be supported. It's a challenge I recommend we all try.
A Cue to Heal Deeper
And here's the part I put last because I honestly am embarrassed and scared to share it.
Coming into this experience, I was really confident about how strong my recovery was. I still am, actually, but I got a cue to heal a little bit more thanks to a snafu at the doctor's office.Part of my eating disorder recovery is that I don't weigh myself. Every time I go to the doctor, I turn around on the scale and they don't read it to me. They're usually nice and understanding about it.
Well, something got mixed up at my very first appointment and my weight was shown to me, and it was shocking. Everything I'd read about what's "supposed to happen" came swirling like a hive of angry wasps into my head:
"Pregnant women don't need to gain weight in the first trimester."
"A healthy amount of weight to gain is _____."
And then there were my own, old, unrecovered thoughts:
"You've really let yourself go."
"Have you been this heavy the whole time?!"
"You're doing this wrong! You're gonna f**k everything up!"
When I got back to the car, I broke into uncontrollable sobbing. It was so intense and frightening that I made an emergency call to my therapist for support. Thank God she was free; she talked me through it for 45 minutes as I sat in the car parked on the side of the road. I haven't had an episode like that in maybe 10 years.
It scared me so much that it opened my eyes. WIDE.
I realized that there was this whole area of my eating disorder that I hadn't yet healed because I'd been avoiding it. I'm not saying that we should weigh ourselves. In fact, I'm still a staunch advocate for not weighing ourselves in normal circumstances. But, I believe I was dealt this eye-opener for a reason.
I've got work to do.Since that first appointment, I've been working with my therapist to be able to look at the number on the scale and detach my worth from it. After my most recent appointment, my husband and I discussed my weight on our own and I was ok with it thanks to the work I've been doing.
When I had recovered from it all and turned around to look for the lesson in all of this, it's that there's always more work to be done, and that's an amazing thing!
We're never done healing. Recovery is not something you just achieve and then coast; it's a changing, growing, deepening, alive thing that has the potential to teach us so much about ourselves if we are willing to explore it.
I'm grateful for that frightening incident because now I have the opportunity to heal this before my little girl comes into the world. I have the opportunity to choose not to pass this eating disorder on.
And that's really why I'm doing it all: for her. It was clear to me before I even got pregnant. Now that I am, it's not even a question.
Closing Thoughts
Change will always throw us for a bit of a loop, but it's the only way we'll grow and learn from it. It's ok if you don't love it at first. In fact, it would be weird if you did. What matters is that you understand how essential it is that we be exposed to the mess.
The mess shows us the work to be done...and reminds us we're resilient AF.
Without the mess, we would just coast along at our less-than-enlightened level of consciousness forevermore. How f**king boring.
We Health Heroes aren't here to coast. We're here to grow. To get stronger. To recover from everything we've been taught separates us from "good enough."
That's where the juicy parts of the life experience are! We only need to be willing to see beyond the mess to drink it up.
So here's to you making more of your mess today and in the future, no matter what comes along. You can if you choose it.
Love,
Amy and her bun in the oven
P.S. Announcement number 3 is coming at the end of the month and you better hitch your pants up high: it's a big one!