650. Becoming a Mother in 2020 and Settling into Motherhood

It’s 2021 already and many months have gone by since my last written update on how motherhood is going. I’ll explain why it has taken this long because I owe it to myself since I’ve been having this blog as a self recording public process space since 2008, it virtually holds all relevant details of my life and this process of essential change,  but for several months my oh so comfortable rug underneath me was suddenly lifted and I had to figure out what the hell was going on in the world while at the same time I was fitting my new shoes as a mother and finding out that the “far away” crazy lockdowns in china were suddenly going to  become our reality…. Then everyone going paranoid about the possible harms – Including myself of course – and having to now step up in this new living role while the world had gone absolute bunkers. It wasn’t easy, nope. It was quite the timing I would say to give birth and then suddenly as I was immersing myself in this whole motherhood thing, stuff in the world also grabbed my attention and, being who and how I am, I couldn’t just ignore it and sink into my own newborn bubble.

Looking back I like saying that this is all a blessing in disguise to all of us, a very much needed shake up to wake up to own who we really are. But, I will stick to the topic at hand and so, the story begins.

After my last blog where I shared about the first three months after giving birth, I went into a spiraling experience with regards to what was going on in the world with the whole covid crisis and trying to make sense of where we were and where this all was heading to. This is also a disclaimer on how some of my views here may not yet entirely be balanced out into an equilibrium of testing things out and sharing proven results from it. I will be sharing about decisions I’ve made based on my investigation – knowledge and information – yet, I decided to write about it here because, if anything it may at least open up someone to consider more beyond what may go usually unquestioned when it comes to the medical establishment  and what it has deemed as “care” for newborns and babies.

Many of our decisions and choices as new parents are based on fear or plain compliance to the norm. Part of my responsibility as a mother now is that I had to make informed decisions based on some of the – now in looking back at it – rather ‘usual societal pressures’ on supposed-health-care, such as constant visits to the doctor and getting babies inoculated with aluminum, mercury, animal dead tissues and so called inert “viruses” – read poisons- to apparently develop my daughter’s immune system because… everyone does it and doctors say so. Well, this simple question of “are we going to do vaccines?” Led me to an extensive research that crossed paths with the then ongoing speculation about the covid vaccine and it’s possible harms.

A disclosure here: I understand some parents have zero problems with following the vaccination schedule and their doctor’s orders and may disagree with what I have to say

It’s ok, not everyone will or has to follow this path yet it is my will to share about it since that is part of my living principles of doing what I can see and test to be best for all. Yet, I’m also aware of the social engineering process that has taken place for almost a century to prep people into never questioning what certain authorities sell as “safe and effective” measures for health and especially on newborns.

I will express however, how I can understand If someone else thinks otherwise. I’m no authority on any of these topics and I’m sharing about it because this is an important path in my journey to life, to make informed decisions in a way I can test out to see if that is indeed what I see is best and own that decision regardless of the outcomes, that’s just how I roll. If I find something that may prevent unnecessary shit in someone else’s life, I’ll talk about it and this is one of those things.

Enough with the apologies though!

I consider there is a way where we can step outside of name calling each other “conspiracy theorists” or “sheeple” and come together with common sense to investigate some facts about such proposed “medicine” and decide to walk a certain path to see whether those facts correlate to what’s supportive for an infant’s health or not. You know? Like real science used to do before covid1984.

I am aware that deciding to  not vaccinate our child sounds like experimenting with someone else’s health or even sound irresponsible to some – and that’s why I’ve taken my time to know what I was getting myself into by taking “an alternative path” of not vaccinating and being able to own that decision in whichever way that choice plays out, which for now I’m quite settled with as the best option.

My partner is fully vaccinated and he is probably the healthiest person I’ve known at a physical level, though there are some indices of him not being neurotypical and even if he doesn’t link that to vaccines, I reserve my ability to have a different view based on the research I’ve been doing on this subject. I have had some vaccines too and I’m alright – apparently – even though I have started to consider upon research how some chronic experiences having to do with throat and tonsils since I was a child may as well be related to vaccine injury. This is all conjecture but worth considering when it comes to the path we chose and that I am quite certain by now is the best and how the whole vaccination process is completely unnecessary and formulated within a paradigm that will soon be obsolete: germ theory.

I also understand that part of my “patterns” is to try to save others from walking through tough consequences or “preventing them from evil” type of thing and, that came up quite wildly towards my relatives these past months, until I finally realized I was trying to play savior with “my side of the story” which in fact, yes, stands as a polarity of what’s currently being embraced as truth by the majority of people with regards to the mainstream narrative around the virus and what not. I can also absolutely understand how I might be wrong and playing just the other side of the coin here and not seeing both sides equally, though for now this is my path, my understanding and it seems I will walk this as part of my self honesty and self creation, I including now the responsibility I have towards my child’s wellbeing.

See, I am aware how many of these points are hot topics that may contribute to the already ongoing polarization, but I’d like to consider there is a way to Still make informed choices and walk that talk in a self responsible manner without necessarily advertising it or trying to “convert” others to do the same, which I admit I do have a tendency to do and surely, that makes me another dictator just like the people we are currently “blaming” as the sources of imposing these limiting and nefarious measures, Not realizing that! They are us as well, we are all equally responsible for what’s here right now unfolding on Earth and I have no plans to try and “escape it” since many things might become inevitable and dare I say rather Necessary consequences for us to realize what the heck we have accepted and allowed our reality to become through our tacit or explicit consent.

Having said all this, there is also a necessary constant check of this current stance I’m taking and not making myself feel like “I know better” or “I’m superior” because of it, I’ve done that before within this process and surely, it has led me to plain isolation and alienation from others. I do see I have yet to moderate myself on these aspects and that it is Very easy to fall into the righteousness trap in relation to having a 1certain “position” around this.

Here words like consideration for others and humbleness to understand ‘where others are at’ are necessary, and this is where I see my Achilles heel  exists. Even my partner has explained several times how I’m just playing the exact opposite of what mainstream says and as such, I’m no different to that which I am criticizing and saying No to. And it is so, I can understand that view as well, but I still won’t be “doing as I must” when I am aware those are not best for all rules or decisions.

But! Haven’t we all done that anyways, always? Without a question? Yep! How about not questioning how money works and how poverty and starvation and disease are an Inside job and how we all could change it if we could agree to do so? Yet we haven’t and we keep complying to the value of our made out of thin air money and believe in its “almost divine” source as unique and not ever even flicker to consider things could be different for everyone. Yep! I have and still am doing that. It just happens that currently these – to me- absurd measures are now on our face quite literally and the rest of our acceptances and allowances are just an ever permeating seemingly dormant set of beliefs and interests we don’t really ever question.

This means that we had to get ourselves to this point, a breaking point as humanity to precisely wake up from slumber and perhaps that discomfort of not getting enough oxygen by wearing a mask for several hours a day, makes us question everything we have believed as “authority ” or “truth” or “right” throughout our entire “lives” – I hope so, in any case, this is not all in vain.

Well, looking back I’m grateful that opened up because it got me to understand a lot more about what we generally call viruses, the falsehood of germ theory and got to understand terrain or cellular theory, which actually makes a lot more sense since it places health as a self responsible act of creating wellbeing in one’s body, rather than falling into the current madness where people are believing that some invisible attackers are going to kill us or cause disease = there is zero self responsibility in such paradigm and that is why people indulging in wearing masks (within the belief of feeling protected from a virus while neglecting focusing on creating real health in their mind and body) are losing the sense of real responsibility in their lives, because of not understanding the greater plot of this all and just following the norms. To me, ignorance nowadays is a choice. Most people has a computer in their pockets and information on this abounds in the internet, yes, even if censorship is also rampant.

I won’t go into explaining all details or sources to what I just wrote above here, but anyone Interested is welcome to contact me to provide study material to understand what I’m merely describing in very general terms here.

Getting to understand and cross reference this all took me months – including seeing in real time my child’s first year alive – and they ran parallel to some rather uncomfortable months when it came to settling in with becoming a mother. In fact, I did probably get so absorbed by wanting to understand it all that I neglected my child. That is something I am ashamed of admitting but, it is the only way I can also get to confront myself and my priorities and decide to change that as a self honesty point in my life. What kind of neglect? It’s not that I didn’t feed her or attend her basic needs, but I was certainly disconnected from her, not really PRESENT which is something I had ‘tried’ working on during the first three months. I won’t be hard on myself though, as soon as I finished my postpartum quarantine, the world quarantine began and suddenly the world changed in a way I didn’t expect it would and as fast as it did. I was trying to make sense of the madness and I now know many others went through a similar experience, mostly people like me that want to keep abreast of world events and already know some of the plans laid out for humanity as a whole.

I share this is not to justify my lack of presence though, I would get too imbued into the searching and getting to ‘connect the dots’ that even if I was with her all the time, I wasn’t really Fully with her, I was processing and considering where it all was going to, and I also started understanding a whole new paradigm when it comes to health etc. Which was awesome by the way, since I had a tendency to ‘fear germs’ and with having a baby there’s this whole notion of having to ‘sanitize’ and ‘disinfect’ and ‘sterilize’ everything she eats from and touches on lol, so, by ditching that idea upon understanding terrain theory, I definitely liberated myself from that kind of ‘passed on’ information from previous generations which would have certainly added some extra paranoia upon the existing global one. The results? After a year of her life, she is perfectly fine!

But, I kept wanting to understand what was going on in the world and in the medical realm as a life or death thing – which in a way it is. I still had the benefit of her father being at home since this opened up during month 3 to around 7 of my child’s life that I zoomed into this whole information web and made it my focal point of attention. Yep, went through lots of info on several fronts from medical, to global politics, spirituality and re reading some of the Desteni material and audios on the topic, such as the viruses ones.

The outcome of that? Prolonging my process of actually settling in with doing what I’m now here to do which is to take care and support my daughter in all ways: Be a mother.

How did that go? I will not sugar coat it. I didn’t really develop a genuine or dare I say “natural” sense of what people can define as “love” for her until around her 6th month. Everything before that was a mere creation of habits and integrating care and attention towards her in practical terms. It is ok, I don’t judge the fact that I didn’t instantly “felt love” towards my daughter in the way I have known and seen – or was told – other mothers did or felt. I even recall my mother after many months saying ‘It’s the first time I see you smile.’ I did judge myself for this and have explained a bit of this in my previous blog. To me it makes sense that it took time to get used to her, to know her, to have a new being in our relationship and getting used to redefining “my life” now as a mother, yep, letting go of my old life and really settling in doing that extremely important job in the world and one that I feared the most: becoming a mother.

After her first 6 months, I started to experience more of what many might call “love” as a feeling, but to me it is more like me being able to enjoy more of my expression with her and towards her and this didn’t come easy at first as I’ve just mentioned. I just didn’t have that program ready to run the moment she was born, and it’s just how it was for me. And even if I had the most natural and unmedicated birth with immediate breastfeeding and keeping at it several times a day and having the fortune of not having to leave her to others to take care of her – as I continue doing- that “bonding” everyone talked about just wasn’t there or what I thought I had to be “feeling” –  which now I see is part of the things I had to completely shed off: the ideals, the stereotypes and anything else I’ve stored as “the way mothers feel and do.”

I realized each person has a very unique path and process in their experience and that is how it goes, we can’t possibly compare ourselves in that or to anything really. We can learn from each other for sure and that applies in terms of investigating all things and keeping what’s best. It’s also why I share my experience and it’s what makes our human experience quite rich and dare I say bearable too in knowing how others deal with things or how we process them. So, that’s how I currently do within this new phase and role I have as the mother hehe.

I’m here to learn to live the best of myself now as a “guide” and company to another new being in this world and it is a completely new experience that will always be unique to each one, and as with anything else, it stands just where it should as part of our individual process.

I share this because perhaps more mothers feel like “bad mothers” if they didn’t feel that “immediate bonding” with their child or start wondering if there is “something wrong with them” and who knows? Perhaps it was part of a post partum depression or in my case more like an extended quarantine plus not being able to satiate my thirst to understand what we were going through as humanity and at the same time getting used to and being there for my child 24/7 and being suddenly in a very slow paced life after my very active and “get stuff done” life and mindset. I knew this was my “pause” in life and that it was time to embrace it, but the world context didn’t make that entirely easy.

Let’s say it as it is, it’s hell of a weird time to be bringing a child into this world and many times I keep feeling like the character in the Italian movie “Life is Beautiful” where they make of the whole war and concentration camps a game for their child. Ok, we aren’t that far yet, but it certainly has already been a challenge for Minerva to get to be comfortable around more people and not knowing how to react because of everyone wearing masks and not being able to read people’s expressions. Sigh. It is just part of what she will have to deal with out in the streets – but we are also fortunate to have others on the same boat with us in realizing the importance of our children developing with some normalcy like being able to laugh and see each other’s faces and share hugs and be around each other without fear.

We were worried about her not getting enough social interaction with other kids and adults beyond us and my parents, but luckily during the summer we did meet up with other two families and have been seeing each other in the flesh regularly and it’s been great. I never appreciated social gatherings as much as I do now, and sure I guess we all had the same kind of experiences of craving social contact in times like these and now we do with more mothers and kids and that’s been quite a new phase for me as well of having something in common with new people and all of us craving social interaction for ourselves and for our children.

Back to the main topic here, to me it made sense that I simply had to get used to the whole life change over time and deliberately paving my way with living the words unconditional love and care. I also see that it’s easier to start bonding with your child once that they start to interact more with you and you get to see more of their expression when being with them, which is something that doesn’t really show when they are newborns and it’s all just diaper change, sleep, eat and carry around – or perhaps it was me that didn’t see the subtleties at the time due to the same shock experienced of becoming a primary caregiver to a newborn. Holy cow. AND! Then bam! Lockdowns, mass hysteria and people stopping to kiss and hug as usual – along with the rest of the paranoia that ensued in 2020.

So, overall,  I did question myself about me not having such “maternal flair” so to speak, but I realized this was just me trying to compare or fit into ideas of mothers I’ve seen around me. I kind of went… “F… It! That wouldn’t be me” and embraced myself as a mother, as how I wanted to be with her which is something I did by focusing on My expression  first around her and then, by default, my relationship and expression towards her unfolded in a more natural, carefree and genuine way. This was liberating and this is an ongoing process where even more so when being with others and my daughter I have to let go of feeling observed or judged etc. Because I’ve seen how this becomes the primary concern for mothers when allowing other voices, comments or opinions to become their guide to assess “how well they are doing as a mother” which is quite normal to go through for a novice in any job or position. And! Adding the layer of not doing what could be defined as normal or traditional parenting but going more into the current alternative routes that can be defined as radical parenting, so yeah! Not an exactly easy path in my context but! That’s just how we roll as a couple and now as a family, yay!

I decided to embrace me and my expression, how I decide to raise my child and owning it. That doesn’t mean being arrogant and not taking others’ words into consideration, but not immediately going into “panic” if I find out about something I haven’t been doing or considering.

To me and to us as a couple, Minerva is our parameter and if she is alright, growing well, healthy and being in general fine then, we’re going in the right direction. As simple as that.

I’ve been also learning to let go of some cleanliness attitudes because well! Babies! They eat and get everything all over the place and that is OK lol. So in general it’s been awesome to accompany her in discovering the world and watching myself to not become a control freak or impose something or do as others do – or did as my parents in their time and context did.

Instead, I practice learning to listen or see what she needs and being patient about her sudden desperation about things she wants and place myself in her shoes and understand her position of having everything be new to her and having no way to communicate with words what she is experiencing, that’s just some humbleness right there for me to learn.

Personally, I also had to let go of my antsy ways of wanting to “be productive” all the time and do a lot of “stuff” to feel like I am doing something or “getting somewhere”. Being with a newborn became a perfect excuse to test myself out with that and I kept my doings to the basic while still saying to myself it is ok and I can let go and enjoy the simplicity of the life we have, which I am quite content with actually.

Now she is one year and one month or 13 months old and I am more at ease and used to it all and more focused with what I’m here to be and do, which is to be a mother and raise a child within the context of – or upon the foundation of – being that change that I want to see in the world in one of the key areas in this reality to do so: parenting.

So, this comes from me as a person that many times tried to fit other people’s shoes, ideas and idealized version of people I thought were “better” or “greater” or more “normal” rather, and I only got to love being in my own skin when I embraced the uniqueness in me – which involves some weirdness or being not of this world like my partner says – that’s why he married me hehe. Sure! I’m Definitely not your regular kind of person here, but I wouldn’t want me to be any other way at all either.

One of the things I like about me is my authenticity and well, that’s what I’ve been around Minerva as well so, in the context of dipping my toes into motherhood. I didn’t fake attitudes when they weren’t coming from a genuine source within me, and I still check myself every time now that expressions of care are flowering like in spring so to speak. Little kisses, hugs, massaging, letting her know I care for her are now things I can genuinely say and do and it’s great! No faking and not asking anything of her either, all about me and my expression.

I’ve also been enjoying getting to know other mothers and having our meetings for our babies to be around other babies and kids and that’s been awesome too. Lol, I laugh because I never thought I would do things like that and hey! I actually enjoy it, even more so after this whole lockdown hysteria and finding people that are not paranoid or afraid to meet and share meals and spend time together, that’s been awesome and I’m really grateful for everyone I’ve met now as a mother.

It’s also been cool to be able to relate to for example my sisters as well as fellow mothers and understand them better from that common role and experience in life, and that’s something I’m grateful for because it has opened up communication about more in depth experiences we can go through as mothers, such as that idea and sensation that “we are not doing anything with our lives” and we might not be reaching certain financial or professional “success” and I’ve also opened up this whole topic in Spanish in my podcast here https://anchor.fm/encausarte/episodes/Encausarte-88-La-Maternidad-y-Poner-Nuestra-Vida-En-Pausa-el7qrh (for those that can understand) where I explain how we have been essentially brainwashed by currents of feminism and the ideals imposed of “modern women” that become successful business people or in certain professions and job positions that take up most of their time, while also raising kids. I don’t intend to judge anyone being a mother and being a full time working person here, but I speak from my observations on how it goes for the kids that don’t have their mothers at home because of work and how that eventually affects the whole of our society as well, based on the lacks these kids develop by not having their mother or both parents at home with them and barely get to BE with them. Its insanity and we have learned to see the staying-at-home mothers as “less than” those that choose to work.

Read me out though: Choose your priorities, because! We unfortunately do exist in a society and system where financial need does get the better of us and sometimes it is inevitable that both parents have to work to get to survive. And that simply obviously sucks. Let alone how it goes for single mothers, I honestly cannot imagine how hard it can be for them, yet, it is a very common situation as well and I would say isn’t ideal for anyone this way.

Here, a massively important topic opens up and that is MONEY. Because honestly, I don’t think many mothers would be that eager to work if there was a form of Living Income as an unconditional support for mothers that by the sheer outcome of having kids, requires money to survive – considering they are agreeing and willing to spend all their time with their kids to accompany that process of raising them and perhaps why not? Taking some courses and gathering support to become an effective father or mother if one has no idea of how to actually raise a child.

Here I’m also mostly talking about the essential first 7 years of age, but I’d even double that amount until the teenage years to have a solid certainty of having raised a child to the best of one’s ability to have them be a well grounded self responsible person that can make sound decisions with sufficient awareness and considering their lives as a contribution to the betterment of our society in every thought, word and deed. Not perfection reached by then! But surely being so in the making, as we all currently do in our lives within this Desteni Process.

I would not be able to be here pleasantly typing this while I breastfeed my daughter – that happens to also eat while sleeping-  if I didn’t have the financial support from others to do this. I don’t have to worry about going homeless or having to go to work somewhere to make money and leave my child with someone else, nor am I in constant anxiety about lacking my next meal and having an empty fridge has never been a problem to me. And nope this is not about feeling privileged, this is about the Russian roulette that exists as our current system and society where this is not something Guaranteed for every mother out there, and children, and fathers, and everyone else because, guess what? We all well know what would make us have a sense of security and support and have time to be the best versions of ourselves if we so decided to be so.

Becoming a mother has completely re-sensitized myself to consider and wonder “how other mothers do” when they lack the money and support from others to effectively care for their child? How would it be to have a child and having to breastfeed but not having even eaten yourself first!?

It really shocks me to what extent the whole world is able to be “lockedowned” in a matter of hours  for as long as it “apparently” takes to apparently “protect people” from getting Ill or dying – but we haven’t yet done anything similar to ensure that every single person alive is well fed and has a dignified living space – especially those with children! It baffles me, every single day to see the amount of money that goes to bs pseudo science and “studies” and f…ing so called “vaccines” – which should be called injectables btw- to apparently protect people from their own fear of dying while we haven’t realized that we don’t even know what it is like to truly be Alive! We don’t! If we knew, none of this absurdity and nonsense “rules” would be happening in the world because we would have learned how our bodies operate, how to best nourish ourselves, how to coexist with the environment and every single living part of it. We would have overthrown our so called authorities that are currently misleading towards a dictatorship because we would have learned to be self directed and be responsible for ourselves.

We would not be fearing a coming pseudo technocratic totalitarian governance because we would not have a reason to be told how to behave towards others or commit crimes against other ME’s for money, because we would have already cocreated a way to live our lives of mutual support and in consideration of the environment and other species that we share this realm with. These are just the basics to have a fulfilling Physical life, such as the principles embedded in the Equal Money System.

We wouldn’t be having a massive crisis of gender identities and races and nations, because we would be already living and loving others as ourselves regardless of skin colors, religions, nations, political affiliations or sexual preferences and we would all leave aside our individual beliefs to focus on that which makes us enjoy life and sharing our experiences with each other, learning from other, sorting out our messed up inherited world and create a common ground to thrive.

We would not be fearing to send our children to concentration-work-indoctrination-camps currently called “schools” because we would understand what it means to assist each child to reach their potential by facilitating the support they need to acquire the skills to become that which they want to develop and do with their lives! As an expression of themselves and not as a result of fear of survival.

We wouldn’t be worrying about the notion of a virus because we would have obviously understood the actual origin of these particles inside our bodies and as such, would not be fearing a part of ourselves as waste material that we simply have to learn to assist expelling out of our  bodies. I could go on and on, but you get the idea.

Right now the world is paralyzed in a fear of dying while we haven’t yet even begun to try Live and be self aware and know how our minds and bodies operate, let alone being able to properly assist a new being to do so for themselves.

I seriously hope more can see through the cracks of this current narrative and ask deeper questions like… why haven’t we all paralyzed our lives until every child is well fed and has a supportive environment to be raised in? Why haven’t we lockedowned the entire planet to install a new economic system that could assist us all to get our means to live well if we so choose to spend our time at home raising our children properly? That would change everything, but we don’t even think that is possible. We are too busy seeing who wins political selections or waiting for some panacea that will shield one from dying, apparently, disregarding the fact that many are too busy dying while alive in fear and failing to consider the play we are embodying until we decide enough is enough with our complacent roles.

Well I got a theory. Things will not get any better until we go to the root cause of it all and economic inequality and the lack of living principles are the points we need to focus on to start sorting this out. That involves getting to apply these tools of self investigation and self honesty as well, to see where and how we are actively contributing to the cocreation of this very evident delusion,  to truly rewire ourselves if we are indeed interested in getting to Live in the actual sense of the word in this world.

Well, this is how it goes with me. Even if this blog was supposed to be about myself and motherhood, I can’t play dumb or be oblivious to the times we are living in. I also understand this Is part of the consequence we have to walk through to finally – perhaps- get it, how hardship and troubles in this paradise won’t cease to exist until we sort out the root cause of our problems, which Is: ourselves, our self interest, our grand illusions that don’t consider what would be best for all.

Critical times we are living in and that also means it is an awesome time to be alive as well, because we are being forced to place the wheels of change in motion, finally moving along whether we are ready or not.

So, I want every mother to have sufficient economic, mental and relationship support in order to have everything necessary to be an effective parent. If we do that, if we made that our next goal as humanity along with an economic system that could cater it, we would witness the beginning of massive changes in our reality. Why not instead of fearing dying we start gathering to rethink the way we live among each other in this equally alive physical world? Sounds far more worthy time wise than living in fear of death and of each other.

Come on! Let’s let this all sink in and decide what we want to focus on and live. I’ve made my choice long ago, and for now I keep focusing on this very living present I got as an opportunity to contribute to this world change we want for ourSelf, because we are all it and the time is ripe to do so

For now, I’ll keep at it educating myself on how to best take care of my child, but also taking it easy around her and enjoying the lightness she brings to our day to day, the laughter, the enjoyment of the simplest things in life. I’m definitely keeping an eye on my spiraling into info worms and creating a balance so as to not go into extremes at times.

Thanks for reading

647. The Birthing Process: Patience and Perseverance

After we had made our decision to give birth at home, we continued to get educated on the topic watching documentaries and learning from other couples that had gone through the same process recently, which gave us further strength and trust in ourselves and in our capacity to do it. This is something I consider is very supportive for first time mothers, to get acquainted with other mothers to be and get a firsthand share of how the birthing process was for them. In my case, the pregnant ladies I met that gave birth during the time I was expecting, didn’t have favorable outcomes in their intent to have natural births, which did initially moved me in the sense of thinking ‘what ifs’ but, I have to thank my partner and the midwives that were able to explain why such complications took place so that I could see the reasoning behind it and so, not fear, and get myself back to trusting myself and my capacity to do it.

 

One interesting thing is how upon getting to meet our midwife Minerva and getting more informed, I became quite settled and tranquil within the process and fears dissipated, because I saw how much I had been brainwashed to see birth as something painful or terrifying even. And that was awesome as well, because then I wasn’t fearing getting to the delivery time, I had other resistances that played out as I will share here, which were of another kind.

 

So the story begins… It was January 14th, I had gone to my yoga class that morning and then had a family meeting to celebrate my father’s 70th birthday and I actually was feeling quite alright but already having some of what I had understood were the famously known Braxton-Hicks contractions, which interestingly enough I started noticing in a more defined way on January 1st. That same day at night, I was eating some left overs of the chocolate cake I had made for my father and one of those contractions came and I told my mother: ‘come and feel this!’ and she placed her hand on my belly and she was shocked by how rock-hard it felt and she was like ‘how long have you been feeling these?’ and so I said that I noticed them from the beginning of the year – actually on the 31st to be precise when we were at the movies watching Parasite, lol, Minerva really disliked that movie chair – and she explained how there’s this theory that 2 weeks after these contractions begin, well, labor also begins. I didn’t pay much attention and just said how this was nothing to worry about.

 

The midwife, Minerva, had explained to us how from the 11th on, anything could happen. Well, I was still kind of holding the idea that first time mothers deliver mostly close to the 40th week or even later, I was in the middle of the 38th and I thought I ‘still have time’ and actually was kind of being lax about buying some of the stuff required for the whole home birth experience. Actually on the 10th we were still going to shops to buy stuff and we were foreseeing to start packing and moving things by the end of that week… well, that night we came home and close to midnight I saw that the mucus plug came out. I kind of freaked out even though I knew this was something that would happen before labor started. I also held on to some information of how some women lost this plug and ended up having their child some 2 weeks later, I thought this was going to be my case.

 

I told my partner, I wasn’t feeling anything after that, so we went to sleep and all I can say is that in the middle of my sleep I was feeling this quite heavy or hard contractions throughout the night, but I kept sweeping them aside as if they were just the Braxton-Hicks ones and nothing serious, however the pain was getting definitely more than the ones I had felt the days before. So, it was at 4 am when I decided to wake my partner up and explain the situation and from that moment on, contractions started happening quite frequently. I downloaded an app to keep track of them and man, it turned out that they were happening every 10 minutes and then, gee, every three minutes! lol the app was telling us ‘you need to rush to the hospital right NOW!’ lol well I laugh because I also knew this could happen and how it didn’t mean that labor is starting ‘right now’ but I still called Minerva – our midwife – at 5 am and let her know about it, she simply said to keep her updated and let her know whenever we wanted them to come to the house.

 

I called my mother and she obviously freaked out because, yes, like me, we weren’t expecting this to happen ‘so soon!’ and my reaction was that of rushing and worrying how I didn’t get to have or ‘leave’ everything ready, I was still expecting to have some time left, some more days to go swimming or to my yoga class – yep! I had such kind of thoughts in the middle of these continuous series of contractions at 5 am on that Wednesday morning. But, in the middle of my disbelief, we started packing everything we needed to temporarily move to my parent’s house where the birth and my postpartum time would be spent.

 

By that time, I really thought that our daughter was going to come in the next following hours, but! what actually happened is that the contractions receded, they essentially slowed down in frequency, oh and I was also having some of the amniotic fluid coming out, but not entirely, so midwife explained how this was a partial rupture of the membranes, so that kept me ‘on guard’ so to speak as well because of having to keep an eye on that and ensuring the liquid remained clear- if not, that means attention, you need to go to a hospital soon.

 

To make the story shorter, contractions kept happening that day, sometimes an hour and a half would transpire before I had another one, sometimes they happened every 20 minutes, and that’s how most of the day went. At night, they spiked and so, I would wake up to manage them – because it’s not particularly nice to experience contractions while laying down in my experience – and my partner would assist me in every single one of them. We would sleep in between the contractions and to make the story even shorter, the same happened in the following two nights which means by the time I got to the day of giving birth, I have had four nights of really bad sleep with contraction pains… not cool, but that’s how it went.

 

The next day on Thursday, we got the first visit from the midwives after me telling them that contractions were still happening just not as frequently to call it an ‘active’ labor phase. So they came home, checked baby’s vital signs and did some acupuncture on me, some massaging and some rebozeo, which is a very traditional technique with what is called a ‘wrap’ in English to help the baby position herself better to give birth and also to assist with my hips and in general also to relieve some tension in my body. That was great, it all was aimed to ‘start the engine’ on the giving birth process. They explained to us how most women go into ‘activity’ at night due to some hormones, and so I was expecting that action would begin that night, but it didn’t. We had another long night with multiple contractions but nothing too painful to call it an active labor phase yet.

 

On Friday, both midwives came home again, this time they gave me a series of homeopathic stuff to induce labor and here comes the most interesting part, they also have a set of questions to check up on some of the emotional stuff that could be clogging or delaying the active labor phase. So when Minerva asked ‘are you ready to give birth to your child?’ My Ms. Correctness answer was ‘yes, as ready as I can be’ but my partner was like ‘hold on, that’s not true’ lol! Grateful for his ever bluntly honest perspectives and feedback because he then explained to me how I was still doing my work in the past days, how i was still doing chores and the ‘regular stuff’ and in essence not really focusing on the birthing process at all. I had to admit that was in fact true and how my sense of ‘responsibility’ was killing me because of not having ‘everything ready’ at the time and still holding on to that idea of myself having to ‘get to do everything’ and not really giving myself that space to realize: you are about to give Birth! How about focusing on THAT!

 

Well, that was my first point of admitting I was preoccupying myself with all kinds of stuff instead of realizing: it’s time, baby is about to be born. And then, there was some kind of question related to the end of pregnancy, and that’s where the nail was hit on the head as well. As the conversation opened up, I realized how pregnancy had become my comfort zone, I was feeling so well and was able to do ‘all of these things’ like going out and exercising and I was sleeping well up to the contraction-night time that I just kind of wanted to prolong that phase because, hey! it’s easier apparently, you don’t have to actually take care of the baby outside of the womb, don’t have to feed them or get to be awake at night, baby goes everywhere with me and I didn’t have to do a thing to care for her… this was my point of resistance and what also delayed my active labor phase.

 

It turns out that I was holding on to the pregnancy and as such, I was holding on to keeping the baby inside me, I hadn’t essentially let go and ‘detached’ in that sense of her. And, as I was sitting cross legged on the mat with my partner next to me and I started opening up all of these things about me ‘holding on to the pregnancy’ and having her within me… I seriously hadn’t realized this if it wasn’t for those questions that led me to find this out. And the moment that I said: “I need to let go, I need to detach” bam! The ‘water broke’ or the membranes were ruptured and liquid started flowing for real this time. I started crying, it was such a ‘magical’ moment, it seemed that’s what I had to realize, to really recognize this time as ‘this is IT! Baby is coming’ and in a way then also embracing that this was the end of this ‘sweet time’ that I made of pregnancy to be.

 

Was it the homeopathy, was it the talk, was it all of the above? I’m not sure or all of the above, but one thing led to another and so this time contractions continued ‘as usual’ throughout the afternoon and then around 10 pm at night on that Friday night, contractions really went up in intensity. I started experiencing them every 20 minutes and I kept tracking most of them. I am eternally grateful for my partner that would wake up with me and step out of bed in every single one of them throughout the night to assist me with coping with the pain, now that was some more intense stuff I couldn’t just ‘laugh’ through as I had done in the previous contractions. I had to be swaying from side to side holding his hand and holding myself from a piece of furniture that was in fact Minerva’s diaper changing zone 🙂 Well, once we saw that the intensity had reasonably augmented and that this time they didn’t seem to slow down in time, we called the midwives to let them know it was time to come home.

 

I still can’t fathom how we managed to do this, we would sleep some solid 20 minutes and like clockwork a new contraction would begin, then we would go back to sleep and so forth. By the time I kept track of the last series of contractions before midwives arrived at around 5 am on Saturday morning, I had logged in more than 235 contractions since early Wednesday morning when I started tracking them. God knows how many more I did on the rest of that Saturday when things got really intense and then we certainly knew it active labor time.

 

That Saturday is kind of fuzzy to me, time ceased to exist and I just remember having a lot of contractions, being on several positions, holding my partner’s hands in each contraction, holding the midwives hands when he had to leave to eat or go to the toilet. I was assisted with many natural means throughout the whole process, I had a heated bag of salt on my back to relieve the pain. I had homeopathy, aromatherapy, essential oils, massage, acupuncture all done throughout that day to assist with activating the process and relieving pain.

 

I was also able to eat whatever I wanted to, this apparently is a no go when going to a hospital. I had my aunt sending me some chicken soup and I even ate a bit of a hamburger throughout that day lol along with all the usual nuts and seeds that I eat, dried fruits, lots of electrolytes and a natural mix of lemon, salt, baking soda and honey to hydrate myself. I had some really rough moments where I thought

I wasn’t going to make it, I felt like fainting, I hadn’t slept in the past 4 nights and I was in pain. I got a tact done by Minerva and got to know I was half way dilated, there was progress, yay, but still had a long way to go. After some more hours of constant contractions, I got another tact done and voilà, I was fully dilated, yay, but I was exhausted.

 

This was a crucial moment because the birth tub was getting filled with water but there was a general concern to use it or not, because as much as water helps to relieve pain, it can also slow down the process and ultimately take it to a halt if one gets ‘too comfy’ in the water. Well, I decided I wanted to do it anyways and give it my all to make it work.

 

Now, entering that birth pool was a heavenly experience to me, seriously, I don’t know what I would have done without that water embracing me in that moment, I am grateful for having chosen this method of giving birth, which also btw can only be used once that one is totally ready to give birth, so it’s meant to be used for a short period of time, but! in my case, I spent more time in it than expected because, It did happen that things came to a halt at some point, I lost focus, I was really tired and I had to essentially be ‘re-focused’ to it through a guided meditation, to essentially give myself the necessary awareness of how close I was to giving birth now and how I had to gather my strength to do it. At this point I was really in pain, I was screaming out loud with all of my lungs and I was also continually directed to refocus it, to not go into the ‘pain’ experience but to channel that through vocalizing it, with my whole body instead of just ‘screaming out of pain’ type of thing.

 

Something else that I got to actually take as a big lesson in all of this is how I am not entirely IN my physical body, meaning aware of how every muscle works and how to direct my body in fact when it comes to something like giving birth where I couldn’t really focus on pushing as such where I needed to push; instead, I would tense my whole body and that of course only prolonged things once again. This was getting everyone’s nerves to the top, to be honest, I could see everyone’s face how they could see the baby’s head and I even was told to stick my finger up to feel her head and I couldn’t believe that ‘this was it’ that it was in fact Minerva’s head, I thought it was some trick to keep me in good spirits and keep pushing, lol, but it was in fact so that she was only a few centimeters away from the outside. Well, those few centimeters took a couple of hours of constant pushing for her to actually come out, yes, it was intense and by that moment I was having contractions like every minute or god knows how often, all I remember was having a contraction, holding my legs up so that Minerva, the midwife, could do some aid with her hands to have the baby come out and then I would go back into the water and drink electrolytes. Yep, I ended up drinking like 5 bottles of it that day, all definitely needed because, I was truly in that marathon experience I had considered it would be, only with some ‘extra’ days added of relative hard work.

 

I was getting desperate by the very end, I kept pushing and everyone kept saying how close I was but the baby wasn’t coming out. I have to admit I said – almost at the very end – I give up, I can’t do this anymore. In that moment, my mother stepped up and reminded me how this was definitely not the time to ‘give up’ lol and how I had to give it my all. She actually had to directly explain to me how to breathe and direct the force of that breathe to push the baby out. It turns out I just wasn’t really ‘connecting’ with that innate way that women have to give birth, it turns out my intellect, my rational mind has more of a hold of me to the point that I wasn’t really surrendering to the process. And that was in fact one of the key words that also assisted me to finally give birth, to surrender to it, I was still trying to ‘manage’ the pain by tensing up my body throughout the contractions, instead of giving myself to it, surrendering to it, offering myself to the process so to speak, fully opening myself up. And that’s something that I finally did in those last moments of pushing when I gave it my all, it didn’t matter anymore if all of my insides would come out in that moment, I just wanted Minerva to come out and end this whole marathon for myself, for her and for everyone that was there and not there that were also stuck to their phones trying to find out any news about the birth, making their prayers and sending me good vibes essentially for everything to go well.

 

The moment came when I did one of those gargantuan efforts to push and with Minerva’s hands as aid, the head was released from my birth canal and a fraction of a second afterwards the whole body just came out like a torpedo in the water. I couldn’t believe myself and as I type this, I still can’t fathom how that was possible. My partner was in tears throughout the last phase of the process because he was seeing how much I was in pain and suffering, but I kept calm in that sort of trance that one goes into when giving birth, I can’t honestly recall if I cried at some point, I probably did, but the moment that Minerva came out it was just this giant relief, because I was just about to be ‘out’ when it comes to lacking energy to do another effort like that.

 

She was finally here, on my chest, spewing some phlegm out and mustering her first crying. I recognized the feel of her vertebrae because it was the same I would feel on my womb, I said how I was glad she was finally here, but I was mostly ‘out’ of myself by that moment. Giving birth to the baby doesn’t mean it’s over yet. Next came the placenta and I wasn’t ready to have more contractions for it to be delivered, I wanted to have some ‘rest time’ lol, but it didn’t quite happen, after some 20 minutes I had another big contraction – though less than the actual final delivery moment – and the placenta came out also with quite a force.

 

The next thing was to step out of the pool, which I didn’t want to do, but it was something I HAD to do since I was already at a very weak state and staying there was only prolonging getting back to the regular pressure of the outside and getting some actual rest. While the midwives and my partner were helping me to get out of the pool, Minerva was carried by my mother, a very happy grandmother that got to carry her first while still connected with the placenta that was kept in a crystal container next to her, that was definitely something new to her for sure as well.

 

As I went out of the pool, I felt the weight of gravity, I felt like the air wasn’t enough for me, I felt pain just everywhere and as I was walking next door to the room where we would be sleeping, I was ‘gone’ for a second. This was very creepy for me as well because that moment where I essentially ‘fainted’ seemed like an eternity for me. I was awaken by Minerva with the words ‘Marlen, wake up, you are here and now’  with a very direct voice and as I opened my eyes and saw her face, it’s as if I had been born myself again, like having that fraction of a second recap of what had just happened ‘Oh god, I just gave birth, Minerva – our daughter – is here, I made it, we made it’ and then after a few steps, same fainting happened and was brought back instantly again with their ‘magic’ lol – and I was awaken.

 

This is significant, this is something that happens to women where there’s like a really big shock after birth, and sometimes there’s this unconscious desire to just not wanting to ‘wake up’ to the new reality of having a child, of becoming a mother, of now having to take care of a child. I do see some of that in my case considering how I had interestingly enough placed ‘the birthing process’ as some sort of an end-goal, instead of taking it as the beginning of a new phase in my life that it actually was.  Fortunately, I am alive to tell, lol, it’s not like I was dying, it felt like a rebirth certainly, a new phase of me and my life of which I still had to go through some more ‘mourning’ because, I hadn’t really placed too much attention into ‘what’s next’ after the baby is delivered… yep, that is correct and so the next phase came with the challenges that emerge when one is stuck with the heroic feeling of ‘delivering the baby’ and forgets about actually taking care of oneself mentally and physically for that which starts right after the baby is out.

 

Fortunately enough due to all the labor done, colostrum came out with ease and Minerva started sucking it up right away with all her might and strength which has characterized her from the moment she was in the womb 🙂 We had a very special moment to cut the umbilical cord, a little ceremony to release her from the placenta that had given her all the support she needed to be born alive and well, which I ended up also consuming right after giving birth  in a milkshake as well as taking it in pills throughout the quarantine to take some of those nutrients back into my body – and some other medicine that was made from it as well as the actual dried placenta, which serves as an aid to restore tissue in any kind of injuries in our bodies. Well, I share about this to be aware of all the benefits of using the placenta, instead of perhaps leaving it to the hospital where they most likely sell it on the black market to companies that make some ‘stem cell’ health or beauty products. Own your placenta, women! I learned to be thankful to it in realizing the essential job it has to keep my child alive in the womb.

 

Once the cord was cut – with an obsidian knife by my partner – I was just wanting to rest, and there is nothing like being able to get out of the ‘birthing room’ – as we now call the TV room hehe – take a few steps and be in bed at the comfort of your own home, not having to deal with any other ‘hassle’ of measurements or vaccines or lousy treatments for the mother or the baby, just pure skin to skin contact with myself and with her father. I ended up sleeping afterwards and my partner slept with Minerva on his chest that whole night. That is priceless when it comes to the first hours after the baby comes out of the womb, to have the warmth of her parents as a bed to sleep on, no need for separate beds or incubation.

 

The next day, I was feeling ‘really well’ like surprisingly well – all things considered in terms of all the postpartum aches and bleeding. I sure would get the usual contractions while breastfeeding and bleeding quite a bit as is normal after giving birth, but I felt well, perhaps some of the hormones still having an effect on me at that time that I kind of ‘forgot’ to eat well, I ‘forgot’ to sleep more during the day. We were just ecstatic about the whole odyssey that the birthing process had been, we were just happy to see Minerva alive and well and have her in our arms and I forgot to do those very basic self-care points even if people offered them, I didn’t quite ‘realized’ that I had to be WELL fed and rested to be there for my child, to feed her, to take care of her.

 

Minerva was born at 6:35 pm on Saturday January 18th, and I went to bed at around 11 I think. The next day I didn’t sleep throughout the day, I have had some bad nights of sleep the previous days but I didn’t seem to care, until the second night where I felt the effect of staying up several nights and I felt so weak that I was losing it, like closing my eyes and perceiving I was going to ‘leave’ type of thing, it was scary for myself and my partner who didn’t know what to do in the moment other that telling me to go to sleep while having a baby that craved to eat but still wasn’t having enough of what she was demanding at the moment, so that was a stressful time for the three of us and got to learn the lesson: I have to feed myself well enough, I have to rest well because I am now feeding my daughter and I have to take care of her and so, I have to be well for myself to be there for her as well.

 

I share this because, it may happen that someone overlooks this kind of basic things and one can prevent such ‘overdrive’ by learning from others’ experiences as well.  After that, I made sure I eat more than the usual because I am breastfeeding Minerva, also resting well even if at times it is hard for me to go back to sleep after feeding her at night, since I have ‘programmed’ myself to ‘wake up’ and be fresh like a lettuce quite easily upon opening my eyes, but that means I start my mind and brain’s engine and then it’s hard to fall asleep again, even if I’m tired, so I’m still practicing breathing at night to be able to sleep. I’ve never had any problems to sleep at night, but I definitely have a hard time going back to sleep in the middle of the night, and that’s been a bit of a challenge because, Minerva is actually really calm, she wakes up at night, eats and goes back to sleep, there’s really no hassle with that, but it’s all now on me to be able to go back to sleep in fact and perhaps it has to do with my constant ide of “having stuff to do” which is also a form of anxiety I have to work with and will share more about in time.

 

Well, up to there the birthing process odyssey. I am entirely and eternally grateful for the two midwives that assisted us – Minerva and Maria Luisa – who were some genuine pillars of support throughout the whole process with their strength, courage, bravery, wisdom and essentially coaching me throughout this journey and life changing moment – a rite of passage in fact – which was giving birth to Minerva and me becoming a mother. Omg, yes it took me some days or perhaps a week or so to actually ‘change the chip’ in my head to realize ‘I am a mother now’ lol, but I’m getting better at it 🙂

 

We are also eternally grateful to our family and friends that were in spirit with us in that moment. We decided to only have my parents present in the birthing process, so my sisters and the rest of my relatives waited some days or weeks to visit us to meet Minerva, which we appreciate in them understanding this decision, giving us time before coming to visit, which is also different from how things usually go when having a baby delivered at a hospital and everyone comes at the same time. This was also something different we did to give ourselves a space to recover and get to know Minerva as well since it is quite a new thing to enter that parenting phase right after the birth process, which I will expand on in blogs to come.

 

The current aftermath is that I recovered quite well and I’d dare to say, surprisingly fast. This is from my experience and doing some constructive comparison to my sisters for example with c sections, I was back on line so to speak with ease. I sure was drained for a week or so to catch up on some sleep and eating more than well too. But I then was fine, had no complications thankfully, so I’m grateful to my body and the organs, tissue and bones that were involved in this process, well, the whole of my body actually. I’m currently quite fine and almost the same as before the pregnancy, which is awesome and another proof of how natural processes take in perhaps most cases less time to recover from.

 

I may also add I was glad I got to do exercise and get a better physical condition during the pregnancy because! It was definitely like a marathon that I experienced and I’m not sure I would have been able to deliver this way without building some physical condition to withstand the amount of effort I had to put in this whole ordeal. However again, I’ve heard of stories of women that don’t really do any physical training and get to deliver with ease, so nothing is set in stone, as I was saying, it all depends on our bodies and getting to know ours is a primary thing to do in any case.

 

Thank you for reading if you got up to here. I wanted to share this as close to the reality as possible to perhaps assist other women to realize that labor, the birthing process can be lengthy, yes, and that there’s no reason to be alarmed and be rushed into hospital if it’s been one or two days of ongoing contractions and nothing happens… it actually takes patience and perseverance to get it done in a natural way without any artificial ‘accelerators’ like artificial oxytocin that’s given at hospitals, which make contractions feel a lot more painful and accelerates the whole process because there it is about hospital time and doctor’s time. In my case, I’m almost certain no hospital or doctor would have had the patience I needed to give labor in a natural way, I probably would have been induced at the first signs of having contractions and most likely citing al kinds of risks (not real in fact) about losing amniotic fluid, having the umbilical cord around the neck (which she had as well) or being too big to fit and probably doing an episiotomy – when in reality I was able to deliver without any tearing 🙂

 

Thus it is also relevant to realize how a lot of the “complications” that may be commonly cited by doctors “at the last minute” while being at the hospital about to deliver – a very, very vulnerable moment for the woman – might just be the usual tricks and ways to get you to agree to “speed up” the process or “just get over with the pain” so as to consent to get a C-section instead. Again, this is in cases when the woman is fit and healthy to have a natural birth and had planned or desired to have a vaginal delivery, which takes time, patience and perhaps not many have it when it comes to, say, 4 days in passive and active labor like I did.

 

Here I also want to say that it is OK if one wants to instead go to the hospital if one doesn’t feel like doing it ‘al natural’ anymore, or if something goes off in the body or if one is seriously too exhausted to make it. It is OK as well to have moments of rest and just keep at it and trust that things will be alright with proper monitoring of the situation of course – like keeping track of baby’s vital signs etc. I have learned how for some women it can go as fast as a couple of hours of labor and having an easy delivery s well, each body is unique and so different and this is then my story with most of the variables that influenced the outcome, so it is definitely not something to measure anyone’s birthing process against.

 

This is a tale to perhaps encourage women considering natural births or perhaps prevent having to be ‘rushed to get a C-section’ for those that do want to have a natural birth or just have unnecessary procedures done onto themselves. Know that there are ways, even with the umbilical cord on the neck or any other seemingly inevitable obstacle. So, consider questioning your practitioner or midwife about any possible obstacles or complications and how they handle them, so that you are on top of things and are aware of every decision made in your birthing process. It’s your body and your child’s wellbeing, so, be aware and use your ability to decide How you want to give birth wisely.

 

I can lastly say that I am humbled by the whole experience. I was able to see how much I have yet to really BE my body, which is something I want to continue focusing on developing. And at the same time, I am humbly proud of myself for this, I turned one of my ‘greatest fears’ into a successful self-empowerment story, and may I say: this is just the beginning 🙂

 

641. Early Stages of Pregnancy: Doubts, Fears, Worries and Getting to Own the Decision

 

 This is a long overdue blog, but there are a couple of reasons why I wanted to write and share about it once that there were certain points ‘in place’ for me to openly do it. This is about the most important decision I’ve made and am still actually learning to walk in my life and to get to a point of owning it, which will mean stepping into a new phase in my life, stepping into ‘the unknown,’ into what throughout most of my life had defined as ‘the most fearful thing’ I ever could think of doing – or the ‘biggest fear’ that I could name whenever anyone asked me ‘what is it the think that you fear the most?’ and one that I thought myself to be quite certain of when it came to ‘saying no’ to it – and yes, I even may declare myself as a ‘culprit’ for having also at times attempted to discourage people from doing, since I also went through a phase where I considered overpopulation was ‘the problem’ in our world – and not the nature of who we are and so ourselves being the solution, not the ‘quantity’ – but, I’ve learned my lessons and have given myself the chance to evolve from such limited mindset that was part of some brainwashing I went through when being a ‘concerned teenager.’ And yes, I truly thought that it wasn’t going to be something I’d have to go through in life.

Well, as always, Life says ‘here I come’ and change knocks at your door and….! I am now four months pregnant (!) and the idea of bringing a child into this world with the best person I’ve known and have had as a partner is an idea that is now sitting quite well within me and I am embracing more and more as days go by, where there is actual joy and gratefulness emerging as we continue to establish the foundation of who we are individually, what we would like to provide to our child and the benefits that we can create for a new person coming into this world, for ourselves and better so, for society and the world at large… but! This wasn’t my immediate experience and it’s been a process to get to that point – I’d say it still is – so this will be about sharing the experiences I’ve been having throughout these past months.

First of all, I didn’t want to share how fearful I was and still not having walked through those fears in a way that could be supportive for others to read and possibly learn from. So, this will be a detailed explanation of what I went through when finding out I was pregnant and being open about the fears that emerged, the uncertainties, the comparisons, the prejudices that yes perhaps I didn’t even dare to confront within myself, but that I deeply experienced and had to eventually work through within myself with the support of others to as well to it, which otherwise would have probably made this a lot tougher.

I found out in May 22^nd that I was pregnant with a simple pregnancy test. I had my suspicions since I’m quite regular with my period and there was already like a 3 to 4 day delay, and there were other unusual ‘symptoms’ that I wouldn’t get in my regular period. This is not my first ‘am I pregnant?’ type of ‘scare’, but this time I was doubled-troubled about it, I feared it more than other times if it turned out that it could possibly be a ‘yes.’ Somehow in the back of my head I kept the idea of ‘possibly’ perhaps, maybe, somehow having a child later on, but interestingly enough somewhere last year I had made a very ‘clear’ decision to not go into the ideas of having a child – at least for now, or so I thought! Lol. Even though being honest, the thought did emerge based on the relationship I have with my partner, but then I simply went into a more ‘rational’ view that included certain fears about finances and being able to provide for a child up to the time they are  capable of supporting themselves. Yep, since then the money concern emerged as well.

But I have to backtrack a little bit because the whole context of myself throughout this year is quite interesting to look at in what I now see almost as a ‘preparation’ of what would come almost in the middle of the year. I decidedly started the year with what I have defined now as a healing and self-creation process, which involved walking the decision to support myself to work on some points that I had just been dragging around and that could ‘possibly’ be linked to causing some health issues – which were actually intermittently happening throughout the past year – and I decided to look for alternative ways to support myself instead of only resorting to taking medicine and hoping that I ‘eradicate’ it that way. In a ‘shout out’ to get support,  I took the offer from my fellow life-processer walker and sharp-eyed friend Leila to have a Life Alignment session with her for support, and I would say that such session at the end of December of last year  turned my life around for good.

 Leila’s support and session assisted me tremendously to become aware of certain patterns I was still defining as ‘having to carry them’ to finally come to understand, forgive and let go of them, which were most likely the emotional issues causing the consequences I was facing at a physical level. Through opening up all the points that came up in that session and taking the route of the suggested alternative support, I was able to open myself up to a healing phase and at the same time, to really step into a point of self-creation that I had kept ‘on hold’ because of, in a way, still ‘torturing’ myself with the past and not really forgiving myself completely.

So, from January on after that session with her, I visited a regular doctor to find out what I had – which yes had to do something with the reproductive system – and decided to go to alternative therapies to assist with the healing and body balancing process, while knowing that there were very clear points I had to work with and process emotionally as well, which I did as well and it definitely turned my life and inner presence around as well. I started taking Qi Gong classes which I definitely enjoyed, as well as getting to hear these other two alternative medicine specialists on ‘my case,’ which assisted me a lot as well to have that understanding of how I created my own symptoms and recurrent illness – and in a way, reinforce the perspectives that I had been ignoring: being able to self-forgive and let go. Yep, at times we can be stubborn in believing we have to ‘hold on’ to something as some kind of ‘pay for the sins’ – not recommended at all, folks.

I started focusing on what I wanted to create and do this year. I started working on developing a workshop related to developing self-introspection and self-creation through the creation of art. Here my friend and terrific Life Coach Joe Kou assisted me personally with grounding these plans and projects, along with my workshop partner to ground and refine this project we had and getting to define what we wanted to actually give to do and provide to others. I was quite excited about the whole process and I’m still grateful for everything that I got to learn and – most importantly – get to define for myself in terms of ‘who I am’ in my ever ‘doubtful’ type of relationship with art. The project may be on hold, but I’m quite certain that all of these talks with Joe also assisted me to tap more into my personal potential and getting back in touch with my creative capacity again, lol, perhaps the creative capacity emerged just in a ‘slightly’ different way, lol.

I consider that all of these initiatives to support myself and the changes that I embarked myself on at an internal and external level – like setting myself into a point of self-creation and ‘breathing life’ into myself again, gaining a new perspective on life – contributed to ‘opening the gates’ to something else that I had not necessarily planned or expected, lol. Interestingly enough all the alternative support I had was also focused on getting my reproductive organs and general hormonal system balanced out. I also did some changes in my diet, but I still had some deficiencies like feeling sometimes very weak and so on. Interestingly enough, I actually didn’t want my ‘next period’ to come, because of the last massive blood loss I have had, and what would I know? That such period never came… Lol! Well my body is wise after all.

So back to the point of finding out ‘the news’ and how this time around I felt very different to go and get that pregnancy test, I was actually fearful, I even got a bit pissed on the way back from the pharmacy which is a pattern I ‘thought’ I had already ‘nipped in the bud’. I recognize that I was simply quite fearful. Well, I came home, did the test and hoped that the faint line that appeared was simply a mistake, that it wouldn’t mean a POSITIVE result. See, I actually thought I was having some delays because my body had been quite wonky in the past weeks prior to my ‘period date,’ or I thought that all the homeopathy and acupuncture sessions would be destabilizing my period a bit, but it wasn’t like that. I asked Leila about it and well yep, she let me know that even if the line is faint… it is a YES. Lol, I had not read the pregnancy test instructions properly either it seems, since I later on read that was a common thing to happen even if it was ‘very faint.’

I called my partner right after I found out. I was quite shocked and didn’t know what to do, it’s almost as if I just wanted to ‘go back in time’ and avoid it all. We decided to talk it out at night when he came home. And his response – as always – is that of taking absolute responsibility and supporting me in whichever I decided. Yep, this was tougher in a way because he said he would be ok with whatever I decided – to have the baby or not – because of me being the one that would actually go through the whole physical process of birthing the baby, and yes understanding the role of the mother in it all. He stood firm in his disposition for whatever I decided, because he simply wanted me to be ok with it.

But, as he explained this, I saw that I just didn’t have it in me to say ‘no’ to this – and his calm and assertiveness to receive the news definitely gave me an example of how one doesn’t have to ‘freak out’ as one may expect.  This is where the notion suddenly hit me: a new LIFE is taking place now in your body as we speak and this is not a matter of chance. This is a result of me also having a relationship with my partner and acknowledging that, ultimately, there’s always that chance of getting pregnant even if there’s protection involved. And at the same time, I knew that it was only what I in the moment called ‘the worst of me’ that would say ‘no’ to it, which were a bunch of fears, self-definitions, comparisons, self-doubt and general uncertainty that would prevent me from saying ‘YES, let’s do it’. In other words, I knew that only ‘the worst’ part of me – or the weakest one – would say ‘No,’ because everything else can be worked out, like in terms of finances which was one of my biggest ‘fears’ around the idea of having a baby, but that has also changed as time has progressed and we’ve both opened up this point and I am very much learning from what I could say is more like my ‘partner’s process’ which has everything to do with entrepreneurship and financial education – which actually also touches on very similar principles that I’ve walked on for these past 11 years.  Money hasn’t been my ‘forte’ but I am learning a lot from how my partner currently approaches it, therefore I am learning to not only see fears and lack in my relationship with money, but rather learning HOW we can make things work and genuinely decide what is of real value, which we both agree on is not a ‘ton of material things’ in that sense, but rather seeing the actual wealth there is in the education that we can provide for the child as well.

Before this moment condensed into a reality, I actually have had a dream on April 16^th where I would realize I was pregnant, and it felt extremely real, or dare I say ‘frightfully real.’ I would think something like ‘Oh oh! I’m pregnant, this is actually happening’ and I would kind of move to making a decision about it and I would think to myself: ‘Well, I guess it’s time to grow up now’ And my presence and nature would be that of embracing it, of actually accepting it and being ok with it. Only afterwards did some financial fears emerged about ‘how I would go on about it’, which I guess is one of the most common fears that emerge whenever you start planning to have a child or are already pregnant. I woke up from that dream and said  to my partner ‘I had a nightmare! And proceeded to share what the dream was about, Lol! But I let it go and didn’t make much of it.

So once that we were discussing about the pregnancy that night of the day we found out, I remembered that dream and how I had afterwards assessed that it had been ‘the best part of me’ that had stood up in the dream to be ok with it, accept it and embrace this maturity or new phase and ‘letting go of the childish me’ so to speak, which I know is also quite the problem in my generation, which involves not really wanting to take responsibility for ourselves, and ‘worse off’ not for any other either.  I also knew that in a way I was holding on to this belief that I had always said to everyone when asked about wanting or having kids and always saying ‘No, no, no… Me? No! that’s not for me, I won’t have kids. That’s the most important decision in life and the most important job in the world, and I respect parents a lot, they are really brave, hat’s off, but that’s just… not for me.’ But deeply inside knowing this was in fact cowardice and so in a way I realized that the time had come for me to face one of those ‘greatest fears,’ which I opened up about – to a certain extent – to my partner.

There was a sense of responsibility as well but also of understanding how I just was very scared of assuming now my decision and responsibility. I can definitely say that such discussion was assuring for me from the perspective that he assisted me to dispel some of the most immediate fears around money, about ‘not being capable’ of doing this and rather seeing the possibilities and how this kind of challenges would actually support us to grow more and to give ourselves another purpose to our lives together and in our personal development. I realized later on that, as he said, this was our chance to actually create some change in the world, which it certainly is. I’m glad as well how this is something I came to understand some years ago where I went from seeing kids as ‘a burden to the planet’ to more like the opportunity actually change the current state of affairs in humanity over the generations, and what a better way and opportunity to do so than with being able to raise a child.

At that moment I decided to say ‘Yes, let’s do it’ but it wasn’t a FULL decision made with the wholeness of my being. I still had the fears, the uncertainties, the fear of losing the baby in those first 3 months of gestation, the fear of going through problems that would not enable the proper development of the child, fearing that my body wasn’t ‘fit for it’ yet, etc. These fears plagued my head for weeks – and yes I accepted and allowed it. I knew that I had said YES and went on with it, but a part of me was simply fearing that ‘it would not happen,’ that my body was not ‘at its best’ to be carrying a baby. I also feared letting go of the plans I had recently created, I feared letting go of the ‘ME’ that I’ve known and the idea of just having to ‘do what I please’. Yep in essence, I did go through a mourning process in a way of having ‘my plans’ changed and then at the same time not having anything certain yet – nothing is, still – but in my mind at least it is now ‘safer’ to say that I am pregnant because of the amount of time that has transpired and because I’ve seen the baby developing really well in the womb J Who knows, yes anything can happen, but then I also walked another point that I will describe later on in terms of not being defined by the outcome, but walking a decision regardless of it.

So for me in general, finding out that I was pregnant, that WE are going to be parents and bring a human being into this world wasn’t immediately met with enthusiasm, happiness,  joy and jubilee – as I had perceived ‘I should have done’ but why? Because of my fears, mostly of the pregnancy actually ‘not sticking,’ of my body not being ‘fit’ enough to develop another life within me, not having ‘what it takes’ to bring a child into this world. These were mostly the fears that became an incessant type of doubt and uncertainty throughout most of the first weeks. And the fears then sparked up more and with some pains I had that demanded me to be ‘taking it easy’ most of the time and minimize my activity – like barely going out for 3 months – and then on top of that the nausea started kicking in… I just felt like in a limbo. That’s all I could say to my partner for some weeks ‘I feel like in a limbo’ of not being able to truly say ‘this is certain, we are having a baby’ or not, and yes there is that ‘weight’ over me to in a way ‘make it happen,’ but fortunately enough my partner was always supportive and considerate and not really concerned if it couldn’t get to form and ‘happen’ as expected. But he also taught me to stop expecting ‘the worst’ all the time, which I am still learning and frankly once again getting to step out of, since it’s almost as if my old-age pessimism kicked back in.

The nausea so far has been the worst of the pregnancy process up to now, I mean I don’t want to discourage anyone with saying this, but I do want to be as realistic as possible because this is my experience and I really felt like a zombie, like constantly ill for weeks on.  I also felt ‘odd’ for not being so ‘happy’ about the news at first  – even though when sharing the news to those closest to me, it felt like there was a sense of joy in it, but that I couldn’t just for now ‘take it for granted,’ so I would just go back to the limbo-phase of smiling but deep inside me, not really being certain of what I was ‘getting myself into’ nor if it would physically ‘work out, or that I had ‘what it takes’ to pull it off.  

I must say that abortion (miscarriage) had not been in my mindset or radar before, this I mostly got as a ‘real scare’ because of knowing of a situation from someone I know that went through it and that kind of placed it in my awareness and, yes, what can I say? I moved the least I could because, it would hurt and be painful to just go walking to the store close-by. I felt like crippled because of not having my ‘me time’ every day to just go out and about with my long walks and generally longed for ‘feeling fine’, but I also realized this was part of a process and decision I had agreed to go through and that I had to actually care about another’s life developing within me, one that me and my partner had planted as a little seed. And because yes a 20 minute walk ‘at my usual pace’ had detonated a pain that actually got me in pain and therefore in crying and fearing that I would be placing this baby’s life at risk, I decided to keep myself resting and that was definitely a tough time where even writing became very repetitive and somber with describing only the worst of the experiences, and found it difficult to see any ‘light at the end of the tunnel.’ I knew that this was taking a toll on me, so I reached out for support again.

Once again, it was through Leila’s support with her Life Alignment session that assisted me to actually open up this ‘limbo-mindset’ and get to face it, even though I had seen the fears moving in my mind and me demonstrating it and acting them out in what became, I would say,’ the pessimist me’ that was ‘waiting’ just for the time to pass so that I could have ‘some certainty’ of actually being pregnant, actually having a baby or not. More like desiring to have some ‘control’ over the idea of being pregnant or not.  Through the session I was able to face and open up the fears about ‘it not really happening’ and I actually allowed myself to realize I was in fact fearing not having the baby, and that I was at the same time in a way mourning or letting go of ‘the old me,’ and I got to see the ‘big’ point that I’ve seen comes up in my life when having to take care of another being: selfishness. And that whole idea of ‘me, my time, my life, only doing what I want and what I like’ and having that self-definition printed on me like my creed, a very limiting one to be honest. I actually cried out when realizing through the session how I was in fact preventing me from embracing, being happy and joyful about the pregnancy because of not wanting to create ‘a bond’ with someone that I could ‘lose’ or see not ‘happening’ if something went awry.

I’ve also taken this as if Life was also throwing this ball at me kind of like saying ‘So you speak of supporting life, and life in equality, and wanting the best for all eh? But you don’t want to actually have a child and see what it takes to actually care for another life as yourself?’ Well, this is my characterization of it lol, but I saw my own principles and words ‘staring back at me’ and this also led me to see that it was – again – only the worst of me that could be fearing stepping into a new phase in my life. Leila assisted me to realize there was a mourning process of letting go as well of ‘the me and my life that I’ve known up to now’ but most importantly, I was able to admit to myself that I actually wanted to have the child, I just feared not having it and having to go through the loss and the pain that goes with it.

In a way, I was creating a detachment  as a defense-mechanism to the whole idea of being pregnant because then my logic was ‘If it doesn’t ‘stick then I would not feel ‘attached’ or already ‘hyped’ with the idea and having let everyone know about the news.’ It became something like a ‘safe spot’ to be at, to not be so defined by the idea of having a child, because I still ‘could not be certain.’ Well, it then became obvious how then how my decision to say ‘Yes, let’s do it’ contained this whole point of uncertainty and fears in the background – and selfishness as well, making it about ‘how I feel’ instead of actually rooting and being up for giving it my all and being my best at it for something that I am deciding to do along with my partner.  So this also took some time for me to assimilate and actually open up to the new and actual change in life.

What opened up in that session also enabled me to discuss these points with my partner, and he was able to understand what I meant when I would say ‘I still can’t believe we are going to have a child’ – which he would understand as some kind of pleasant surprise statement, but to me it was a real ‘I can’t still be certain of it’, I still can’t ‘wrap my head around it,’ and also because of the early stages of it. So that was yet another very supportive talk we had, where we got to open up one of my most ‘ingrained’ traits, which is yes, pessimism and almost expecting the worst of all things to happen at any moment. So I got to open up about these and other fears, which is also where I got to see how my own mindset was generating this sense of uncertainty and fear, and how I wasn’t allowing myself to fully LIVE the decision of having a baby and instead, being almost like ‘leaving it at the hands of life to decide what would be or not be.’ And here it’s very relevant to make a distinction as well because sure, it could have or could still happen that it doesn’t work out, and that then would be something for me to get to understand, learn from, embrace and move on with. But I no longer fear having to go through it as I did at the beginning.

The main point here is how I was creating this whole fear and uncertainty because of not realizing that I could decide to be OK with either/or scenario as well. I was defining myself already by the idea that ‘losing the baby’ would be a bad, negative, painful process and that would ‘define me’ somehow – so that’s how I then would ‘prevent’ going through all such ‘negative things’ by remaining in that limbo = not being truly standing in and as my decision to have the child, because then logic said “If ‘something happens’ = It would not be something that I was already ‘attached’ to, or future projecting about.” Well, this was quite revealing to me in how I was in fact standing only in fears and prejudices. I had to stop. My partner was awesome in discussing this with me, he is in fact the most supportive partner I’ve ever had and has been an exemplar pillar of support for me since day one, and he was able to assist me to face these points and to realize that I didn’t have to be defined by either outcome, that either way: Life goes on and we will be fine at the end of it all.

An interesting thing though to realize is that at that stage and having walked our first months with the pregnancy together, I realized that based on how enthusiastic he was, how he pushed himself to from the get-go get himself ‘moving’ to do things he needs to do to have sufficient time and financial support for when the baby arrives, and how every single day he would wake up with a smile in his face and saying ‘we’re going to have a baby!’ that even if this didn’t ‘happen,’ I would still go through the whole thing again to try it again. Lol! I can’t believe my words, but it is so. Based on the values that we share, the ‘who we are’ that we can share with a new being definitely becomes an attractive idea that overrides everything else that I also feared like the actual pregnancy and birthing process, the incessant crying, the growing pains, the discomforts when they are little babies etc.… that goes to a secondary stage when placing ‘what we both have to offer’ to a child, not to mention that he loves children and is quite a natural with them, treating them the same way as I do, not from an ‘I’m an adult and you are a child’ type of starting point, but one of equals and talking to them as the fully formed beings they are. And so that does fill my heart with joy in a way, to work together now on someone else based on seeing how well we get along and how supportive and loving we are to each other, as in really assisting ourselves to be the best that we can as individuals.

What has emerged within me therefore is an actual gratefulness of this opportunity to bring a child into this world and I basically turned my stance around from indecision, fears, what ifs, future worst-case scenario creations to rather being able to trust myself in this, to know that we can together handle this because we got the foundation that’s most important – from my perspective – a solid, supportive and loving relationship where we each have demonstrated each other to support ourselves to live the best that we can be, and that we haven’t ever ‘pushed us down’ to become the worst of us, but quite the contrary, and this has been a daily living thing, which has shown tremendous results in both of our lives.  

I am not fearful or ashamed to say that this time around, I wasn’t the ‘strong one’ with this whole new path and decision in my life, I wasn’t the one that would ‘help the other’- as I was used to – to come to terms with something. I was definitely the one that was supported by my partner who stood solid and quite optimistic about the whole thing. It was definitely another point of ego for me to let go of, because I had always believed that in my relationships, I’d always be the one to ‘help the other out,’ and I am actually glad and grateful to be with someone by your side that is there to support you when one is crumbling in fears and in a general low. So, it is also safe for me to say that as much as the decision was placed ‘on my plate,’ I knew that this decision would not only impact me of course, that this was part of my partner’s life process and a point that was opening up for both of us in the path we decided to walk together J And I couldn’t be happier about it now that I’ve come to assimilate it, embrace it and root for it as the days go by. 

But, who knows if I haven’t had a supportive partner or someone that was as pessimist as I was, or as fearful or only focusing on ‘financial problems’ or seeing it as a ‘load’ or doubting themselves in not being able to ‘pull it off.’ I guess that things would have been a bit different, but this is also a general point to become aware of when being in a relationship and not having a super secure method to avoid pregnancy – if not desiring to have any children –  to be aware of the possibilities of getting pregnant and making sure that one is in a supportive relationship, that one can actually step into that possibility of having a child together and know exactly where each other stands in it. Otherwise, this is also a problem in humanity where people just ‘get together’ because they ‘like each other’ or have some ‘fun together,’ but have no idea of where each one stands in the ‘hypothetical’ yet very possible scenario of having children which it surely is a life changing situation.

In my case, that is something I considered, I observed and assessed and ‘tested the waters’ on with my partner to know where he stood in such potential situation. It would have been quite different if ending up pregnant with someone that perhaps really dislikes children or wants to just have a partnership relationship forever. So even if this wasn’t planned, I sure knew where my partner stood about it and now I embrace that unconditional support that he has become for me in my life and receive it in gratefulness, instead of perhaps going into regret for not having stood up and being ‘my best’ from the get go – this is part of the things I probably had to learn and experience firsthand to then be able to root or ground myself in this life changing decision.

There are so many other things that have opened up in relation to walking now into a bit of a more ‘certain’ phase of the pregnancy, like looking at how it will change our lives, the ‘letting go’ of ‘me/my-time’ for some years, but at the same time actually being glad about it because it is in fact an opportunity to test myself in a whole new terrain, to learn more about myself, to learn to work in a team with my partner, to learn to live that unconditional love and care towards another being, and be that which I would want every newborn child in this world to have: a supportive environment, a supportive family, a pair of individuals that are preparing themselves to do the best they can to bring up a life in this world that can continue our individual paths to become better human beings in all that we do. It is fascinating how to me this is what excites me the most and knowing that this is a child that will contain both of our lives and paths to in a way, re-birth ourselves into the best, to assist in the process of possibly getting to correct the things that we both know is the worst of us and to be able to in essence create – perhaps – a better version of ourselves and of our parents in this forthcoming phase of our lives.

So in essence, now that the nausea has subsided, now that I’ve seen how the baby is doing, there’s more of a sense of certainty around it. And even with the process of planning, placing ourselves in the position of ‘preparing’ to the next year when baby arrives, is opening up so many cool discussions between us where I get to be more and more certain and actually quite happy and grateful to be carrying a life that contains my partner’s life as well, because he is quite an extraordinary human being that has demonstrated, in a rather short period of time, to be able to turn his life around in ways that few people I know have been able to. That assists me in my own trust and confidence to walk into this new phase in life.

It’s also very relevant for women to have that kind of support in a partner considering that I have seen how there are emotional upheavals, there are changes one goes through in the body and that having a partner that doesn’t react to my ‘emotional upheavals’– but understands it’s part of the process –  that gives comforting words and caresses, that doesn’t judge my body as it goes through its changes, that helps me to see that the discomforts and so on is part of the process for something better to come is something that I am truly grateful and learning from, and absolutely relevant and a great example as well for me to see how it is possible to face even the ‘difficult parts’ with a better sight on things to come. So if you are a male reading this, it’s best to also do your part on getting to understand what women go through in pregnancy, which is what my partner has done in his spare time, even to the point where he has now gotten to explain certain things to me, because he’s made the decision to be there all the way to support me and wants to be, what he calls, a ‘second mother’ lol, and not be the typical father role that is portrayed in pregnancy books-  or at least the older ones that I got from my sisters J

So to me, as important as it is to be taking physical care of myself, having proper nutrition – after a few of the rather not so supportive ‘cravings’ I gave into in the first weeks – gaining more confidence in going for walks, stepping out of general fears and doubts of ‘being able to do this,’ and more like embracing the being that is growing in me it is also important to have that equal stance from the other in the relationship. So as with anything, I guess for anyone reading this my suggestion is to yes prepare the body and one’s mind as much, but to also fully, fully disclose and talk things out with your partner first and know ‘where he stands’ in it all, because it does require great courage to embrace this in the best way possible. Sure we all got our points to walk, but that’s where having that support in one another comes in to face such experiences. Well, I say this, but I bet my partner would simply say that any challenge in life is an opportunity to motivate himself more, a challenge that makes him just push himself and see the benefits that it creates, which become a well-rounded purpose in life and that to me is quite an example I am learning from and grateful to be walking along this new path with.

To me this whole process has taught me how I don’t have to play strong all the time, or still fall into the belief that ‘I am the one that should save or assist others,’ but rather recognize my own weaknesses and be ok with receiving support from those that are around me and to ask for specific support when needed, otherwise, who knows where I would have been without the support I got from my partner, my immediate family, Leila, Joe and the people that directly worked on myself and my body with the alternative therapies, which I am also grateful for having the opportunity to have.

I realized it is also OK to not be initially happy, ecstatic, joyful and jumping up and down about the idea of being pregnant. I understand that I don’t have to compare myself to how other women – specifically – have faced their pregnancy or motherhood process, and I kind of knew that I set myself up to this kind of uncertainty and fears because of me having fed the fears of ‘having a baby’ or ‘becoming a parent’ for most of my life, it was ‘THE’ most feared point in my existence, and I held it as a very ingrained belief. So this is another learning point to become aware of what we say ‘never to’ and realize that Life may have a different plan for us and that we may actually end up facing such things we ‘fear the most’ and that it is actually not something to fear, but to rather take on as a challenge, an opportunity for growth, for change and to embrace the opportunities and paths that it will entail.  And that it is ok to not be all smiles about it, but take it as a very physical process of growth and development that it is and eventually as the very real responsibility and opportunity to challenge myself that it will represent with all that entails to be a parent, and be definitely fully UP for it – or at least knowing that I can trust myself to work on the bits I may go facing and being uncertain of, or the mistakes I may make. It’s all part of life.

I wake up every day aware of being pregnant and that is quite something to see growing in my body, but more so enjoying as well how this has opened up so many potentials in our lives in how we can best support a new child coming into this world, how to best prepare us, how to be also OK with making mistakes and facing the unexpected too, to not try and have everything ‘under control’ or attempt to ‘know as much as I can’ either. I am also allowing myself to simply take it easy with it, focusing on our physical wellbeing and continuing building the bond with my partner through it with the expectation of a third person coming into our home J He says we will be having so much fun, and I’m so glad he sees it that way because it is contagious how he can talk about what I would’ve defined as ‘tough things to go through ahead’ and he’d see it as something funny to go through, something challenging that can push one to the limits of seeing how much one can stand through. Lol, anyways it has assisted me a lot to have a different outlook on the idea of becoming a mother, becoming parents and yes, why not, also leaving that ‘selfish-me’ phase behind, which sure might be challenging, but hey, this is what Life has now placed on my plate, so that means I’m ready, I can take it, let’s do it J

Thanks for reading if you got up to here! I’m open to any feedback, questions or comments – or any topic that may require going into some depth.

For Spanish speakers, I’ve been sharing my weekly process within the pregnancy and reflecting back on how things apply to anyone else in their lives in my Encausarte Podcast from Episode #23 on.

Recommended series! Parenting on Eqafe.com

 

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