5 ways I prepared for pregnancy and 3 things I would do differently.
I live in a pretty sweet neighborhood, the kind where kids are allowed to ride their bikes around and parents don’t have to worry. At the beginning of summer, my neighbor and I decided to kick off the season with a neighborhood block party. We had food, a slip and slide, a mini pool, the whole shebang. It was epic.
When one of the visiting neighbors saw me she said, “well you didn’t plan this whole pregnancy very well! Your third trimester in the summer?! You’re crazy!”
I smiled and nodded… Little did she know, there was no control over when this baby, or if this baby, would ever come.
After 7 months of trying to get pregnant with no success, I was diagnosed with Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS). Of course, the moment I was diagnosed I took a deep dive into healing.
I tried, what felt like, everything:
dairy-free, gluten-free, alcohol-free, caffeine-free diet
swapping all of my household cleaners for nontoxic
swapping self care products for non-toxic alternatives
editing my stressful lifestyle
taking 12+ supplements a day
The list goes on, and on, and on… It felt like every negative test was a big fat “YOU FAIL” slap in the face.
It made it impossible to plan, well, anything! I never knew if I should or shouldn’t indulge in a glass of wine because well, what if I was pregnant? Will I be able to attend my cousin’s wedding in a year? Would I be up for the 600 mile drive to visit our family for the holidays?
Nothing was easy anymore. Everything required so much attention and thought but I had no control over any detail.
Talk about stressful, especially for someone who is obsessed with a detailed plan.
Luckily for me, I was eventually able to get pregnant. After two rounds of letrozole, I am now expecting my baby girl who is due in September of 2022.
While letrozole was definitely the golden ticket, here are a few things that helped me prepare my body for the journey I am now on… And a few things I wished I would have done before getting pregnant:
What Worked:
I noticed a HUGE shift in my body when I switched to a low-tox lifestyle. This required a ton of research, and some upfront investment (but massive savings long term), so allow me to share my favorite swaps:
Candles, smell good sprays, and pretty much anything with “fragrance” was immediately swapped out for essential oils. Now every single room in my home has at least one diffuser in it, a spray bottle of some magical concoction, and all of my perfumes were swapped with homemade rollers. More on this coming in another blog post!
Household cleaners: my girl Shane with GreenGo is a literal angel sent from the heavens. All of my household cleaners are hers: all purpose, glass cleaner, degreaser, floor cleaner, etc. The packaging is beautiful, everything comes in glass, it smells amazing, and…the best part…it WORKS. I’m obsessed, and one of my favorite parts (pay attention Western NC folks) is that you can take your empty bottle to Cup and Saucer Mercantile or to the Transylvania Farmer’s Market to fill it up!
Self Care items: I swapped everything from deodorant and shampoo to perfumes and makeups. I’ll share my favorite products in another blog post soon!
Eating whole foods. Hear me out…I swear the less processed junk I put in my body, the better my entire system operated. I tried to stick with a pretty simple setup: a protein, a fat, a carb, and lots of veggies. Many meals have been high-quality, local, organic meat along with potatoes and veggies. That simple.
As a tried and true workaholic, another important piece here is to note that I started to make sure that I was actually eating. I was so good at waking up, having coffee for breakfast, and working through dinner time. I would look up from my computer and realize I hadn’t had anything but water all day long… major red flag for my hormones! So I started to set timers on my phone, 40 minutes of work and 20 minutes off. Those 20 minutes were meant for me to peel away from the screen, find some food, water, sunlight, and whatever else I needed.
Working out…less. This one was especially difficult for me, as a naturally competitive person who is borderline obsessed with CrossFit, it was really hard for me to scale back my intensity and workout less. It felt counterintuitive and wrong, but once I edited that stress down to a more manageable level, my body was screaming “thank you.”
I invested in my health in unconventional ways:
I started to see a chiropractor on a regular basis, and I still see them regularly! The folks over at Shine Family Chiro are the literal best. I could not recommend them more for your ENTIRE family. We even plan for baby girl to see them when she joins us earth side.
Maddy Aper with Flor De Luna has been integral to my overall health. She is a spirit, mind, and body healer who will work with your entire being.
Doing less, which was tricky for this multi-biz-owner, do-it-all-right-now kind of gal. I had to schedule time away from my home, laptop, and phone in order to give myself time to breathe.
Making choices in my business that weren’t the choices I thought I would be making. For a long time I thought I would want to grow my business into a massive machine with loads of employees, and I would be wearing a suit in a room full of male CEO’s dominating the industry. But that all changed very quickly when I looked inward and realized that what I truly want in my life is the freedom to live without restraint, this meant it was time for me to scale back in my business. I moved out of my downtown office space, said no to clients who wouldn’t fuel my soul and looked to interns and subcontractors for support rather than hiring in-house. Ultimately, this has been the best decision I have ever made in my business.
While there were loads more that I did, these were definitely the highlights. Here are a few things I would have done differently if I would have known better.
What I Would Do Differently:
The second I saw that second pink line show up on my pregnancy test, I could not believe my eyes. It did not feel real. To this day, I have all 12 negative tests that preceded this 13th pregnancy test and the first positive. I wished I would have recorded myself when I was reading the test. I know there would be 12 videos of heartbreak, but I was all alone when I read my pregnancy test and my husband was working until 6 pm. So it was really just me who knew for a solid 12 hours, I wish I could go back and share that moment with my husband, even if just to show my reaction via video.
For those of you who don’t know…my first trimester was rough — I lost 12 pounds and was basically dead to the world weeks 6-13. I am pretty certain I had Hyperemesis Giardia, and my doctor was pretty concerned that I didn’t schedule fluids when she learned how rough my first 9 weeks were. Next time, we both agreed, I would start taking the magical concoction (Unisom+B6) immediately upon getting a positive test and schedule IV fluids.
Let go of expectations of my body during pregnancy. I have had so many people impose their expectations onto me and that can be super overwhelming. I walked into pregnancy thinking I would be far more active than I have been, but when you’re throwing up for 26 weeks, you just sort of do what you can with what you’ve got. Many, many folks have shared what they think I should or should not do, and ultimately I’ve learned to do what feels best and to listen to my body.
There are a thousand other things I would add to this list, but I also give myself so much grace because this journey was hard. It was an emotional roller coaster, but so worth the ride. I am writing this as I feel my sweet girl kick and roll, and there is something truly special about that.
If you’ve stuck with me this far, bless you. I hope you enjoyed this little piece of my heart. There will be plenty more where this came from, I’m sure.
And if you’re a woman struggling to get pregnant, know that I am here for you, cheering you on and sending you all of the baby dust.
XO
la