Preparing For Pregnancy

Baby fever, although it’s not a medical term, generations of women can attest to its existence. Some of us get it young (including the both of us), others a little older. Some don’t experience it until after their baby is born, and some don’t at all. But if you come down with this infamous “fever,” it can seem almost impossible to think of anything else. 

Bringing a baby into this world is a life-changing experience, and one that can bring up lots of emotions, even before you’ve embarked on the journey itself. You may not feel ready for a very long time, and then out of the blue it becomes all you can think about. For us, all the things that changed—some hard, some really beautiful—brought us into this new and amazing stage of life. It’s not always easy, but its challenges have taught us some of the most profound lessons we could ever learn. What motherhood is for you is your own unique story. Through any adventure in life we have the opportunity to learn, grow, and find out more about ourselves. This evolution is our own. We get to decide how we see motherhood. We shape how we feel, and we can choose to follow our knowing feeling, the one deep inside of us that we come to know as our “mama instinct.” - Excerpt from The Zen Mama Guide To Finding Your Rhythm in Pregnancy, Birth and Beyond

The Zen Mama Guide To Finding Your Rhythm in Pregnancy, Birth and Beyond covers everything related to pregnancy prep; how you know when you're ready, the concept of 'the right time', pre-pregnancy and conception health, getting to know your body, fertility, sex and so much more. Today, wanted to share with you our personal journeys with pregnancy prep and would love to hear yours - please share in the comments below!

I’ve always wanted a bunch of kids and I find it funny that right now baby number 4 is booting me from the inside as I type away. Seems I’ve succeeded in this goal! When I prepped for pregnancy with my first I had long chats with Mark about the type of parents we wanted to be; adventurous, fun, connected, affectionate, calm, open-minded and gentle. I read all my favourite parenting books such as Ina May Gaskins Spiritual Midwifery, Ina May Gaskins Guide to Childbirth, Dr Sears the Baby Book, Lé Leche League’s the Womanly Art of Breastfeeding and Buddhism for Mothers among many others. I watched docos, read natural birth stories and watched countless intervention free births to try and get in the mindset. It took us about 6 months to conceive and in that period my research intensified. We bought ovulation kits, found a wonderful whole foods based vegan prenatal, I ate a plant based, nutrient rich diet and dreamt about who this little person would be.

Once Bodhi was in our arms I was SMITTEN just as I knew I would be. With the subsequent pregnancies, since a lot of the ground work had been done in terms of deep diving in to fertility, pregnancy, birth and the years beyond, I decided that I’d focus on the kind of births I’d like, I envisioned them, wrote them out, journaled to my future babies, nourished my body with plentiful foods, practiced meditation (particularly helpful throughout my secondary infertility experience) and focused on calling in each baby. I also made a point of cultivating self care which was even more important now that I had little ones to take care of, sometimes your own needs get lost in the mix when you’re juggling home life as a parent. I’ve been pregnant now 5 times (one of which ended in a loss) and each time, each baby feels unique and even if I don’t get my pregnancy prep perfect or if it feels rushed or non existent at times the thing I always fall back on is my mothers instincts and I know just that is enough.

I wanted to be a mama ever since I could remember. I loved baby sitting and taking care of my little brother. I waited until I was 29 to get pregnant with my first and I took the prep to a whole other level. I want to preface this by saying I had the “planning time” to be able to do all of the prep research. So many women get pregnant before they even have a chance to prep or without even planning a baby so I just want you to know that if you didn’t do this that is totally OK. Every pregnancy is unique and everyones experience is different, this just happens to be my passion (ie. YZM) so this is why I went down the “rabbit hole” of research.

The moment it seemed Eric and I aligned with the idea of starting a family I started researching everything I could about preparing your body for a baby. I went to my OBGYN and got a full work up including a blood panel and armed myself with a notebook of questions. One thing that stuck with me was a few studies she mentioned about the postitive effects of taking prenatal vitamins as early as up to a year before getting pregnant. This was specific to the Folate that I would get from taking them.

I started taking vitamins early, I researched the ingredients in my skincare products and makeup and discovered those should be changed out too. I was already eating a cleanish diet but I decided to go further and shop for organic foods and the more I researched the more I felt empowered with knowledge.

I read similar books to Teresa, I read as many blogs as I could find and when I finally got the positive pregnancy (after a few months of ovulation predictor kits) I was in pure shock and over the moon. I didn’t start watching documentaries about birth until I was pregnant but those brought me so much joy. Any and everything Ina May Gaskin filled my heart with excitement. I loved how raw and real she and the women in her books describe pregnancy and birth. When we started writing our book one of the reasons we wanted to cover everything from pregnancy prep to your first few months with baby was because after years of pregnancy and childbirth books, the overwhelming amount of medical information and fear inducing googling, Teresa and I wanted to write the book we wished we could have read. A book filled with stories and information written by mothers in a way that feels like your two friends are giving you the scoop but allowing the space for you to take what works for you and leave what doesn’t.