I Was Never the Girl Obsessed With Motherhood
I was never the girl obsessed with the idea of a baby or getting pregnant or motherhood. I wasn't obsessed with my baby dolls. I wasn't obsessed with thinking about becoming a mother, even after I got engaged. I knew I wanted a family, I knew I wanted to be a mother my whole life. I always knew it was something I wanted to do, but I wasn't obsessed with this idea.
And then there was this whole Christianity conditioning, where growing up, it was "Don't have sex. Don't get pregnant. Getting pregnant will ruin your life." It's like the Mean Girls episode where the health coach comes in and says "If you get pregnant, you will die." That's the message I always had. So there's also this shame or weirdness around getting pregnant where I was like, I've always been told this is a really bad thing to happen, and it's hard to flip that switch when you get into adulthood.
A couple years ago, I took a trip by myself. A three-week trip to really discern if I wanted to be a mom. I went off to Europe for three weeks, and during that time, I really did discern, and I really did decide, okay, this is something that I want.
Pregnancy Feels Like Being Pushed Off a Cliff
Even though pregnancy was something that I wanted, it feels like skydiving to me. Yeah, I do want to skydive in my life, but I'm not going to jump out of the plane myself. I need somebody to push me out of the plane. I had so much fear around pregnancy and birth.
Was it planned? Basically, what happened is I got engaged last August, and right after we got engaged, maybe a couple months after, we were like, all right, if we get pregnant, it's not a big deal. Lucas is 43, I was 29 at the time. We're both in our 30s and 40s. A lot of our friends, it's taking a long time. A lot of people go to fertility doctors. It's super common right now.
We decided we're not going to try. I'm not going to track my ovulation. But I'm also not going to not try. I assumed it's going to happen in a year or two.
Turns out, a couple of weeks later, I get really, really nauseous and I get sick. After being sick for a week, thinking I had the flu, I woke up and still was sick, but my boobs hurt so bad. So I Google "Boobs hurt, nausea" and Google's like, "Bitch, you're pregnant."
I took a pregnancy test. Bright red line. At that time, I think I was 10 weeks pregnant. And you know how on Instagram, people flip over the stick and they're like, "Oh my god, babe, we're so excited!" That was not my experience. I flipped over the stick, and I go into shock. I can't speak. I'm too stunned to speak.
Every Pregnancy Brings a Challenge
I have a theory about pregnancy. Whether it be conceiving, pregnancy, or postpartum, you are going to have a challenge. Period, you're going to have a challenge. This is a moment of transformation. Some people really struggle with conception, and my heart goes out to you.
Personally, my challenge was the pregnancy. It was mental health during my pregnancy. I was depressed the entire time. I couldn't feel happiness, I couldn't feel joy, I couldn't feel dopamine or any sort of emotion. It was really sad. I had moments of joy and laughter and fun, but there was this dark cloud that was over me the whole entire time.
I had nausea that lasted into the third trimester, horrible. My mental health was rapidly declining. The only thing that kept me sane was routine. I do really, really well with a routine. Thank God I have Content Club, and that kept me in a routine. I have my co-working that keeps me in a routine.
The Week Everything Fell Apart
We were in a long-distance relationship my entire pregnancy. We saw each other maybe five days out of the month total. It was really challenging. So not only was I super depressed, I also was alone.
About maybe 14 weeks, 15 weeks, we road-tripped to Tennessee for his work, and that's when shit really hit the fan.
The minute I got to Tennessee, I remember being in the Airbnb, going to the bathroom, and after I went to the bathroom, I just collapsed on the bathroom floor and was sobbing and sobbing and sobbing and screaming, crying, panic attack. I was so unwell and I didn't know what was happening.
The scariest part about this, and I'm getting emotional, the way that I was speaking, I couldn't speak properly. I couldn't speak, and my brain wouldn't connect with my voice. It was so scary. I was like, "I'm losing my ability to speak." I couldn't make full sentences.
And then I was trying to feel better, and I went on a walk. The minute I went on a walk, the light poles started changing and warping, almost like I was high. And then I started getting these really scary thoughts. Really scary, dark thoughts.
At one point, I was in this pizza shop picking up dinner, and there was this group of soccer kids, and I couldn't tell what was real from not real. Luckily, I've had psychosis before, so I know that that's not real. But it was still really, really scary.
I did get treatment for my mental health. I can't really talk about what I did, but it's something that's safe, it's proven, there are studies and papers on it. The psychosis went away, thank God. That was probably the scariest part of the whole pregnancy.
Most of Labor Was Honestly Fine
I woke up on my due date at 3:00 a.m. having contractions every 10 minutes. And I was like, there's no way this is real. It's 2% of people who go into labor on their due date. But it kept happening.
Honestly, most of labor was fine. I feel like if you've had really bad period cramps or diarrhea cramps, it's not that bad. And my entire labor was 24 hours. People are like, "Oh my god, that's so hard." No. Probably only 4 hours of it was hard. 20 hours was period cramp level. And contractions don't last forever. They last for 30 seconds to a minute, and then they go away.
My doula came over at noon, and I labored at home for 5 hours. The doula was awesome. I highly recommend hiring a doula. I read somewhere that doulas reduce C-section rates by 40%. So she came over, she was really helpful, Lucas made me food, we had a really fun day.
I was so ready to go into labor that I think that helped the pain a lot. I was just so excited not to be pregnant anymore. It wasn't even, "Oh my god, I'm getting closer to meeting my baby." Truthfully, I was like, I just don't want to be pregnant anymore.
Things Got Intense at the Hospital
At 5:00, my contractions started getting really intense. They were 2 minutes apart. They were lasting a minute. So we went to the hospital. I was 7, 8 cm by the time I got an epidural, and I was in pain. That was really hard. The anesthesiologist was busy at the time, and that part was brutal. It felt like all of the world's pain that ever existed inside my uterus and my lower back.
When they broke my water, they noticed that the baby's meconium was in the sack, and that's really dangerous because as they're coming out, they can inhale their own poop. They were like, "Girl, you're about to have a lot of people coming to your room." So 10 people come into my room, all the emergency people, the NICU people, everyone is on edge hoping he can breathe.
I had to be on my back because when I went on my side, his heart rate dropped. So I pushed him out in less than an hour. It was pretty chill. They just coached me how to push.
When he came out, I was still so delirious from the Benadryl they gave me for swelling. Everybody says when your baby comes out, you have this euphoria. I was so excited, I felt so much love, but I was high on Benadryl. I didn't really get that euphoria until a couple hours later when I actually came to.
The Answer Is Delegating
Once I decided I wanted to get pregnant years ago, here's how I prepped. Every single time I would go on vacation over the last three years, I would be like, okay, pretend that I'm going on maternity leave. And then I would look and see what broke, who we need to hire, what processes we need to have in place. I've been prepping for a baby for years in my business.
A couple years ago, I decided since I want to have a baby in the future, I'm going to learn the art of delegation. Let me tell you, the time to learn to delegate is not when you have a screaming baby, or when someone in your family is sick, or when you're in extreme overwhelm. That is not the time. Please, for the love of God, learn how to delegate before you have a baby, before this stuff happens. I learned how to delegate as preparation years before I got pregnant.
If you've ever wondered how someone with ADHD builds a business, this is how. I have a team and I've learned to delegate. Period. I'm not a superwoman. You don't have the same hours in the day as me, because I have a team that I've built that does stuff for me. I can not work an entire day, and there'll still be 10, 12, 15 hours of work done on my business. Learning to delegate is the single most important thing I have done in preparing for motherhood.
Your Career and Pregnancy Can Coexist
Somebody asked, "Is it possible that I'm energetically pushing away pregnancy by accepting career opportunities?"
Heck no. I think that those things can exist at once, of course. We don't need to have this thought that we can't have our career and pregnancy, too. You can absolutely have both. It will look a little bit different than you expected, but you absolutely can have both. Again, the answer is delegating.
People ask, "How do you have enough time to be a parent?" Guys, my screen time was 8 hours a day, and not on productive shit. I can take that 8 hours that I was using to scroll Instagram and be a parent. And your screen time probably sucks, too.
I also plan on getting support. A night nanny every Sunday night so I can be fresh for the week. Someone to watch the baby from 9:00 to noon on weekdays. A Life Time membership where he can go to babysitters for two or three hours a day once he turns three months old.
Why I Would Do This Again
Will I get pregnant again? I think yes. I need to wait a couple years, because pregnancy was hard. But I had really scary mental health, I got a treatment, and I know that I can use that treatment in the future. I definitely think my next pregnancy would be less challenging just knowing what I know now and knowing all the little tips and tricks that helped me.
I also don't want to scare anybody away from pregnancy. What I went through is extremely rare. Actually, it's way more common postpartum to go through depression or psychosis than during pregnancy. And I think it was exacerbated by the fact that I was in a long-distance relationship, that it happened suddenly, unexpectedly. There were a lot of factors that led to the severity of what I went through that I don't think would happen again.
Postpartum has been so fun and so good. I freaking love postpartum. It's so fun and cuddly, and I just love my baby, and he's so freaking cute.
What Actually Prepared Me for Motherhood
Here are my cheat codes:
- Follow other entrepreneur moms. I look up a lot to Kendra Scott. She's done everything with her kids. Find people that inspire you that have kids, and use those as your expanders.
- Learn to delegate. This is a non-negotiable. When I first delegated, and it was having someone clean my house, it caused such a nervous system wreck. I'm so glad I overcame that discomfort years ago rather than right now.
- Make money if you can. If you want to go premium mode with massages, extra care, a doula, that's going to cost money. Childcare can be 5 to 10k a month.
- Seek out pain before labor. Do a cold plunge or put your hands in cold water. Do one more rep at the gym. Any opportunity to experience pain during pregnancy, really try to embrace it and feel it.
- Just send it. If you want to get pregnant, you just got to jump off the cliff and trust that everything will always work out for you. There's not a good time, there's not a right time. I wasn't pushed until I was pushed.
The best thing I did to prepare for labor was go on a pregnancy retreat in France. We did all the classes, all the birth prep, a lactation class, all of it over the course of a week. Being in a beautiful place eating delicious food while doing all my pregnancy classes was lovely. I highly recommend going to a retreat instead of doing classes in an ugly hospital waiting room.
That's my crazy pregnancy and birth story. If you're going through something similar, I don't want you to feel alone in it. And if you're building a career that makes zero sense on paper, you can still have a family. You absolutely can have both.
