This is such a special time in a woman’s life. But what an emotional mix of thrilling excitement, terrifying fear and worrying concerns we all normally feel … as you contemplate the thought “Wow, my baby needs to come out soon!” – easy to get them in – but getting them out? Seriously?!
Statistically, for about half of you, this was an ‘unplanned pregnancy’, and that probably created some pretty high anxiety levels, especially in the first weeks, and now again in the last weeks. Then for a good number of you this pregnancy has been more than a nine-month wait, more like a three-year wait, or a four, five, or six-plus year wait for your ‘little miracle’. So, especially for those of you that had to endure years of infertility or miscarriages, this is such a momentous time in your life!
From Mother Nature’s perspective, you are about to accomplish your primary and primal task here on Earth — to reproduce (thank goodness we ladies are so much more than that these days). You are about to move onwards (and upwards, and downwards, and sideways) along your Life’s Pathway … and being responsible for a helpless human being is both so scary and so elating.
Perhaps you’re feeling like you’ve been pregnant since forever, or that you are going to be pregnant forever! Nearly your entire abdominal cavity is now filled with baby, and your baby is rolling around inside your swollen belly putting on a last growth spurt. Your boobies are leaking colostrum, your cervix is softening, and the ligaments and muscles of your pelvis are loosening. Your hormones are going crazy!
Your oestrogens Oestrone and Oestradiol have increased a hundredfold, and your oestrogen Oestriol has increased about a thousand times. Then, of course, there are the increases in progesterone, prolactin, oxytocin and more. Did you know, when pregnant, the amount of Oestrogen you produce every single day is equivalent to that produced by a non-pregnant woman’s ovaries in three years! In fact, during one single pregnancy, you will generate as much oestrogen as a non-pregnant woman will in 150 years! You are more ‘female’ than you have ever been before, with a perplexing assortment of emotions . . . you are more weepy, more cranky, feeling more vulnerable, more euphoric, more clingy, more brooding, more nesting, more private, more at peace, more needy, more settled, more introspective and more maternal than your body has ever been before . . . all at the same time! This increasing of your sensitivity physiologically can also extend to psychic sensory increases (sixth sense, ESP, intuition or instinct, whatever you wish to call it). Trees can appear more radiantly green, flowers more luminous, rainbows more magical, and wondrous things more miraculous. (If you’re worried about feeling so sentimental and irrational all at the same time, don’t worry — things will return to ‘normal’, eventually.)
Feeling forgetful these days? Do you think you accidentally put your short-term memory down the waste-disposal? Feeling like your brain is in a permanent fog? Finding even the most basic concepts hard to comprehend? Well, you are not losing your mind or your grip on reality. This is a very normal side effect of being heavily pregnant — and I have my own theory: it is Mother Nature’s way of forcing you to chill out — heck, all those perplexingly insane and elaborately colourful dreams, night after night, certainly don’t help you to feel rested.
But the bad news is that with the arrival of a newborn there also arrives the jet-lag of the extreme-sport called ‘sleep deprivation’ — things are going to get worse before they get better … But that’s cool! You will be able to join in an intellectual conversation again one day — it should be in time for your baby’s first birthday.
You think I’m kidding?!
Sorry, Babe. xxx
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