6 moments of truth in 6 months (of my big fat pregnancy)!
I am in my 6th month of pregnancy and it was last night that I felt my first PROPER baby kick! It happened while I was having my post dinner dessert, a chocolate brownie!! I was desperately waiting for this moment for the past few weeks (after experiencing the fluttering, the bubbles and popcorn popping). And when it happened — I was shocked, perplexed, happy, confused and teary — all at once! Hence today, I am feeling this intense need and desire to put myself and some aspects of my pregnant life a bit out there.
I always knew that pregnancy, parenting, fostering, adoption, and all such life choices where we assume and take up responsibility of something bigger than us — are a learning curve that can challenge and recalibrate our whole being. But trust me, it’s all just words and intellect till the time we actually experience it — the realness, the rawness, the unexpectedness and the funniness of this is not a shared experience for a long time and not with everybody. In the past 5.5 months, I have experienced many physical, emotional, anatomical, mental, spiritual and social changes — with one overarching feeling — I am stretched and I am humbled!
#1: Understanding & defining the politics of my pregnancy
My pregnancy wasn’t just another conventional and anticipated ‘life’ event for me. The word itself had intense personal meanings, trauma, emotions, power and history associated for me. I have spent good chunk of my late twenties advocating and organizing for stigma and judgement free sexual and reproductive health rights for young unmarried and single women as part of my work at Haiyya. Last year as I chose pregnancy and the pregnancy chose me, it was undoubtedly one of biggest moments of truth in my life that made me trust my values, my feminism, my healing, growth and decision-making process. The most liberating action in the last two trimesters has been to make my pregnancy go public, professional and political via email announcements, funder meetings, partner and allyship spaces, team spaces and some bit on social media. I also discovered a new found community of relationships in my professional and political circles, where the same people now started engaging with me wearing different identity hats — parents, mothers, dads, single and married women who want to get pregnant or adopt, foster and adopted parents, young women who have become mamas in the pandemic etc. I think any form of pregnancy or parenthood is a process of political importance & development, and I have only scratched the surface of this crucial life-changing area in the past 1 year.
#2: My spectrum of tolerance and reciprocity is changing — for good!
It’s so surreal to even think and write about it. I have spent so much energy, resources, time and money in my therapy, with my parents, family and well-wishers to figure out my method of finding and protecting my peace. And then came pregnancy! It’s hilarious the way it has changed my spectrum of tolerance and reciprocity. The best way to describe the sensation is like having a private party with just you and your baby, no one else is invited and you don’t quite give a fuck to the world. I was sharing this my husband the other day that my tolerance window is shrunken for many things it should have shrunken a long time back, and my tolerance window for many things is expanded which also should have expanded a long time back. I am having my own stressful and joyful times figuring out and experiencing my new spectrum of tolerance, but it is turning out to be my second moment of truth. In a nutshell, I am becoming much better at not tolerating bullshit or being taken for a ride or my boundaries being violated, better at walking out, at pausing, at giving it back and protecting my peace; and I am also becoming much better at not having a final word or having stances/opinions on everything or getting my hands dirty at everything and with everybody, and also cutting people some slack . Above all, it is mine to protect my precious heart (read two heartbeats:)) and my energy.
#3: I am developing a new and better relationship with my body
Physical and anatomical body changes is the most experiential and visible changes of pregnancy. I have also been grateful that my pregnancy has been relatively generous to me. But my body has amazed me at every turn on this journey so far. Starting from quitting alcohol, smoking, sugar, high fat foods; to eating the right things at right time, to having diet, exercise and sleep routine & discipline, and having clear boundaries for my physical needs and wants (I am not going to share my hotel room with anybody :)) — its all quite startling. I have always been in tune with my body and can mostly listen to it very well. I can feel or notice when something is off quite instantly. But I have never spent so much time with my body — like putting coconut and bio oil on my belly and bum, spending evening time treating acnes in the first trimester, slowing down my bathing and walking speed, watching my genitals while doing kegels exercise etc. I have also never respected my body’s needs and wants like I do now, and never read so much about my medical and legal rights as a patient. I have always been a skinny and thin person and have been skinny-shamed almost all my life, especially in family circles and spaces. Seeing myself 10 kgs heavier, rounder, and curvier is a new territory that I am making sense of.
#4: Walking the path of hope, trust, surrender and control on an every day basis
These four words (aka elements, acts and emotions) have been dominantly around me for the past 6 months. In this hopelessly broken and shattering world, the birth, creation and growth of a life inside me has become the source of my everyday hope. The images of their body parts in the ultrasound, seeing their weight and size increase every week and just the hope of bringing them into our worlds that is so keen and thrilled to welcome them — it feels like my unlimited supply of hope and future is inside my belly.
When you’re pregnant, there is a lot that we are in control of — like the diet, discipline, health check-ups, pre-planning work schedules, meetings & commitments. But there is a lot that we have a very little control of — like the changes in the body, emotional upheavals, memory, work schedules and commitments changing pregnancy needs, medical systemic routines and delays etc. I am learning to trust my reading of my body, my mind, my heart and my day to day mundane decisions. I am also learning to trust the caregiving ideas and methods of my people who truly and genuinely want to support me through this extraordinary process of life. Similarly, the beauty of when to surrender and when to control is a skill that I am learning. To fully surrender to my body, emotions and the due timeline of pregnancy is allowing me to experience life as a peaceful flow. At the same time, having the space and time to control and plan things I can, to build a conducive and supportive nearing future is a bliss — like planning my work pre maternity leave, building my transition plan for maternity leave at Haiyya, like discussing important matters in therapy that are coming up around pregnancy, self-worth, identity shift and parenting, like starting leadership coaching to help me hack and think through some of the purpose, strategy and tactical leadership challenges and questions.
#5: Simple and basic is more than good
I honestly feel my partner likes me more this way, hahaha! He has a peculiar smile, admiration and love in his eyes every time I crave for a chocolate brownie, or ask him when the mango carrie season will start, or demand him to not disturb my naps. I’d like to believe (and people who know me would too) that I am not a simple person in worldly ways. I crave for simplicity in my life but somehow I (and so many of my beloveds around me) are just wired differently — and that makes us very very special. But sometimes I take this ‘I am different, I am complicated, I am special’ thing too seriously and I forget how small I am in this cosmic world of events, relationships, connections and people. My pregnancy months are making me realize how simplest and most basic of my needs being fulfilled are such historic moments in my life — such as coming to bed at 10 pm, getting my afternoon naps, eating shahi tukda at a party that I am not really enjoying, having a slow morning with my doggo etc. I couldn’t have said it better than Dave Bruno, “We need to know that when we crave simplicity, we are not after an easier life. We are after life.” Simplicity, minimalism and decluttering are the tools that give us the time and space we need to identify our joys, passions, loves and cares but we have to give ourself the permission we need to take that time and space.
#6: Putting our relationship at the center (not the baby)
A very dear and wise friend (who is a momma herself) shared this with me in my first month of pregnancy. She said, ‘Starting now, remember, the baby should never be the center. The baby is the product of the relationship. So the next 9 months and the parenting time after, its still all about your relationship with your partner’. It sounded like wisdom, but it only started making sense to me when my husband and I started reading, learning, handling emotional and medical moments of pregnancies and its manifestations together. We started turning our conversations and time to deepen our intimacy, getting to know unexplored sides of each other and being more vulnerable with our struggles, anxieties and fears. This doesn’t mean that we don’t spend time talking about the baby, watching baby reels and videos, touching the belly and talking about parenthood. But to us, the outlook to keep our relationship at the core and NOT the baby is my 6th moment of truth. It’s also making us see this life event of ours from a holistic perspective where we are at the center of this co-creation.
PS: At some point, I will be writing my journey, process and questions while choosing pregnancy. Let’s see when I get into the groove!
Here are other pieces that I have penned down in the past few months:
