How Pregnancy Completely Changed Me, My Self-Worth, And My Life
Getting pregnant is the best thing that’s ever happened to me. And I mean this in a different way than a lot of women would describe. This was not a planned pregnancy for us. In fact, a few years ago the doctors told me it would be difficult for me to get pregnant so here I was living my life selfishly and freely as everybody should. Upon taking test after test, part of me was elated for the fact that I actually was pregnant despite what I was told and because I could not imagine raising a child with anybody else on the planet. Yet part of me questioned if I was ready to put my selfish years on the shelf and dedicate my life and my body to someone other than just I.
But getting pregnant was the best thing that’s ever happened to me.
Of course, there are the things that make me fall in love with my baby more and more each time I experience them. There are no words that suffice when it comes to how it feels when I feel his movements or his hiccups or just watching the capability of my body; creating and sustaining a life inside of itself.
Getting pregnant is the best thing to happen to me because it made me fall in love with myself. Actually, it FORCED me to fall in love with myself. It seems my favorite topic to write about is love and self-love. But this is a love I have never known. It’s made me learn and adapt to a new love— an uncomfortable yet unconditional type of love. Not just for what is growing inside of me but for myself and those who surround me. It’s a love where the days you wake up and can’t find it in yourself to get out of bed and like yourself, let alone love yourself— you get up anyway. You talk yourself down from that mentality, even if it’s just for that moment. Because now….. you have purpose. You’ve always had purpose but now it’s just tangible.
It’s not just about you anymore. It’s not just about your depression. Or your anxiety. It’s about sitting them both down on a yoga mat and breathing with them through whatever is troubling you that day and letting them know that they are not in charge of you anymore. It’s about telling them of the strength you are learning and practicing with each day that passes, with each milestone you reach and with every inch and stretch mark that grows on your body.
Getting pregnant has made me face raw and ugly truths I’ve thrown in a box and hidden under the bed in my mind. It’s made me take a good look at what I want out of this life and it’s made me grow and work towards becoming the type of person who deserves it. It’s brought insecurities and negative thoughts and battles I quit fighting in my childhood to surface. I had to choose to forgive them or to fight them all over again. And though, I still struggle, I forgive them every single morning in hopes that one day I no longer have to. That one day they are just potholes of a wrong turn road instead of seeing them as dead ends.
This new love has made me fall in love with the beautiful revelation of what being in actual love is like. It’s learning how to appreciate parts of who you love, in a new light. Because sometimes being in love is like those days when you can’t get out of bed….. but sometimes your partner can’t. Being in love is realizing that you are not the only person who needs patience when it comes to silencing your demons. Actually being in love is being scared and angry and sad. Sometimes being in love is just being okay. And you have to learn that just being okay isn’t a bad thing. The boring, repetitive days are life’s way of telling you that things are comfortable. That you are in a comfortable and safe part of your journey. Being in love isn’t just falling in love once, it’s finding new ways to fall in love again and again and again. On the boring days, on the okay days, on the days where you’re scared, angry and sad. Getting pregnant has taught me how flexible and resilient real love is. How empowering it is. How much more meaningful and fulfilling a love that endures all seasons is than the fairytale love that is drilled in our minds, that we need.
Getting pregnant has changed me. It changes me every single day. I’ve changed my outlook on life and my way of thinking, changed the way I breathe, the way I love and the way I receive love. I am not the same person I was a year ago when I first got published. I’m not the same person I was yesterday. I wouldn’t even compare myself to the person I was this morning.
Things are more challenging but filled with so much more reward. Things are filled with so much love. And the capacity for love my heart has grows vaster and more wild by the minute. I never thought it was possible to love like a wildfire. But here I am setting flame to everything around me.