On becoming a mother
Reflections from a season like no (m)other
249 days ago, my husband, Ryan and I found out we were going to become parents. For eight months, we’ve oriented our lives around preparing to meet our son earthside in early April. Today, April 9th, marks his “official” due date.
Although we’ve since learned that only ~4% of babies arrive on their expected day, it feels momentous to have made it to 40 weeks. As we head into the birth portal to welcome our baby to the world (and before our lives change irrevocably), I want to memorialize this fleeting chapter of life — nine months of straddling two worlds, standing at the threshold of becoming a mother.
The journey toward becoming a mother, known as matrescence, has been filled with surprises and revelations. If there’s one thing I’ve learned over the course of nine months, it’s how singular each person’s experience is. It’s hard to anticipate exactly what hand you’ll be dealt, especially in a first pregnancy. So much of the experience has been surrendering to the waves of the unknown.
Here are my field notes from the last nine months:
1. The prenatal resources in San Francisco are abundant
At the onset, I had expected navigating pregnancy in San Francisco, a notoriously childless city known for a greater population of dogs than children, to feel lonely. Instead, I was surprised to find an abundance of resources for expecting moms scattered across the city.
My main outlet for plugging into the collective experience of moms-to-be came in the form of workout classes. Shortly after learning that we were expecting, I did a quick search on ClassPass and found several studios that offered pre-natal classes.
Starting Week 7, I joined a weekly pre-natal strength class at BODY, looking for guidance on how to move my body now that I had our baby’s safety to consider. Those early weeks were filled with gratitude, trepidation, and anxiety.
During my earliest prenatal appointments, I was made acutely aware by our traditional healthcare system of the miscarriage rates in the first twelve weeks, a subtle reminder to temper my excitement. Rather than create space to hold the duality of the risk of early pregnancy and the joy of growing a life within me, the system flattened the experience to a series of statistics.
Early on, we hadn’t shared the news with many people in our community yet, but for a few hours each week, I was surrounded by other women who were embarking on a similar journey of uncertainty and change — many who were much further along than me, giving me hope that everything would be alright. Being around other pregnant women normalized the unfamiliar changes happening to my body, serving as a respite from my day-to-day where life around me carried on as usual while I felt myself stepping into an entirely new universe.
In the months that followed, I stumbled upon more and more resources designed to support expecting mothers across San Francisco from the SF Birth Center to Natural Resources to birth doulas to yoga practitioners to lactation consultants to acupuncturists and everything in between. (I’ll share a full list of resources in a future piece.)
2. Surround yourself with a team of practitioners who empower you to make decisions grounded in your intuition
When I walked into this season, nervous about how isolating it might feel to be pregnant in San Francisco, all I knew was the traditional medical system. I had no idea just how many local practitioners have dedicated their lives to bringing life into this world.
In my late twenties, I had a destabilizing encounter with the traditional medical system that left me skeptical of spending one of the most important days of my life, delivering my child, in a hospital setting. Throughout the process, I’d felt a stripping of my agency unlike anything I’d felt before or since. While I began my prenatal care with an obstetrician, I was open to the idea that there might be an experience that better served my needs. Fortunately for me, San Francisco is home to world class medical systems and midwifery care.
Over the course of eight months, Ryan and I have assembled a Prenatal & Birth Team that we’ve been overjoyed to work with as we prepare for the arrival of our son. We sought to surround ourselves with practitioners who aren’t just experts in their field, but also possess the capacity to hold space for us as we navigate the emotional side of bringing new life to this world. Midwives and doulas who arm us with evidence-based research then support us as we make decisions anchored in our own intuition.
3. Creating life clarifies your boundaries and realigns your priorities
Having spent my last several years building communities and holding space for people of all walks of life, I’ve poured most of my energy outward. A few months before we conceived, I had an intuition that creating life would direct far more of my energy inward. I started to reorganize my life around less commitments and set firmer constraints on where I would focus my attention.
In hindsight, this realignment was one of the most important decisions I made to prepare myself for this season of life. My world quickly narrowed as much of my energy during first trimester was funneled toward creating life. I no longer had the capacity to engage in things that didn’t give me energy. Boundaries that were once challenging to set no longer seemed so difficult.
In social settings, I found it much easier to Irish exit and slip out when I no longer had the bandwidth to carry on a conversation. The interactions that drained me became far more obvious now that I had less energy to give. Increasingly, I sustained myself through one-on-one catch-ups, voice memos, and time alone.
4. Be kind to the growing tension between your ambitious and nesting selves
For months, I’ve felt the strong urge to nest, feeling next to no desire to leave the comfort of our home and our city. With all the changes on our horizon, I’ve craved cozy and predictable.
And yet, as I found myself braking in all facets of my life, life around me in San Francisco has accelerated at breakneck speeds. At the heart of it is advancements in AI — barreling forward, redefining what’s possible week over week.
Each week, I find myself attempting to feed multiple selves. The ambitious self that’s eager to ride the wave at the forefront of all this progress, spending her days vibe coding and spinning up new projects at work. Her rival: the nesting, on her-way-to-motherhood self that has a competing set of priorities. Prepare the baby’s closet, redesign our apartment, attend newborn care classes.
This unfamiliar self that requires far more rest than I’d previously ever allowed myself has risen to the top of the hierarchy of selves. While this is the exact season I’ve been waiting for, the tension between my selves feels all-consuming some days.
In the end, I’ve done my best to tend to each of them, giving them space to express their deepest needs and rest knowing that, for now, the self suspended in the chrysalis of becoming a mother takes precedence above all others.
5. The little things will become the big things
As my body has changed and my belly has grown to accommodate baby boy’s growth, the little things I once took for granted like getting out of a car and rolling out of bed were no longer as simple as they once were.
In many ways, this feels symbolic for the way our life will unfold as we step into parenthood. Over the last few months, as I’ve walked through San Francisco, belly in tow, I’ve felt a sense of nostalgia for how life once was. I watch as twenty-somethings walk through the park with their yoga mats hanging from their shoulders and lattes in hand, thinking back to a time when life was far simpler than I realized — that I could sign up for a workout class without thinking twice, go for a run during a free pocket of time, or meet up with a friend on a moment’s notice.
I feel a sadness knowing there’s no going back to that life and a certainty that I’m at peace with that reality. I think back to all that I did in my twenties and early thirties: the traveling, the experimenting with different jobs, the moving cross country, the taking up new hobbies, maximizing every moment I had.
And I feel a deep gratitude to younger me for always making the most out of the moment she had, for the existential dread she felt that she was running out of some sort of time because the reality was: the little things that she once took for granted will one day become the big things.
6. Ride the waves of unpreparedness
Much of navigating pregnancy has been an act of surrendering. Each trimester has felt like a new season and required a new level of preparedness. It took me several years to arrive at being ready to open the conception portal.
Once we conceived, I was unprepared for the intensity of the bouts of nausea I experienced and the lack of energy I had to do anything I’d historically loved: writing, working out, getting outdoors. The days when the nausea were particularly bad, I could imagine a younger version of me resenting being pregnant. But instead, despite how painful it felt, I found myself anchored to my love for this small baby, knowing that he relied on me to survive. I knew that the nausea was a good sign — that my hormones were shifting to create a home for him within me — and I held on to that knowing to buoy me through the worst of it.
By the time I reached second trimester, the nausea felt like my new normal so I was pleasantly surprised when slowly then all at once, the food aversions I’d been living with left as quietly as they came. During second trimester, I noticed how subdued my emotions had become. I no longer experienced the roller coaster of emotions brought on by my menstrual cycle.
I was unprepared for the dullness in how I felt day to day. In media, it’s common to see pregnant women bursting into tears at the sight of anything remotely tender. Rather than see a ramp up in tears, I was surprised to find that it was much harder to access the full spectrum of my emotions. I was now oscillating between just a handful of emotions. While part of the reason for this emotional shift was certainly tied to all the hormonal changes happening in my body, I suspect another reason was the result of a defense mechanism my body constructed to keep me safe, suppressing the risk of heartbreak.
Despite the fortune of a smooth conception and first trimester, I felt a persistent fear that something might go wrong. For the first half of my pregnancy, I found it difficult to fully bask in the joy of expecting a baby boy. Relief finally came during our comprehensive 20-week scan that confirmed that he was hitting all the right milestones. Seeing (and soon feeling) his little body move inside me gave me a sense of peace that I hadn’t realized I needed. I was unprepared for the fear I would feel about fully embracing the existence of our baby.
Third trimester came on fast and furious. For the first time, I felt a noticeable change in the way my body was carrying the weight. I’d developed subtle then unrelenting pelvic pain. In March, a heat wave blanketed the Bay Area, shattering multiple records and aggravating the end-of-pregnancy swelling that suddenly made itself known. One morning, I woke up to the sensation of my left hand detaching from my wrist. The pain was likely the combination of swelling and the presence of relaxin, a hormone that loosens ligaments in the weeks leading up to labor. For two weeks, I struggled to manage the swelling, wrist pain, and pelvic tension, realizing how lucky I’d been leading up to the final stretch. What I had thought was a middle of the road experience had actually been an incredibly smooth experience. I was unprepared for what the final weeks dealt me.
Now, in our final days before his arrival, I’ve oscillated between patience and impatience, frenzy and peace, fear and surrender. In this (and every) moment, I’m as prepared as I’ll ever be.
7. The most important experiences in life are the most uncertain
Our arrival to and departure from this world are two of the most uncertain experiences that we have in this lifetime. Sitting here as I write, waiting for a sign that our son is ready to join us, I now understand why our medical system opts to schedule inductions and create a sense of certainty amidst a deeply uncertain moment in time. It allows for the whole system to run smoother.
Yet, labor and birth are inherently messy and uncertain. In these final weeks, there has been a sense of anticipation as we wait, not knowing when our baby will arrive. Unlike most important days in our life (graduating, getting married, starting a new job), the not knowing makes it hard to plan other aspects of life. Will this baby arrive weeks ahead of “schedule” or take his time making his entrance? When do we need to have our pre-prepped meals ready by? When should my mom book her flight out west? Should I start encouraging labor now or wait until we arrive at 40 weeks?
For the last several weeks leading up to today, I’ve been in states of frenzy, feeling the scarcity of time before me as we prepared the apartment for him and took care of all the administrative tasks I’ve procrastinated until now. As I check the final to dos off my list, I feel a sense of softening to letting it all go and appreciating that any day now will be the last of our ordinary world: life before baby.
8. Loosen your grasp on time
In the final weeks, I’ve found myself loosening my grasp on time, allowing the hours and minutes of each day to run into each other and become fluid. Each day, my schedule is centered around a handful of priorities. Beyond that, I do my best to let go of any need to control what comes next.
I allow my body to rest when it needs to rest, no longer resisting the 4AM wake-up, just to fall back asleep two hours later. I allow my body to accept the cramping as it prepares itself for labor, not turning over to check what time it is or monitor how long it’s happening (for now). I try my best to surrender to not knowing when we’ll meet our son.
I’m resting into the reality that I’m straddling two worlds with no timeline to mark when I’ll emerge on the other side.
9. You won’t know what you don’t know
It’s only on the other side of nine months that I can definitively say that I truly have no idea what to expect as we enter the birth portal and parenthood for the first time.
We’ve prepared in all the ways possible and yet, no class will truly prepare us for the moments ahead. After all, “knowledge is only a rumor until it lives in the muscle.”
All I know to be true is that we’ll soon come face to face with the greatest surrender yet.
See you on the other side. 🩵