32 min
162 | Part 1 Pregnancy Real Talk The FITSPRO Podcast
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- Health & Fitness
This podcast episode is the epitome of nuance - of several different emotions and experiences coexisting at the same time. So I want to make clear that if you skip any part of this or take any single part of it as the conclusion of my experience or this episode, you are mistaken and you’re also missing the entire point of this episode.
Bless me and my attempt to keep this episode concise. I’ve already decided to make this a two part series because it’s just needed to get in everything I want to. Bringing a bebe into the world is not a simple thing for me (or anyone I presume).
Pregnancy back story
It’s no secret to my Instagram audience, friends or family that Nate and I were team no babies for a long time. I say that but it’s not entirely true.
If that was the case, we would have gotten him snipped or tied my tubes or taken an actual preventative route. That only makes sense if you’re 100% on not producing offspring.
For us, we’ve been married nine years in August. When we got married, we told people, maybe in three years we’d think about expanding our family. Then three years rolled around, and we said maybe at that five year mark. Then five turned into we aren’t preventing kids (I wasn’t on birth control but tracked my cycle via the Fertility Awareness Method - aka FAM), but if and when it happens, we’ll figure it out.
Therefore we were open to having kids, we just didn’t WANT them in a specific time frame.
I would say I was more against the idea of having kids. And I want to be very careful with my words here. I am simply sharing the most authentic story I can for myself in hopes that it helps other people (both men and women) feel less alone if they had or have similar feelings.
Also, I have always been amazed by and think that motherhood, pregnancy, in the act of giving birth is miraculous. And believe it as a gift. It was just never some thing I saw clearly for myself.
Let’s lay out my situation. I am the breadwinner. And frankly my business has been my baby for the last seven years. Thinking about a child coming into that picture did not seem feasible to me. I couldn’t visualize it working. I’ve never identified with any of the natural motherly tendencies or desires. You could say I have more masculine energy naturally. But the beautiful thing is, Nate is a stay at home husband and is f*****g amazing with kids. They gravitate towards him. He’s a big punching bag or cuddle bug, and a big kid at heart. He’s a better cook than I am and he’s hospitable AF.
It’s why we work. It’s not that I am masculine and he is feminine. I want to make that very clear. We very much so respect rather traditional masculine and feminine roles while also letting each person pursue and express what we believe to be their natural gifts - I am task driven. He is relationally driven.
Sooooo all that is to say - I am now, at 19 weeks stoked to raise a babe with Nathanael and trusting him has also allowed me to see myself in the motherly role that will make sense for me.
That feeling is abundantly different than when I found out I was pregnant and two years leading up to it.
From 2018 through 2021 my feelings around possibly becoming pregnant were 110% fear driven. That fact is clearer than ever now. From the fear of actual motherhood - bonding with the baby, balancing my work life, literally not getting to be as selfish as I was without children, to the literal act of labor, I avoided even thinking about the possibility because I was terrified of it all. Stick with me, because I don’t fear these things now.
This podcast episode is the epitome of nuance - of several different emotions and experiences coexisting at the same time. So I want to make clear that if you skip any part of this or take any single part of it as the conclusion of my experience or this episode, you are mistaken and you’re also missing the entire point of this episode.
Bless me and my attempt to keep this episode concise. I’ve already decided to make this a two part series because it’s just needed to get in everything I want to. Bringing a bebe into the world is not a simple thing for me (or anyone I presume).
Pregnancy back story
It’s no secret to my Instagram audience, friends or family that Nate and I were team no babies for a long time. I say that but it’s not entirely true.
If that was the case, we would have gotten him snipped or tied my tubes or taken an actual preventative route. That only makes sense if you’re 100% on not producing offspring.
For us, we’ve been married nine years in August. When we got married, we told people, maybe in three years we’d think about expanding our family. Then three years rolled around, and we said maybe at that five year mark. Then five turned into we aren’t preventing kids (I wasn’t on birth control but tracked my cycle via the Fertility Awareness Method - aka FAM), but if and when it happens, we’ll figure it out.
Therefore we were open to having kids, we just didn’t WANT them in a specific time frame.
I would say I was more against the idea of having kids. And I want to be very careful with my words here. I am simply sharing the most authentic story I can for myself in hopes that it helps other people (both men and women) feel less alone if they had or have similar feelings.
Also, I have always been amazed by and think that motherhood, pregnancy, in the act of giving birth is miraculous. And believe it as a gift. It was just never some thing I saw clearly for myself.
Let’s lay out my situation. I am the breadwinner. And frankly my business has been my baby for the last seven years. Thinking about a child coming into that picture did not seem feasible to me. I couldn’t visualize it working. I’ve never identified with any of the natural motherly tendencies or desires. You could say I have more masculine energy naturally. But the beautiful thing is, Nate is a stay at home husband and is f*****g amazing with kids. They gravitate towards him. He’s a big punching bag or cuddle bug, and a big kid at heart. He’s a better cook than I am and he’s hospitable AF.
It’s why we work. It’s not that I am masculine and he is feminine. I want to make that very clear. We very much so respect rather traditional masculine and feminine roles while also letting each person pursue and express what we believe to be their natural gifts - I am task driven. He is relationally driven.
Sooooo all that is to say - I am now, at 19 weeks stoked to raise a babe with Nathanael and trusting him has also allowed me to see myself in the motherly role that will make sense for me.
That feeling is abundantly different than when I found out I was pregnant and two years leading up to it.
From 2018 through 2021 my feelings around possibly becoming pregnant were 110% fear driven. That fact is clearer than ever now. From the fear of actual motherhood - bonding with the baby, balancing my work life, literally not getting to be as selfish as I was without children, to the literal act of labor, I avoided even thinking about the possibility because I was terrified of it all. Stick with me, because I don’t fear these things now.
32 min