I am, I hope, days away from having my fifth baby. Fully effaced and dilating slowly but surely, my sweet baby boy is making his way Earth-side from what has been a completely heavenly home for him. I believe that we come to Earth fresh from the arms of Heavenly Parents in a pre-mortal world that is bright, beautiful, peaceful and perfectly instructional for our mortal lives. I know that if we could go back there for just a moment everything would be familiar, and we would feel how close our Heavenly Mother and Father were to us there, reminding us of how close They still are to us here. Our Divine Parents never really leave, I believe. Heaven touches down in moments, some more glorious than others, one of those moments being giving birth to a baby.
I love the dichotomy that pregnancy then creates for the wonder of having a new baby — pregnancy is amazing, but in more ways than one, it is the “bitter” to the “sweet.” The magic of new life is easy; overall, pregnancy is hard. The two together exemplify the balance of everything that our Earth life is meant to be: bitter and sweet. We are prepared for our mortal lives before we come, knowing that they’ll be perfect for us. And yet we arrive and begin to see how dabbled life is with imperfection. Illness, sorrow, loss, fear, unfairness, insecurity, doubt — why does life have to be so hard? Shouldn’t the journey be smoother if it is “so sweet?” Shouldn’t growing a baby be blissful if it ultimately is so, so beautiful? In my 10 years of being pregnant and giving birth, I’ve learned so much of the bitter and the sweet of this journey, with each of my pregnancies teaching me something new, something more. Oh how my pregnancies have remodeled and refined my soul.
Pregnancy #1: miscarriage
I was five weeks along when I started to bleed and cramp. Shocked to be miscarrying, I had never considered before that it could happen to me. Becoming pregnant was planned, but admittedly, I was instantly terrified by the changes pregnancy and mothering were going to bring me. My perception of pregnancy, mostly, was that Mama got a drastically changed body that had a hard time being like “the old her” ever again. And while I knew that mothering made for a beautiful life, I also saw some mothers become so consumed by self-sacrifice that they legitimately lost themselves. The two storm clouds swirled around me leading up to my miscarriage and in hindsight, I genuinely wonder if the stress of those thoughts caused me to lose that baby? I was just so deeply, seriously stressed.
Who knows. What I do know is that in losing that itty bitty baby, I gained a sense of reality toward pregnancy that snapped me out of my fear: if having a baby was going to be hard for me – if infertility or child loss was part of my physical make-up – then I wasn’t going to make it any harder on myself by worrying my mind and body sick about it. Come what may – a changed body and a changed life – I’d take it, if it meant I could have my own baby and be my own kind of mother. Filled with remorse over my unnerving fear, I remember fervently praying in my tiny, married-student apartment for another chance, and if I got one, I would embrace the changes! I would be grateful for it all, come what may.
Pregnancy #2: Olivia
It was mid-March – my last semester of college – and a friend of mine nonchalantly told me while walking across campus that she had taken a pregnancy test that day, “just for fun.” Hm, I thought. She took one just for fun? Maybe I should do that, too… I stopped by the store on my walk home, picked up a pregnancy test, and waited till Ryan was home to take it, just for fun. To our cataclysmic shock, the test was positive. Instantly I understood why I hadn’t been having my periods since December – I wasn’t recovering from my miscarriage, I was pregnant (naive of me to not know that the timeline of recovery after miscarriage is fast, but I honestly just didn’t know)! Instantly I understood why my tummy was getting softer and squishier, despite the hard training I was doing for a half-marathon in May. Instantly, I understood the power of something within each of us that I just hadn’t grasped before: the power of perception.
For three months I had been carrying along in my normal ways – eating per usual, exercising just as I had been, and living life without worrying over a changing future – all while carrying a baby. I didn’t know I was pregnant, so I hadn’t given myself the space to perceive pregnancy as problematic! Oh how my thoughts mattered! I hadn’t been viewing pregnancy through my previous shades — that pregnancy was basically a life-altering illness — you can’t eat the same (gotta satisfy those weird cravings), you can’t move or exercise the same (don’t move too much, it’s too dangerous for the baby), and thus you can’t live the same (pregnancy was the beginning of the end). How Olivia’s pregnancy proved me wrong! I could be pregnant and I could be me. That absolute fact followed me into motherhood: I could morph into a mother and maintain me. Completely contrary to my first belief, my most successful endeavors professionally, socially, physically have come to me because of the places life has taken me as a mom. With effort, I’ve gained my body back and made room for my passions after every baby I’ve had. To my sisters out there with the same fear I once had of your life ending with your baby’s life beginning, I am living proof that the opposite is true. Trust me: you can have your cake and eat it, too.
Pregnancy #3: miscarriage
Our darling baby girl, Olivia Joy (she truly brought us so much joy!), was the center of our world for a full year when we decided to get pregnant again. The babies would be close in age – 18 months apart – but as Ryan and I looked ahead at our future (three grueling years of law school were on the horizon), having our second baby sooner than later felt like the best route to take. Per our timing, we’d have the baby in April, giving us four months to let the baby grow before moving cross-country and shipping Ryan off to his very busy life in law school. Fortunately, our timing worked! I was so grateful to be pregnant again and that the baby was chugging along and growing well…until that sweet baby wasn’t.
Unexpectedly, I was that mom at a routine check-up whose doctor couldn’t find a heartbeat. I was that mom with silent tears streaming down her face while nodding her head numbly to everything the doctor said. I was that mom who had to choose between an operation to miscarry the baby or taking a medication to miscarry, since the baby wasn’t leaving my body on its own (the doctor assumed the baby had been gone for two weeks, based off of the swelling of its little body). I couldn’t logically spend time in the hospital with little Olivia in my life, so I opted for the medication and waited two-days’ time for my body to start passing that sweet baby. I was that mom who saw so much blood and tissue and other things that no mom wants to see as my miscarriage finished. I was that mom who wept “why did this happen?” and “why me?” Absolutely heartbroken from losing a little baby, I was that mom.
Through my pain and sadness of miscarrying, I also became that mom that was given something priceless: empathy. To this day, I cannot hear of another woman miscarrying without thinking of my own loss and I ache for that woman. I pray for that woman. I pray that she’ll get another baby, and that the rainbow of it all – the timing, the baby, all of it – will be blindingly bright. I pray that that woman can hold on and that, one day, even just one aspect of that loss will make sense. Universal timing – not just timing in the present – is important to believe in, and I know that in time, reasons for our losses become clear.
Pregnancy #4: Claire
Late November 2014: Ryan was just finishing his first semester of law school and beginning his career-determining, first-semester final exams. I was at peak busyness with my small business, having just launched our Kickstarter campaign. Two days after our big launch, on a twinkling, Autumn night, Miss Claire was born. Just before our sweet baby’s arrival, all eyes were on everything but her, honestly. We were just so busy, literally burning midnight oil the night my labor started. I’d be lying if I said that I didn’t swallow a big pill in accepting the timing of Claire’s pregnancy and birth. Because of my miscarriages, hypothetically we were open to having a baby at any time, but realistically – when the rubber hit the road and Claire’s due date was stamped as late November – I was sad. Months before we even reached November, I was sure that the timing of her birth would make our already-hard lives even harder. Oh how I was wrong.
Two weeks after Claire’s birth, our lives were turned upside-down as my business dynamics unexpectedly changed. Unforeseeable to me during her entire pregnancy, my angelic baby Claire touched down on earth and became the epicenter of our life’s sudden hurricane. Every time I held Claire, I was put at ease. Every time I nursed Claire, I was calmed. Every time she looked up at me with her big, beautiful blue eyes, nestling into my body with her soft, fair skin and blonde hair, I was reminded of what life is really all about – it was about her, and her sister, and their daddy – and if I anchored myself to them like this tiny, loving baby had so easily anchored herself to me, whatever life threw at me, I would be okay. Claire should’ve been born seven months earlier than she was, if I would’ve had my way, but thank heaven I didn’t get my way. Her divinely timed arrival taught me another lesson regarding pregnancy and birth: God knows when it is ultimately right for our babies to come, both for their life events and for ours. I had no idea how much I would need peaceful, blissful newborn Claire in late November 2014, or how much I would need her during the six, strenuous months that followed. How grateful I am for God’s timing trumping my own. Forever and ever, He knows the blessings we deeply need and when our lives will deeply need them.
Pregnancy #5: Emmy
Emmy’s pregnancy moved fast and strong. During my nine months of growing her, we moved fast and strong. We were in an exciting season of our lives — our third year of law school at UVA Law. Ryan had a job lined up before that school year even started, so our 3L Year turned into a time for a lot of adventure, and in-utero Emmy stopped me from doing nothing. At 10 weeks pregnant, we road-tripped the entire Eastern Seaboard for the whole month of August. At 27 weeks pregnant, we went back to New York City for the month of December, staying throughout Christmas and tromping through the most energetic place on earth every day and night as a little family. At 32 weeks pregnant, Ryan and I skipped off to Spain, walking miles and miles every day around that beautiful corner of Europe. Emmy’s pregnancy empowered me.
Emmy’s first six months of life, however, shattered me. And that is where the lesson lies for me in having my Emmy: overwhelm always comes, and when it does, how do you handle it? I was so mentally unequipped to know what to do with the overwhelm of being a mom to three tiny people, I eventually sunk into my first bout with anxiety that led to depression. Looking back, the anxiety started with physical exhaustion + spiraling thoughts of “I can’t do this job anymore,” since the constant demands of our girls was consuming. A screaming toddler, a screaming baby, a screaming toddler – my days and my nights were spent putting out fires. Ryan graduated 8 weeks after Emmy as born, and our happy-go-lucky, 3L law school year was quickly replaced with a six-month stint of major stress. Ryan had to pass the CA Bar Exam in order to be fully hired, and the pressure of passing that exam was immense. I was often all alone during that time, too. Ryan was always intensely studying. We lived as temps in my parents house in St. George while waiting to move to San Diego and my parents were busy. I hardly had friends after being surrounded by my law school girls for the last there years. Burning fumes, my tank constantly ran on empty.
Thankfully, I was still functional. I got out of bed and got ready every day, the girls and I chugged along, getting outside and playing day by day – but internally I was on high-alert all of the time. Eventually that stress took its major toll on my mind, and my body had a breakdown. Of course, that breakdown shocked me into reality – something had to change – and since my circumstances couldn’t be adjusted much, I began a journey of learning even more about changing the state of my mind. I had to learn to be constructive — realistic, yes, but constructive in how I viewed everything – my self, my mistakes, my job, my busy husband, my young children. I had to simplify my life, lowering personal expectations by what felt like 100 degrees. My motto for everything became “less but better.” I turned to psychology literature and research, taking a deep-dive into cognitive behavioral therapy, as I technically learned how to turn my mental health completely around (I majored in MFT & Human Development in college, so I knew where to start there). I prayed hard for my efforts + the Savior’s power to help my mind change. Ultimately, I metamorphosed through bringing Emmy into this world, and God bless her for it. If I hadn’t fallen so low, I would’ve never learned how to fly so high. If we let them be so, our greatest struggles can be our greatest instructors.
Pregnancy #6: Chloe
We had lived in San Diego for almost a year when we felt ready to welcome Chloe into the world. With a two, four and a six-year-old in tow, I was pregnant once again, but being in a stable life situation, and with a full, mental tool box in hand, I felt more ready to have a baby than any other time before. Life moved at a much more manageable pace during Chloe’s pregnancy than with my other pregnancies, and I think that’s the greatest lesson I glean from growing my sweet Chloe: when pregnant, your life circumstances + your attitude matters, and as I learned with Emmy, if you can’t change your circumstances when having a new baby, change your attitude.
Carrying what I learned from Emmy’s pregnancy and postpartum season into being pregnant and having Chloe, lo and behold, I had the best time! I loved the baby phase with her. I loved mothering my little flock. I loved my life! No, Chloe wasn’t a “sleeper” – she wasn’t this unreal, easy-peasy baby that made life blissful. She was a very normal, demanding baby, actually. No, the other three girls weren’t clean little fairies that danced around the house with glee. They were still three little kids with never-ending, exhausting demands. The only thing that was different about having Chloe – in the best way – was me. I was conscious of my attitude every single day. I chose to see the good in every single way. A broken vase dropped by a toddler? I got to find a new that I love even more. A sleepless night brought on by a gassy newborn? I got to fuse an attachment with my baby by being there for her that no one else would. I practiced what I had learned – our perception determines our thoughts, and our thoughts determine our feelings – and I worked hard at perceiving life as positively as possible. I wasn’t perfect at it, but wow, I was much better at it then before! Seeing progress in myself felt like a miracle. I work at this practice still today – perceptions -> thoughts -> feelings – and I’ll forever stand by the truth that gaining the skill of watching your mind think, and then playing positive cards in your mind, changes your life.
Pregnancy #7: Baby Boy
And now, here we are, my seventh and final pregnancy — my fifth baby! In full transparency, choosing to get pregnant with this little one wasn’t the easiest decision for Ryan and me to make. We actually felt like having another baby was a hard pass for a long time. Our hands and our hearts were full to overflowing with our four girls. Finally, though, we started to at least vacillate in our feelings, and ultimately, we decided to go off of impressions we’d had together about our family since we were newlyweds – that we had five little souls in our family to love and learn from. Coupled with what Ryan and I had felt deep down for a long time, I had to have a mega mindset change to get pregnant again. So often in prayer, especially on chaotic days, I’d tell Heavenly Father that I was done with having kids — He saw my “crazy.” He knew I was already in over my head with the four girls. He knew my flaws and how they flared up with little sleep and lots of work. Ultimately, He knew I was scared because of what another pregnancy and baby would ask of me. “I can’t have another baby!” I’d tell Him. Finally one day, I felt like God told me something back: Well, if that’s the way you choose to look at your capabilities and mine, then yes, you can’t have another baby. The impression jolted me in the best way. I knew the power of my mind at this point. I could have the fifth baby that I thought I might always have, if I believed that I could. I decided to believe that I could. Do I still get slammed with fear over having five? Absolutely. Do I fight those thoughts down with perception -> thoughts -> feelings? Yes.
Other than choosing to believe in myself again, and in my Savior’s ability to make me more than I am on my own, this pregnancy has taught me about endurance. I have had an achier body during this pregnancy than all of my other pregnancies combine (there is no doubt, I have had 5 babies in 10 years)! My sciatica, round-ligament, and pelvic floor pain have been intense, even somewhat paralyzing at times (if I sit still or lay down for too long, I actually can’t move – my entire legs tighten up and I have to incrementally inch around till my muscles kick back into gear). My varicose veins are bulging up my right leg. My body has swelled in every direction, as my short frame has gained 40 pounds. My first-trimester fatigue has never let up, forcing me to nap every day. I no longer run, I wobble when I walk and I cry often. I’ve been given a taste of having somewhat of a physically debilitating pregnancy, especially during my third trimester, and oh it’s been good for me to feel. Painful, yes, but it’s given me empathy and immense respect for the women whose pregnancies flatten them. Thank goodness for my little family that has loved and lifted me during these last nine, strenuous months! They’ve been my support team as I’ve ran this marathon. I have made it to this final finish line because of them.
“Strength and struggle travel together. The pursuit of easy things makes men weak.” — Unknown. What a summary of pregnancy. In no way is bringing new life into the world easy. Bitter. And yet, in the pursuance of something so magnificent as growing a baby inside of you, we women discover ultimate strength. Sweet.
What a gift it is to be pregnant! A brilliant welding of gold occurs between the sweet, reliant baby that grows within the strong, selfless woman affording them life. “Grateful” is an inadequate descriptor of how I feel about this life chapter ending, but I will start there. I am so grateful for what my pregnancy years have taught me about how to become the best version of myself, which after writing this piece of my life story in depth, feels like just about everything. God be thanked for the gift of bearing my babies! Thank you, dear Pregnancy. You have been good to me!
