Preparing for motherhood

They say you can't prepare for being a mother. I disagree.

I was not prepared for being a mother. I wanted to be a mother. I was dreaming of having a child for years but when my child arrived the dreams I had, had nothing to do with reality.
The changes in my life hit me like a storm, they derailed me for a couple of weeks until I could find myself again and create a new me - a mother.

It's true you can't imagine what a new baby will bring into to your life, what it will make with you but you can prepare for taking care of a newborn.
After I gave birth to my child I had no idea how to handle him. I had no idea about rocking babies, breastfeeding them, changing them or bathing them. I didn't understand his signs. Was he crying because he's hungry, because he's tired? What does he want? I didn't even know he could cry because he's overtired. He left me helpless and I had to learn the hard way to understand his signs. It took weeks of him being miserable, as his needs where not fully me,t and me being miserable because I couldn't understand him.

I was the youngest child in my family, I had only older relatives. I never took care of a baby before my son was born. I never even held a baby. It was a huge disadvantage. I simple didn't learn yet how to handle a baby.
I believe every expecting mother would hugely benefit from some experience of taking care of a baby. Let it be their sibling, their relative, a baby of a friend but any contact with a baby will be beneficial. There's so much emphasis on preparing for birth but there's not one course for pregnant women on baby care. How to hold a baby, what the rhythm of a baby is, how to breastfeed them, how to rock them to sleep. What their cries could mean. There should be courses for pregnant mothers where they can meet mothers with newborns, where they can handle a baby, learn from those mothers, see baby care in real life.
Birthing is written in our DNA, our body does it by itself but baby care is something we have to learn. And its so much harder when you have to learn it with your own first child.

So if you get the chance, take care of a baby, talk to your friends about their babies. Don't make the mistake of thinking the knowledge will come to you automatically after you gave birth. Be a babysitter, be an aupair, help out your friends who have babies, go to a breastfeeding meeting to see women breastfeed.
Anything but just get your hands on a baby before you have your own.

Preparing for birth

Birth is one of the most natural processes and its amazing how every woman can birth a child without knowledge and preparation. We simply have the ability, it's written in our DNA. Nonetheless a little preparation, mentally and physically, doesn't hurt. Birth is a myth these days. It's something that happens behind closed doors in hospitals, with numerous doctors in white gowns and their medical instruments. By the time we hit 30 and are pregnant with our first child the closest we have come to witnessing birth are TV shows and maybe the stories of our own mothers. We know birth hurts, hurts a lot but that's often pretty much about it. We don't really know what happens during birth. For our ancestors it was normal to witness real births before they gave birth themselves. Well, for us that isn't really the case. So we need a different method of preparation. Of course we can go in cold handed but as we don't know much about birth, the idea to do something you have never done before and know little about is so scary that our worries could interfere with our ability to give birth naturally. Even though I am generally a person who likes to gather knowledge and look up everything on the internet, I didn't want to research too much about birth. Main reason was I didn't want to get too scared. For instance I don't like TV shows about birth, as I believe they often just give you the picture of a painful process. So what did I do?

I prepared my body.
Here in Amsterdam it's very common to do pregnancy yoga. And that's what I did. I did a pregnancy yoga class with Pascale Bonnet. I have to say I loved loved my pregnancy yoga course. It was a peaceful moment every week that let me connect with my body and my baby. Also I met other expecting mothers with whom I could share my experience and above all my teacher Pascale was fabulous. She even became my doula during the birth. Pascale taught us very useful yoga poses and breathing techniques that also helped me during the birth to deal with the pain. She also explained all the stages of birth. That was done during two partner classes, which was very good as our partners also learned about the process of birth and how to assist us best during birth. But above all she gave us confidence, confidence in ourselves to birth, confidence to try for a natural birth and confidence in mother earth that everything will go well. This was a class that ran for a couple of weeks. After it finished I continued with kundalini pregnancy yoga with Siri. Siri also became a good friend and I did two other courses with her. Dancing for birth and Mama and Baby yoga. I loved Dancing for birth. We danced with our pregnant bellies to music from around a world. It was so much fun. It also prepared my legs for the 30 hour birth marathon that I did primarily standing doing dance moves as this was the best way to encounter the pain.

I also prepared my mind.
I believe its very important to prepare mentally for birth. Especially to face your expectations and fears about birth. I started to meditate before I was pregnant and I continued doing so during my pregnancy. Daily yoga and mediation, especially towards the end of my pregnancy, became a ritual. I love to read books, but I didn't read too many on pregnancy and birth. Which was good. But I read one that I can recommend to any expecting mother. It's "Birthing form Within" The book covers some general information about birth but its focus is really on preparing the expecting mother mentally. It uses art as a form to prepare for birth. I am a creative person and I liked that approach a lot. Using the book I worked with two of my biggest fears concerning child birth: having a c-section and giving birth in a hospital with a lot of medical interference. I dreamed of a water birth at home. Eventually I had to face one of my biggest fears - giving birth in a hospital with medical interventions. But I prevented a c-section and I managed to give birth to a breech baby vaginally, I believe mainly because I was mentally prepared. As part of the book exercises I made two clay figures. A dolphin representing my baby (his name is Yunus which means Dolphin) and a small statue of mother earth. During every birth there's a moment when you think you will die and you can't go further. I remember asking for my mother earth figure during that moment. I hold on to it tightly, praying to mother earth to give me strength and let me go on. And I went further. I passed a moment that felt like death and found some energy and strength in me that I never imagined excited. Passing that moment gave me so much self confidence. Whenever I see the mother earth figure laying around at home now, I remember how strong I am and that I can overcome any difficulties. I also asked my mother, my grandmother and my sister-in-law about their birth and they gave me some good tips and their stories showed me again that every woman is capable of giving birth.

Lastly I got some additional support
Just a couple of days before giving birth I hired my yoga teacher Pascale as my doula. This was the best decision around birth that I took. Because I had a breech baby and I was now facing a very medical birth in hospital I felt I needed some support from someone who was not family or in any other way related. I needed someone who had experience with pregnancy and childbirth, who could support me mentally, who could also be there for my husband, who would be another supporter of natural birth in the hospital and who I trusted. Pascale helped me in so many ways, it was great to have her at my birth. I also thought about my ideal birth beforehand and made a birth plan. We couldn't really stick to it but it helped me to think beforehand what was important for me and to give me strength to fight for some of of the points I wanted.

Mental an physical preparation helped to have the birth I wanted.

A happy pregnancy

In traditional Chinese a baby is considered to be already one year old when it is born. One explanation for this is that the Chinese might consider that the baby has already lived in its mothers womb for almost a year. A very nice thought.

I had a great pregnancy. I was lucky to fall pregnant very quickly and I felt very good throughout my whole pregnancy. In the first 2 months I had a bit of what they call morning sickness, though for me I rather felt sick in the evenings but overall I have never felt so good in my life. I somehow felt whole, completed, as if something before was missing. I felt more balanced and had less mood swings and I loved the feeling of something growing inside me. I think the different hormone mix during pregnancy worked very well for me. While I sometimes can feel upset, lonely and even depressed, I hardly had such feelings during my pregnancy. Towards the end I became very anxious because my baby was lying in breech position but this is a different story that I will tell another time. Pregnancy felt for me like a rose cloud. It was also the time that I discovered yoga for me. I already regularly did Pilates and I tried to meditate from time to time but it was during my pregnancy that I tried out yoga and found out how good it was for me. It was also a time when I connected deeper with my body and mother nature. I would listen more to my body, feel my baby , feel what was happening in my body and I would really enjoy spending time in the nature. Going for a walk, listening to the birds, singing a song to my unborn. I developed a total dislike to any technology, especially computers. For some weeks I couldn't bear to be near a computer and I hated it to be locked up behind my computer in a dark office in my cubicle. All I wanted during office hours is to go outside, breath fresh air and have nature around me. I was dreaming of a pregnancy when I didn't have to be in an office and those strong images also influenced me later to delay going back to work after my baby was born. Especially in the first months when I didn't yet worry about the breech position I had little worries about my baby. I was fortunate to be pregnant in the Netherlands, where a midwife looks after you, where they have few medical check ups and view pregnancy as something natural and hence infuse few worries into a becoming mother. I loved to be pregnant. It felt very good.
In retrospective I believe I could also enjoy being pregnant so much as I arranged my life more HSP friendly during that time. I avoided any over stimulation. Was I exposed to it like during gatherings with many people or long nights out, I always had my pregnancy as a reason to retreat and relax. You can always use a pregnancy as a reason to ask for some alone and quiet time. Also the feeling of something growing inside me, of having a purpose was very fulfilling for me. Pregnancy was a happy HSP time.

Being highly sensitive

This blog is dedicated to the life of a highly sensitive person and especially to motherhood. What is a highly sensitive person?

The trait is very well researched and described by Elaine Aron. We talk about a person who has a high sensory processing sensitivity. What does that mean? Someone who is easily startled by loud noise, who gets easily overwhelmed by strong smells, bright lights, chaos or many people. Someone who can sense the feelings of others, who has a thin skin, gets overwhelmed by emotions. A person with a rich and complex inner life. Does that sounds familiar? There' s a good test here. For highly sensitive people (HSP) many situations in life are processed differently. I discovered that I had this trait a couple of years back and reading about experiences from other HSPs was like finding home. I always felt different, I was the shy one, the one that had such a rich inner life but couldn't and wouldn't express it. Finally I knew there are more people out there like me and I had an explanation for situation like when I didn't like the noise from a TV even if the sound level was ok for everyone else. Becoming a mother and raising my child as a HSP was and is a very special experience to me and I wanted to share my experience with others. My husband is most likely a HSP as well and judging from my baby it's very likely he's one too. From the beginning I often felt my baby was different. That I should make other choices on how to raise him like those that were popular or recommended to me. I had to find my own way that worked best for us. I wanted to write down my experience for other HSP parents. To share, but also to help others. I hope you can find something useful for you in this blog and that my experience is encouraging you to find your own way as a HSP parent.