A client once told me something that has stuck with me for years: “I thought it was intuitive eating, but it’s actually intuitive living.”
Looking back, she could not be more right. The process of letting go of fear and restriction, rejecting a prescribed body image ideal, letting go of guilt and shame, and learning to love & accept your body impacts the entire way you look at life.
It is no surprise that I’ve found that to be true during my pregnancy journey.
Four years passed from the day we first started trying to get pregnant until the day I got to hold Sienna in my arms. Four years of fertility struggles. But, it was also four years of growth.
If it had all worked as initially planned and I had given birth three years ago, I don’t think I would have trusted my body through this process like I have been able to do currently.
Before we struggled with infertility, I was so out of touch with my body. It was an opposing force that I had to control, and even fight, to look a certain way. Once I learned that I couldn’t just get pregnant like most people, I felt even more like my body was working against me.
After three more years of reconnecting with my body and repairing that relationship, I decided that the theme of my pregnancy with Sienna would be “surrender.”
I would surrender to my body, because it knows what it needs. I would surrender to the process of pregnancy, because it’s a wild ride and so much of it is beyond our control. I would surrender to childbirth, because no one can predict what will happen as you bring your child into the world.
Without the need to control things so events occur in a certain way, I was able to trust my body during this pregnancy. I knew that it would do what it needed to do. Whatever that looked like or whatever the outcome was, I still would have trusted it.
Before getting into my birth story, I want to make one thing clear: I believe that all births are amazing births. Whether they are medicated, unmedicated, vaginal, or C-sections, they are all amazing, powerful feats that bring new life into the world, however they happen. There is no hierarchy of birth!
In my case, I had an unmedicated birth for twenty-three hours. I pushed for three and a half hours. Obviously, that much pushing is not ideal—I did end up with a stage two tear—but I kept leaning into trusting my body and the support system around me.
I held no expectations for what childbirth “had” to look like. If I had turned out to need an emergency C-section, I would have surrendered to that as well.
Once we got home, I again held no expectations for how things “had” to look. I focused on getting to know little Sienna, enjoying my first days as a mom, and resting so my body could recover.
Sidenote: there is no shame in resting, even if you didn’t just have a baby. Just as we give ourselves unconditional permission to eat, we should also give ourselves unconditional permission to rest. So if your body is asking for rest, listen to & honor it!
Back to babies… to me, there is no greater evidence that we are born intuitive eaters than a newborn baby; babies cry when they’re hungry and they stop eating when they’re full. That means that my job is to listen to my baby and feed her according to her actual needs, not according to a schedule dictated by an app & an algorithm. You can hear more of my thoughts on this here.
So all in all, I am beyond grateful that I had Sienna at this point in my journey, and not at a time when I would have been fighting my body & putting a ton of pressure on myself to meet the unrealistic expectations that our society puts on mothers.
And, of course, I’m grateful for Sienna herself, because, well…
Look at her!
For those along their fertility and intuitive eating journeys, I invite you to surrender to both processes and learn to trust your body.
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