READY FOR PREGNANCY

Ever since I can remember I saw myself as a mother and thought I was going to be a young mum. My mum had myself in her early twenties and I being raised surrounded by people under 30 always felt precious to me. Plus, I have four siblings and changed diapers of three of them so being with small children comes naturally to me.

Yet, my twenties passed quickly with travelling and enjoying life to the fullest and having a child was certainly not on my agenda.

When I had just turned 30 I met the man whom I am now married to. Yaron and I started a pretty serious relationship right from the beginning but with him being a Colombian living in the US and me being German we had to sort out our living situation first which took almost five years. After trying different scenarios and home bases we finally decided to settle in Munich two years ago. It was just by the end of 2018 that we started to feel ready for having a baby.

January and February passed and we were still careful around the time of fertility.

Then we decided to visit Yaron`s family and the home he grew up in on a month long trip to Colombia. This experience was special to both of us: I was eager to get to know this part of him and he reconnected to his roots after years of being abroad. It was in Colombia that we payed less attention to my cycle and by the end of the trip Yaron told me: let`s have a baby. What we didn`t know then: I already carried our little baby boy.

I returned from Colombia a few days before him.

Two days after I had come back, somewhere in the back of my mind, I started to wonder about my period. Yet it wasn`t until the fourth day that I did the calculation and realised: I was five days overdue. 

Of course, this realisation came on a Sunday where all the shops are closed in Germany and no pregnancy tests easily available. Plus, Yaron was on a family gathering without access to WIFI and talking by the phone was virtually impossible. As Sunday went along I became more and more nervous until I finally gave in and called my mum. I shared my thoughts on possibly being pregnant with her and she did a great job holding my pieces together. When I finally managed to talk to Yaron for a minute we decided to take the test together the next day via Skype and set a time for it.

On Monday I taught a Morning Flow Yoga class and went to visit a friend and her newborn daughter, passing the time until Yaron would be awake in Colombia. It was a very special in between state of being nervous, the feeling of carrying a secret and also excitement about the possibility of being pregnant.

By the time I bought the test I felt a sense of certainty that it would turn out positive.

We connected via Skype and I took Yaron along the whole process: the peeing in the cup, the unpacking of the test, and then: two strong blue lines after less than two seconds. It was true: we were going to be parents.

OH THE CHANGES

It took us both by surprise that we made a baby the very first time it was actually possible – but in the happy, excited way. We were going to be parents! After some time tuning into my feelings and savouring the news and I shared them with my mum and set a coffee date with my dad for the very next day. I felt like I wanted to tell the whole world that our life just changed in a split second and that I somehow loved it already. Yaron told his mum and family too, since they were still together in Colombia and he was going to come home the next day. I set an appointment with my gynaecologist and bought a book on pregnancy and early childhood. There was a whole universe to explore and I felt so ready to dive in.

I had another three days of rejoicing in the news, sharing my secret with a few more of my close ones and reuniting with Yaron before I started to feel … off. The changes in my hormones began to show their effects and changes crept in slowly but surely. An uneasiness in my gut, moments of sleepiness during the day, a hightened sensitivity and zero interest in my regular Yoga practice. By the end of the week, the hormones had a firm grip on me. 

Before getting pregnant I disregarded morning sickness as a discomfort, a momentary situation that came up in movies and people talked about. Never would I have imagined the intensity of it. For the entire remaining first Trimester I felt constantly sick. I would wake up in the morning feeling awful, and only eating a salty cracker and drinking 2-3 cups of herbal tea would allow me to leave the bed. Then, I had to eat something, even though everything disgusted me. I would go and teach my classes, and right after coming home I had to eat again, fighting my repugnancy. Afterwards a heavy sleepiness would force me to lie down and sometimes I slept for up to two hours. When I woke from my sleep, I would feel worse than before, paired with a sense of depression about life and things in general that only eating would soften and so the cycle started repeating itself. Plus, I had such a heightened sensitivity to smells that I couldn´t even cook food myself, let alone be around strong smells. Coffee, onions, garlic, perfumes – everything was banned from the house. There were tears at least once per day, mostly over the issue of food and I became extremely mean and unfair towards Yaron in these moments, even though he was a true hero, doing everything and anything for me.  

Other changes started to appear too that took some getting used to. I completely lost my yoga practice, and the only time I tried to do some soft morning yoga after a light breakfast I felt terrible. My body was changing and I didn`t know how to live in it yet. Everything felt loose and wide and unstable and moving my body like I used to simply not right. I began to worry about teaching, about loosing my practice, about the effects of pregnancy and having a baby on my profession. It took some time to accept the status quo and stop thinking of everything I should do and instead trusting that everything will unfold without my doing and relaxing into it. 

About two weeks after learning about my pregnancy we had the first appointment with my gynaecologist and actually saw the baby as a little dark spot with a heartbeat. A little blip. Our little blip!