Jennifer Louden - The Pregnant Womans Comfort Book: A Self-Nurturing Guide to Your Emotional Well-Being During Pregnancy and Early Motherhood

T HE
P REGNANT W OMAN S
C OMFORT B OOK

A Self-Nurturing Guide to Your
Emotional Well-Being During
Pregnancy and Early Motherhood

J ENNIFER L OUDEN

To Lillian, my daughter

Contents

This morning, my daughter asked me to help her put on her socks. Not because she couldnt put them on herself, but because her nail polish was wet.

Sigh. She is almost ten, most of her in childhood but a few toes groping toward tweendom.

When she snuggles against me now, and she snuggles only when she wants to, mostly when she is very tired or when we are watching a video, then I am blessed with the sweet drape of her dense body, a whiff of her fruity shampoo, the peach-like firmness of her calf against my hand. During these times I watch her, not the movie. I imprint her face on my memory. The line of her jaw, the freckles by her ear, the thick lashes that turn up just so.

If I could be where you are now, about to embark on motherhood, I would do things differently. That is so satisfying to declare in hindsighthow I would embrace my imperfections as a mother, how I would waste less energy wondering whether I was good enough, how I would listen to what I thought instead of what others told me about my child, how I would slow time down. Walk slower, eat slower, return fewer phone messages (no email back then!). How I would let the outside world engage in its mad dance without me.

Yeah, right.

Mothering is one of the most difficult emotional, spiritual, mental, and physical endeavors you will ever take on. It will flay you, lay your heart on your front doormat and stomp all over it. It will set you ablaze with such love youll walk into the supermarket and want to hug everyone. It will also stab you with such anger you will walk into the supermarket and fantasize about running people over with your cart. It will stab you with the stark truth, a truth you will only be able to snatch a glance at and then quickly look awaythat someday, this baby of yours is going to be hurt. Someday, this baby of yours is going to fail. Someday, far in the future, this grown-up baby of yours is going to die. And before that, you will. Meaning you will have to leave him or her.

Ive heard it said that growing old is not for sissies. Well, neither is mothering. If you think for a moment you can get through this journey without being kind to yourself, if you think for a moment you can parent this child without learning to parent yourself, youre right. You can. Only, at the end of a year, or two, or twenty, youll be the equivalent of the crushed litter of energy bars crumbs, colored pencil lead, and Northwest mud that lives in the backseat of my car.

Pluck and courage are very important self-care tools for any mother, as Ann Betz discovered, I was four or five months pregnant, feeling tired, fat, and unattractive. Instead of the blissful time I was supposed to be having, pregnancy was bringing up all sorts of issues, my feelings about being a mother, my unresolved stuff with my own mom, and on and on. It was dammed uncomfortable. The books I was reading werent helping a bit. Their tone was that I should A.) Do everything in my life thinking of the baby first, last, and only, and B.) I was carrying some sort of sacred burden for the whole community. I threw a couple of those books across the room. Where was the book that would help ME? Who would speak to me like the complicated adult I was? Then blessedly, someone gave me your book. This book understood that while I was carrying a baby, I was still me. It made me feel like I was normal to have worries and fears and eat too much sometimes and even at times (gasp) resent that I was carrying a baby and simply wanted what I wanted. That I could create my own experience and not fit myself into some Stepford Wife ideal. Because of this shift, I was able to welcome my son into the world in a very different way. Once I was able to give myself permission to feel how I was feeling, we could be partners in the process. I was doing my job as best I could (being the imperfectand normalhuman being I am), and he was doing his job. Then after nine months, we met and fell in love.

Becoming a mother is about falling in lovewith yourself, with your child, and on a good day, with your new role. Self-kindness brings countless precious gifts with it, not the least of which is the gift of being a better parent. A mother, a father, who loves herself or himself is a parent who can say no. A parent who gives herself permission to create her life is a parent who can look at her child and see that child, not her own unmet needs and ambitions. A parent who can speak to herself like the child she loves instead of like someone she loathes is a parent who can ask herself, What does my child need? What do I need? How can everybody get a little of what they need today?

Doing a good job of parenting means your child leaves. Creates his or her own life. You must have something of worth and value and depth left to create your own life from. It is a whole heck of a lot more difficult and painful to wait to create that value and depth when your child is ten or fifteen or twenty-five.

So lower your shoulders, curl up for a nap, and let yourself be the mother you will be. You will be enough. Truly.

Jennifer Louden

November 2003

Bainbridge Island, Washington

Why Read This Book

Youre pregnant and you want to be good to yourself. You want to glory in these moments, in your ability to foster life, but somehow you cant quite let yourself go. You feel guilty taking naps, slowing down, asking for help. You know you should relax and enjoy the attention your partner is giving you, take some time for yourself right now, stock up on sleep and sanity, but you just cant. There is so much to do....

You and your partner have wanted a baby for so long. Youre very happy, but sometimes you feel like there is an alien growing in your belly, taking over your life. People keep telling you how hard it is going to be after the baby is born, how little time you will have for yourself or your relationship. Its dawning on you that your life will never be the same, and you cant help but feel ambivalent about this baby, sometimes even angry and resentful.

Youre exhausted. No, actually you feel like youve been run over by a UPS truck, lost all your ability to think or speak above a third grade level, and picking up your fork to bring it to your mouth makes you feel like youve just run a marathon. If this is what the next nine months, or even the next three, are going to feel like, you cringe at the thought of keeping up with your job, organizing the babys room, picking a name, and the myriad of other details that must be taken care of, let alone doing anything enjoyable.

Now, what do you do?

A. Continue to live your life at the same pace, make yourself twice as uncomfortable and tired, and basically ignore your pregnancy until youre in labor?

B. Feel incredibly guilty that you have worries and doubts about being pregnant, then condemn yourself for being an inadequate mother while the babys still in utero?

C. Sleep for nine months?

D. Sleep until he or she is in college?

E. Read The Pregnant Womans Comfort Book and delight in your pregnancy as an amazing opportunity to learn the importance of self-nurturing and plant the roots of self-love so deep that when you become a mother, you will be able to replenish yourself and give authentically to your child without losing yourself?

Self-Care, Pregnancy, and Motherhood

It struck me the day after I found out I was pregnant. I was reaching for a fruit shake in the health food store. The usual debate was going on in my head: You dont need to buy that. Its so expensive. You really dont deserve to buy that $2.49 drink for just you. You could make it more cheaply at home. Sometimes I argue with this insidious voice. Most days I lose. That day, I had no time for a struggle. A vibrant, new voice boomed through my head, You are pregnant and you will have whatever you need. You will be good to yourself. I hastily searched the store to be sure no one else had heard this decree. And then I started to smile. A deeply delighted smile. Because it felt so good. Yes, I did deserve to be good to myselfnot only because I was pregnant, but because I was alive! From that health food store epiphany, the idea was born that pregnancy is not something to be endureda time of varicose veins and ridiculously frequent trips to the bathroom. Rather, it is a time of self-celebration, enriched inner life, and a chance to grasp that each woman not only richly deserves self-care but must have it if she is to survive and thrive as a mother. Pregnancy offers us the excuse to be gentle with ourselves. That excuse can become a habit. That habit can slowly become a lovingly held belief: I am worth self-care, not just when I am carrying a child but every day.