The art of surrender in pregnancy
Pregnancy is a ride. A wild one. Things change fast and slow all at the same time and the world around you seems to go on as normal.
Before I got pregnant, I was an organiser, a planner, a doer, an ‘active relaxer’ and curated my life to always be in control - often described as independent, a leader, and always a few steps ahead. This has its merits for sure but when it came to pregnancy, birth and then motherhood I realised this mode of operation quickly wasn’t working for me - there were things I simply couldn't plan for or organise my way out of. And it was starting to feel like a battle.
There is a lot that goes on internally and in the early weeks, and for me by about 6 weeks the wave of nausea and tiredness had started to set in. Because I hadn’t chosen to tell anyone yet about my pregnancy, I felt like I needed to still operate at my usual level of go, go, go despite feeling all a bit overwhelmed.
So I had to come up with a new way to deal with the unknown. A beautiful friend of mine suggested the word ‘surrender’. At first I thought - no way to me that sounds like giving up and I’m no quitter - but as I thought about it a bit more it started to soften and began to work a little bit of its magic.
I slowly started to shift my perspective on what it meant to surrender. It meant:
Listening to my body (instead of my busy brain)
Knowing that I am not ‘giving up’
Placing trust in the process
Realigning my priorities to this new phase of my life.
So when things felt hard and like I was fighting, I would take a deep breath and look inward. Here is what I started to do to develop the art of surrender:
Name the feeling - I am frustrated, upset, overwhelmed, nervous, anxious… (and know it is valid!)
Identify why… I am frustrated because I can’t get things done like I used to because I’m feeling nauseous.
Decide whether this is in your control - I am growing a whole small human, and this is one of those parts of pregnancy I can’t control.
Is there an action you can take to support yourself? I can ask for help, not put pressure on myself to do the whole list, pick one thing, rest for a bit, look ahead in my week, go to bed a little earlier. (Sometimes I might mean sending yourself a bit of self compassion).
Surrender is not about just not caring about what happens, it's about letting go of the things you can’t control and reframing your action. I think underlying a lot of our need for control is genuine fear! Fear that if you can’t control it it will mean something bad will happen or that you have failed. But really, there is a power in tuning in, listening and finding the ways that you can support yourself and your little growing baby.
Looking back now in postpartum, I know that by practising surrender in pregnancy and my birth, I was able to work on regulating my thinking in motherhood. I still find myself asking - is something I can control?
Just this week, with my baby having a cold I asked can I control whether my baby sleeps? (spoiler: no).
This helped me decide what to let go and actually I found I was able to ride this wave and tune into my baby and support her through this tough time.
Do I get it right all the time? No way! Is it hard? Yes! But it is way harder to fight and paddle against a strong current that I can’t control than to consciously decide to ride those wild waves with a little more ease.
So I encourage you, with compassion, to wonder - what would surrender look like for you?
