I wasn’t sure if this is the right topic to talk about but I decided to share my experience, so maybe somebody can benefit from it, ponder it , and at least give it some thought.

I’ve been carefully observing women who are pregnant and on the edge of their delivery. Women who were thinking of getting pregnant and women who were just talking about it. By the way, I’m not sure that those two latter types can even distinguish themselves from one another. However, there is a fine, but clear line between those two types, as the one that talks perceive themselves, foolishly, as the type who’s about to get pregnant. Anyway, I’m not going to share about that. That’s a different, very deep conversation and I’ll leave it for the future.

What I figured out by being pregnant myself and carefully observing others is that a lot of us live in an imaginary world when it comes to pregnancy, let alone delivery.

When a woman becomes pregnant, all of a sudden, she starts experiencing everything that tons of fancy magazines or sites say. She starts feeling nauseous, cranky, bitchy, constipated, etc; in short, her pregnancy turns into hell. Delivery? Even worse! By the time a woman reaches her delivery, she hates her body because tons of sites promised her stretch marks, and now she has them. Magazines promise her worst mood swings, and now she has them. My question is: what if one doesn’t read these magazines and websites? What would it be like? Don’t you think that our society is poisoned by skinny, beautiful, and perfect girls that we see on every billboard, and in almost every movie, commercial, magazine, runway and so on. We stopped engaging our brain in thinking of those things and asking right questions, but we are surprised that our lives are so miserable.

It’s all about thinking and asking the right questions.

I drifted a little into philosophy again. Sorry…

So here I am, looking around and seeing all these poor women, and looking at myself — I was upbeat, in a perfect mood, functioning well, having no bad expectations and enjoying my pregnancy. Don’t get me wrong I did have a bad case of stomach aches but I didn’t look at it that way. I was looking for a solution to make myself more comfortable but at the same time, I let my problem stay at that moment. Sometimes we just need to let things be the way they are. Why do we need to always have things our way? Have you thought about why these things the way they are? Why is it bothering us that much? Maybe we need to be more accepting of them? What else do we have to accept as well? How about ourselves and our female nature?

Oops, another lecture on philosophy again. Sorry…

When my time to deliver came, there was a brief moment when I got a little emotional as I couldn’t imagine, at that very second, my child not being in me. It felt like a violation of my rights — and I cried. My husband was upset too, as we grew our baby in my belly. Because I usually look at things from several points of view right away no matter how sad a situation seems at that very moment, I thought that was a good timing and my baby needed to come out and start living real life. With that thought, my husband and I went into a delivery room.

By the way, I need to mention that I did know something about delivery. My husband seemed to have read every possible book and article on it; he was well prepared for everything. I was the opposite, I went into the delivery room with a completely open mind. I told myself whatever happens, it would be the only right thing; if there is a pain, I’ll bear with it up until certain point; if there are complications, my baby would be alright because I listened to my body carefully and it didn’t say anything alarming to me. This is a great benefit of listening to your own body: you can talk to it and it will tell you things! For instance, my body told me I’ll deliver the baby myself but my doctor kept bringing up a C-section and it made me laugh. I never paid serious attention to the doctor’s warnings. This is another thought for you, girls: don’t listen to anyone. Try to be in touch with your body. Don’t let doctors to stress you out because they will definitely do that — this is their nature.

Coming back to my delivery, I lay on the bed and my contractions had started…. yet, I was talking to my husband and watching TV and we laughed — only as hard as I could, but I was doing it! My doctor told me “My god, a lot of women would be cursing everyone in the room and you’re smiling”. This statement made me think again: Why do we curse? What kind of a behavior is that? Does it make us feel better? No! What is it? An excuse to let yourself go? Why? It’s easier to be calm and nice, and your baby inside will not be stressing out too. Also in that state of mind, your delivery is going to be much harder and longer than if you went in with a positive attitude.

My dear girls, we need to throw all advice prior to our pregnancy out of the window.

We need to focus on our bodies. We need to keep in mind how sacred bearing a child inside us is. Who else can do it? Men? No, only we can. It doesn’t make us super special, but it sure does in some sense. We need to let nature help us as all knowledge, especially those about pregnancy, delivery and nursing, is inside of us. We need to just trust it and learn how to listen ourselves. We wouldn’t need all delivery classes that are totally worthless, or advice that make us go crazy, scared, and cranky. We need to learn to look at a having a baby as a blessing instead of a painful curse where everyone around us is going to pay a price. The price that’s going to be too high, but by the time you realize it, it would already be too late.