This whole post comprises words I have directly (and shamelessly) lifted from 'The Pregnant Woman's Comfort Book' by Jennifer Louden. She expresses so well the importance of nurturing ourselves, during pregnancy, and beyond.
Becoming a mother has taught me that
self-nurturing is in fact a code-word for living an authentic life.
Pregnancy is a time of upheaval, excitement, fear, ambivalence, unbridled joy, animal instinct, and love. The challenges of pregnancy seem perfectly designed to prepare us to be mothers. For example, getting up five times a night to pee correlates with getting up five times a night to feed. But there is another level to this preparation. The physical, emotional and spiritual challenges of pregnancy can help us learn to love and accept ourselves, and that is the deeper preparation we need. By practicing healthy self-nurturing, we can discover a well-kept secret: that pregnancy is good for our bodies and our self-esteem. It can enhance our beauty, power, and strength. Pregnancy is an exquisite chance to taste the joyous freedom of self-love and self-celebration.
Pregnancy can make you fat, or it can allow you to appreciate the wonder of your body. Pregnancy can make you a raving lunatic, or it can give you clues from your raw emotions where you need to "cut to the chase", trim away the inconsequential. Pregnancy can make you extra-ordinarily exhausted, or it can give you clues to slow down and listen to your body, feed it what the baby and you need to thrive. I know pregnancy has many uncomfortable, even nasty, side effects. I'm not suggesting hemorrhoids have some magical potential for self-growth. I am suggesting that you can begin to learn to nurture yourself so that when faced with the physical rigours and cultural baggage of being a mother, you will be able to preserve a little bit of your self. Nurturing yourself becomes almost impossible when you are a mother - at the same time that it becomes even more important for your mental and physical health.
Becoming a mother does mean surrendering a lot of oneself to this new relationship, but it does not mean surrendering one's true self. It is precisely during motherhood that we need to nurture ourselves the most, for the sake of both our health and our children's well-being. Self-nurturing makes for a happy mom.
You Need Other Women
It would be great if when we were pregnant we could go live, at least part of the time, with other pregnant women. Talking to someone who is going through the same experience you are or who has walked this road a few months before is incredibly comforting during pregnancy.
