My pregnancy by trimester

When I look back over my pregnancy I am so thankful for God’s gift of life, and for overwhelming health––for the baby, myself, and my family. On paper, everything was really “positive”, and yet there were still plenty of challenging and hard moments. 

Pregnancy completely takes over your body and life in a way unlike I had ever experienced before. I needed a way to process the challenges I faced and so I wrote short reflections on each trimester below. They cover themes of miscarriage and loss, the Covid pandemic, and mental health. 

While I’m undeniably grateful for the year of 2021 so far (and would say it was 100% better than the previous year), it’s healthy for my heart to hold both the good and hard in tension. I hope these short reflections offer insight into not only my journey, but how God can meet us in the middle of hardship and struggle. 

When I look back over the past year (even though hard things did happen), I tend to remember and see God’s faithful provision and guidance and I am filled with overwhelming gratitude and fullness of joy. Not only for the good gifts he has given, but for his presence and closeness in trials that shaped my faith and helped me walk forward each day. 

My first trimester

I never thought pregnancy would feel this way.

Like feel.

Not just emotionally––although the symptoms of depression which suddenly arose caught me off guard––but physically. 

A feeling in my body. 

When I saw the positive pregnancy test after healing from a misscarriage five months before, and after months of trying again, I felt excited and hopeful but full of uncertainty:

What was this journey going to be like? Was the pregnancy going to be healthy? Were we headed for more loss?

A week later I started to feel it. Not the weight of death, like before, but the weight of life. It came on like a sudden wind and I was caught up and tossed around. The brain fog, a weight that felt crushing over me when the sun set, the nausea that came on day and night, stomach cramps from gas, and my breasts––growing and in pain. Even when it wasn’t obvious from the outside that I was pregnant, I could feel it on the inside. 

It wasn’t just a feeling of hope or excitement. It was also a feeling of dread and despair. I felt shame asking for time off from work, and internal pressure to share the “news” early on to have integrity in the workplace (this reflects how my heart felt and not how my workplace treated me––they were the best). 

It wasn’t as if I was sick with the flu and after a few days I would be back as new. 

This flu was going to take weeks, and potentially months, to see itself through. 

How can something utterly feel like death, yet somehow also lead to life? 

Several times my mind drifted to 1 Peter 2:24 where Peter writes about Jesus: “He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed.” Jesus’ death in his body led to another's life. He felt the weight of death and brokenness in his body, and the weight of their life. It might not have been in the same way, but I was also feeling the weight and the reality of pregnancy. How much more Jesus would have felt than me. I couldn’t imagine feeling worse in those moments.

These considerations didn’t take away my experience, but helped me view it from another lens. While I didn’t feel less sick, I felt a closeness with God. I was beginning to understand what it felt like to bear the weight of another life in my body. 

Although it helped me mentally to process these truths, I needed to calm my body and pursue quietness to still the torment inside myself. I pulled back from work, friendships, talking on the phone with family, and narrowed my energy spent on engaging with my husband and getting through each moment. It was a humbling few months where I had to finally admit, I could not do it all. 

I also needed that time to reset my expectations of what I thought pregnancy would be with my new reality. I never thought pregnancy would feel this way. 

And I’m learning that it’s okay. 

My second trimester

I knew to anticipate unsolicited advice in pregnancy and parenthood (often from very well meaning friends and family), but I didn’t realize it would come about so fast. I guess being pregnant in a global pandemic just launches you into all sorts of unexpected things.

Thankfully the darkness of the first trimester slowly lifted, although the second trimester didn’t feel as “glorious” as the books said it would be. It was filled with new challenges, considerations, and concerns. 

To vaccinate or not to vaccinate?

To go out to coffee shops or stay at home?

To take medicine or “go natural”? 

To share our pregnancy on social media or not?

Everyone seemed to care so intensely for the baby, but there were a few moments where I felt a disconnect with feeling support for myself. In pregnancy, my body and self cannot be separated from the baby. In a way, we are “one”. I felt strongly that the health of the baby, and the best chance of it to have life outside my womb, was tied to my maternal health. How can I deliver this baby if I’m in the ICU with Covid? The idea of getting sick was overwhelming, especially coming out of such a heavy, dark, and intensely sick first trimester. 

Did others trust that I cared just as much––or even more––about the health and well-being of my child?

The process of deciding if I should receive the Covid-19 vaccination in pregnancy took weeks to pray and decide. It felt intensely personal and I wasn’t eager to share with others if I received it or not. Or even discuss the optics of it––outside of my husband, medical team, and trusted friends in the medical field. I still don’t feel safe or comfortable sharing publicly if I was vaccinated or not. 

As with most others in our city and province, the controversy around masks, restrictions, and lockdowns was exhausting––but especially in pregnancy when I felt extra vulnerable. Thankfully our new home renovations and move was during my second trimester when I had the most energy. But we had lots of workers who refused to wear masks and who even came to work in our home after returning from trips to Florida without completing their “mandatory” quarantine. It was so close to our project and move, we didn’t have time to find new workers. We had to put up a mental wall and pray and entrust our health to God. 

Did I believe that God cared just as much––or even more––about the health and well-being of my child?

I had zero capacity to engage with “anti-maskers” or those who seemed to refuse to honour the health and needs of others. Fighting or arguing would steal too much energy from me. I just tried to stay in my lane and be faithful to the Covid restrictions our little family felt were right to honour. Thankfully by the grace of God we didn’t get sick. 

Pregnancy after loss, and being in a world surrounded by death, reminded me how much of a miracle life is. Our life (and death) is ultimately outside our control. It’s a painful surrender to sit in the reality of that and entrust my life, my child’s life, my family’s lives to God who holds all things together. It doesn’t mean that we will be spared from death––exactly the opposite. Watching the lives of close friends who have lost husbands or children tragically, I know at some point death will come to our home in one way or another. 

The controversy and stress around decisions in pregnancy (especially in a global pandemic), forced me to draw closer to my heavenly Father who is Lord over both life and death. B and I had to bring everything before God and surrender it to him, ask for wisdom, and make decisions within the conscience and faith God gave us. 

To release the tight fisted hold over wanting control over the future, brought us into a place of peace. Not a place that is absent of fear, uncertainty, or unknown––but a place whereby God offers peace in his presence. 

“I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world.” (Jesus in John 16:33)

My third trimester

Like the summer heat, the third trimester came on full, fast, and strong. Time seemed to slip away. While the first trimester dragged on moment by moment (intense sickness tends to feel that way), my third trimester was flying by. 

Thankfully settling into our new home took a huge mental weight off our plates and we could finally focus on how to prepare for actually welcoming a baby into this world. But the reality of birth, transition, and adjustment to life with a newborn started to weigh on me.

Finding out the gender of the baby in the second trimester and receiving a clean bill of health in the anatomy ultrasound relieved a lot of anxiety and uncertainty of how the baby was developing. But then the emphasis shifted to the baby’s movement––was it moving like it was supposed to? 

I wasn’t sure how common stillbirth in the third trimester was. My incredible midwives assured me it was very rare and all signs indicated everything was fine. Again I needed to open my hands in surrender and entrust the growth and life of my child to God––and let my heart sit in trust as I waited for the baby to grow. 

It turns out that anxiety, fear over death, and uncertainty over the future, easily find new targets when old ones are resolved. My placenta was also growing on the front of my uterus so it was naturally cushioning a lot of early movement, whereas other pregnant moms at a similar point had already been feeling movement for weeks. As the third trimester progressed and the baby started to really grow, the strong kicks and movements came. Whew.

Yet the reality of being pregnant and feeling it, is that pregnancy doesn’t feel amazing most days. And yet I’m also filled with thankfulness with the reality of a healthy pregnancy and life inside me. To sit in the nuance of being grateful for pregnancy but feel challenged by the body aches, back pain, sore feet, and general discomfort is a battle of the heart. 

With the new onslaught of hormones also came both high and low moments. Sadness and grief crept in unexpectedly––not at the thought of my child dying, but of B and me. What would happen to our child? Those were hard conversations to work through but really important as we hope to prepare our child for the best possible future by God’s grace. As God is able to give us each other as a family, he can easily take it away. He holds each of our days in his hands. 

Do I trust that God is good and fully in control even in a potentially tragic circumstance? 

As we started to celebrate the baby with friends and family over the summer, get more prepared at home, and wrap our minds and hearts around what labour would entail we were blessed with feeling increased support. 

But does anything really prepare you for parenthood? As I experienced with marriage, there’s only so much “prep” you can do. Only so many books you can read, important conversations to have, and changes to make to be ready to live life together. At some point, you actually need to get married, and start living life together. By God’s grace, presence, and the support of a healthy community, you hopefully figure it out along the way. 

God often prepares us while we walk in something by faith, and rarely are we fully prepared for anything beforehand. I’m seeing how it’s the same with parenthood. 

As much as I won’t ever feel truly prepared, do I trust that God will still be present and guide me and B through each moment? 

The nervous feelings over labour are a reminder to trust that God will guide me and B through the process. He created my body to do this: I didn’t have to command or tell it how to grow a new organ, nourish my baby, or trigger hormones to help my body grow, birth, and recover. 

A huge highlight of the summer was the reopening of local gyms so that I could return to working out and attending my weightlifting classes. In the past whenever I saw pregnant women doing weightlifting classes I thought it was amazing and I really wanted and hoped to do that as well. Thankfully my body retained the muscle memory and enjoyed the movement and strength building. Being 32-38 weeks pregnant and lifting a barbell (albeit much lighter than before), over your head and doing squats, lunges, chest presses, and more––well it’s encouraging. For the first time in my pregnancy I saw the strength my body had. 

My body is strong. It can accomplish and do so much. As I prepare in my final days to enter the labour process and recovery, I’m reminded how strong and capable I am by God’s grace and support. Not only did I make it through really tough mental and physical challenges earlier on, but God sustained me in faith to walk through it all day by day. He created my body for this process, and offered himself in the journey to offer his presence and peace when I needed it the most. 

I don’t feel like I “crushed” pregnancy, and at times I felt like it “crushed” me. But I wasn’t really crushed––no, God was there sustaining and providing all I needed and protecting us from our worst fears and concerns. We can trust and hope that he will continue to be present and lead us through whatever is to come.