Pregnant: From Pregnancy Test to Childbirth

If you’re like many women, when it comes to your future, you have a basic blueprint of how the big picture should flow: meet a great guy, get engaged, married, and getting pregnant. Within that, your career, house, possibly dogs and/or cats will also come into play. It’s pretty simple and straightforward… until it’s not.

I’m 37. By the age of 27 I had already been married and divorced twice, and since then I have been engaged a 3rd time and proposed to a total of 9 times. I have also struggled with fertility but so wanted to be pregnant. It started when I had a grapefruit-sized ovarian cyst removed, leaving enough scar tissue to render my right ovary practically useless. Stress was the reason my doctor said that I wasn’t ovulating and would have trouble getting pregnant with my 3rd fiancé, a stress that led to major weight gain, emotional rollercoastering, and heavy doses of hormones.

Finally for my 36th birthday I froze my eggs, a safety net to extend my fertility, and just in case in vitro was my only option. And then I met someone who I thought could be my final one and only. He was kind, nurturing, strong, supportive, emotionally generous, he showed up, and went out of his way to make me happy. But… there were necessary “needs” that I was missing and so, as facebook so aptly puts one of its “relationship status” options, it was “complicated.”

We had possibly the sweetest breakup possible. It was what I call a “Last Resort,” (I’m a dating coach and I come up with many of these concepts)- a vacation that you take together during which you drop the drama, forget the grudges, and simply appreciate each other for the amazing people who we are- the people we fell in love with in the first place. Because that is what really loving a person is right? It’s unattached. It’s without expectation. It’s “I love you for who you are, and I don’t expect you to be anything or do anything for me in return for that love.”

I was shooting a pilot for a new television show that I was hosting- a first date show, preparing for the release of my 5th book in a few months- “Screwing the Rules; The No-Games Guide to Love,” and he was moving out; so feelings were all over the place. My period was over a month late, but considering my fertility issues from the past, I really didn’t think I could be pregnant… until I woke up nauseous one morning and I no longer could avoid taking the dreaded test. Within seconds the second line showed up. I was pregnant. And I was single.

This is a column about navigating pregnancy a little differently, but still completely the same. Because although we all have our own paths to motherhood, we are all doing the same thing: taking care to grow the healthiest baby possible while still attempting to navigate our lives.

Whether you’re in a happy (or at least stable) relationship or you found out that you are pregnant during what, at the time, seemed like the worst possible moment: two weeks after your relationship ended, being a responsible mom starts now. Not at childbirth. From what to eat (and not to eat) to why you keep waking up feeling hungover (without doing anything to deserve it), or what about how to handle pregnancy “mask” and how to most fashionably hide (or show off!) your pregnancy bump, and finally what do you need to do to prepare for labor and all of the newborn essentials (vs the unnecessary impulse/hormone buys)… you can count on me to be honest about pregnancy and childbirth- acne, gas, screw-ups and all! As my mom says: “You wrote a book called ‘Screwing The Rules’ and you certainly are following that mantra.” You can expect my next book to be “Screwing the Rules of Motherhood.”

Now lets get ready to enjoy all the fruits of our labor!

xx
Laurel

by Laurel House