Pregnancy changes your body quickly. One day you recognise yourself, the next, your body looks so unlike yours. While there’s a lot of pressure to feel grateful, glowing, or endlessly positive, many women quietly feel conflicted about what they see and feel.
If that’s you, this is your reminder: self-love during pregnancy doesn’t have to look like confidence or celebration. Sometimes, it’s simply just appreciating and acknowledging what your body is doing. Thanking it for carrying you through an enormous change and showing yourself kindness.
Why Pregnancy Can Make Self-Love Feel Complicated
Pregnancy is one of the few times in life where your body changes rapidly and visibly, often in ways completely unexpected. Hormones shift, body shapes far from how they used to be and with a new sensitivity to smells and even to what touches your skin.
It’s completely normal to feel a mix of gratitude and disconnection at the same time. You can appreciate what your body is doing while still struggling to recognise it. Both can exist together.
Self-love becomes complicated when we’re told how we should feel, instead of being allowed to feel what’s true to you.
Small ways to show yourself self-love
For me its listening to your body;
- rest when it needs it
- cancel those plans if you don't feel up to it
- be led by how you you are feeling when you make decisions
- appreciating that you perhaps need to slow down- things will soon be busy when the baby comes
A new version of you is in the wings
We can feel like we lose ourselves when the baby arrives. We obviously do everything we can to look after our new love. It can take its toll for a little while. Ride the wave. There will be hard times but most of the time they are short lived. These are known as the trenches of parenthood and you will not be alone!
When the postpartum haze has lifted and you are ready to "find yourself" again, its important not to chase the pre-baby version of yourself (even though its natural to grieve that part of you). Now you can create you but 2.0.
However you are feeling, remember you are literally growing a human, how amazing is that?
