Take a Step Back, Ego

I can honestly say, I have never been so tired, for so long as when the sixth-twelfth weeks of my pregnancy hit. I was exhausted for “no reason” almost every day. Aside from the nausea and almost total loss of my love of food, I didn’t really feel pregnant and I definitely didn’t look it. So, when I was tired, it’s not like I had something like I was working a lot or I had a cold that I could look at and say “Yeah, this is why.” And of course because we were keeping it hush hush, I couldn’t talk about it either. I was still working regularly, but there were days where I had to put down my lap top and take a nap (A nap! I never nap!). I was still getting up at 6am for our boot camp classes, and there were days I could barely make it through the exercises, let alone push the pace as I often did. Many days when I got home from class, all I wanted was to get back into bed.

These changes brought up a lot of stuff for me. I have briefly attended therapy a few times, and one coach gave me really interesting insights into a few things in my life: One was that she said it seemed like if I wasn’t productive, I didn’t value myself. The second was that it seemed like at some point in my life I had experienced a time where I wasn’t allowed to fully express my full range of emotions, especially ones that could be negative. I feel like both these influences came into play during this time.

I have been trying really hard the past few years to not let my ego get in the way, to make it take the passenger’s seat. I hate looking back on a moment and knowing I was defensive or worse, offensive, for no better reason than my ego flaring up. Our egos don’t like it when they are challenged, they want to protect us. I know that in certain environments, if I feel like I am not performing well, I get really self-conscious and defensive. One of those environments is the gym. I won’t get into all the reasons I think that is the case, but I know it to be true. My husband says sometimes it brings out the worst in me. Well, that’s no good. It is supposed to be time spent filling myself with endorphins and doing something good for my body. Usually it is, but some days I let my ego get the better of me. You can probably guess that suddenly going to the bottom of my fitness classes wasn’t a great feeling for me. I knew that I shouldn’t compare my regular energy levels to that of the ones I had during my first trimester, but I still felt like I needed to keep up. But I couldn’t. I had to put aside my ego and just be less than I once was. It was actually a really great exercise for myself mentally. I physically couldn’t keep up with my non-pregnant self’s pace, and that was that. If I was slower, if I was tired, I just had to let myself be.

I didn’t feel like I was keeping up at home either. There, I had no one to watch me, but I had myself there, judging. When I would take a nap instead of tackling chores, I felt lazy and unproductive. My brain didn’t feel sluggish, but that didn’t matter much when I couldn’t keep my eyes open all day. My brain would sense this, and hit a point of no return. “Productivity levels are dropping. Must reboot!” I felt guilty, like I wasn’t as strong as a “Mother” should be. I told myself things like “Your body was made for this, you can still be the same productive person you normally are.” I also found myself thinking a lot about women in other less privileged positions in the world who would never have the option to just be tired and take a nap during pregnancy, because they literally have to spend all their time trying to survive. I find I compare myself to others a lot when I am in new situations. I try to remind myself of that saying “Successful people never worry about what others are doing.” I tend to make myself in the business of “keeping up.” Not to the Jonses or the Kardashians, but at base with my own expectations. I expect that in any given week, I will meal plan, clean the house, get all my work done, make an effort to maintain my interpersonal relationships, exercise, and put at least some energy into my never ending rollover To Do list of future projects. Once I have kids, I might be able to drop the work part for a few months, but the rest I bet you I will still feel like I need to get done (I can hear all the new parents out there reading this giggling and sighing with pity now).

I am not naive enough to think that these challenges won’t come up for me in many ways during the rest of my pregnancy and as a new parent. I don’t like failing at things, especially if I feel I should be capable of them. I’m nearing the latter third of this first pregnancy, and I do feel that even though this is stuff that has come up for me, that I have handled it relatively well. I have been calm, I have been ok with slowing down, but it did take me awhile to get used to it. Well into my fourth month I was still trying to keep up with my regular non-pregnant self. I remember one morning, around 17 weeks, I was having some shoulder pain so I skipped my early morning boot camp class. I had full intentions to get up at 6:30am, and go for a run instead. When that alarm went off, I was still so sleepy. I let all the good advice I had been getting from Mom's about sleeping now, sleeping when I need it, while I can, filter into my groggy morning brain, so I turned off the alarm, put on my sleep mask, and slept until 8:00am. When I started my work day at 9:00am (on my couch with my laptop and a mug of raspberry leaf tea), I actually felt alert and inspired. Most of the week before I had been up early, and found myself exhausted by mid-afternoon, even needing to lie down several days. I was grateful to have quieted the voices telling me I wasn’t enough, and listened to my body. Being in touch with myself over the next few months, the next few years, as I navigate my way through new parenthood.

I think that as much as it is ok for us to slow down while our bodies are busy building a human, that it is also ok for us to feel less than adequate some days on our path to realizing we are allowed to take a break from our normal expectations. I look forward to the growth I will find in this new chapter. Confronting, challenging, uncomfortable? I am sure it will be all these things. But just think of what could be accomplished on the other side of those situations?