Thoughtful Articles

The first trimester hit me like a freight train. With the baby on the way, my husband and I decided to move closer to our families, which meant packing up our whole house and driving 1,000 miles from New Mexico to Oregon.

In my pre-pregnancy life, I was someone with vast rivers of strength and energy, and an undaunted nature when it came to projects, moving things, and creative endeavors of any kind.

In my first trimester, I stayed in bed for almost two weeks straight. Nausea and a reeling immune system left me literally lying down with the shades drawn for days on end, while my mind struggled to adjust to the many changes happening. As the weeks passed, I felt a bit better, but I was still shocked at just how little energy I had compared to what I was used to.

I had known this would happen — how many marathons pregnancy is equivalent to, etc. — but I had only known it conceptually. To be faced with the immediate, physical experience of living in a body that felt completely different from the one I had jumped, climbed, built, and charged through the world in my whole life was deeply humbling.

I was weak, I was tired, and I didn’t know how to grieve the version of me I was letting go of so that the mother I was becoming could emerge. I barely had the energy to feed myself and take care of basic daily and work needs, let alone the creative projects I was so used to diving into. I felt deeply lost, knowing only that I had left my old self behind, and that the person I was becoming was still an unknown blur in the mists of the future.

I was frustrated with this new version of myself and all the ways I felt I was losing things: my energy, capacity, strength, creativity. I was having to let go in a way I had never experienced before.

Then the second trimester came. I started to feel the baby moving. My belly began to really grow. Little bursts of energy returned, and my mind slowly emerged from the dense fog of the first three months. I still had very little energy and was still having to go slowwwww, but I could finally reflect on what was happening.

I was arriving in a version of myself that had never existed, and although I was letting go of theme I was used to, there was a sense that this new me was emerging with a depth and capacity that were actually much greater. I was taking up more space, both literally (hello belly!) and in my capacity, depth, and presence.

I felt like the trunk of a great tree, layer upon layer added on — the old versions not left behind, but encompassed within an ever-expanding whole. I was learning to surrender, to soften into change instead of bracing for it.

The pieces of my identity — creativity, energy, strength — weren’t gone. They just looked different now: slower, steadier, requiring me to nourish myself in deeper ways to reach them, instead of just fueling up on caffeine and inspiration like I had in my younger days.

Now, as I move through the last few days before beginning the third trimester, I’m realizing that slowing down can actually be its own practice of creativity. Having less energy and less speed than I used to is, in a way, a gift — because I have to be more present now, to pay closer attention to what I am doing and how I am doing it.

In a world where efficiency, energy, and speed are intertwined with almost every aspect of our lives, it’s challenging to intentionally choose to do things differently. By having this pregnancy make that choice for me — I have to slow down — I’m learning how much more there is within something perceived as “less".

Less energy, but more presence.

Fewer checks on my to-do list, but more intention.

Less strength, but more embodiment.