Dear Expectant Mother

Dear you, Congratulations!

Congratulations on realizing that you are to become a mother of a little human being. What do you feel? Excitement? Fear? Joy? I felt all of those. A thousand thoughts and emotions were running through my mind when I realized that I was expecting — how will the birth be? Will the baby be ok? Did I have a glass of wine while I already was pregnant? Will the baby be ok? How will I be as a mother? What will my parents say? What will my work say? What will I do with my work? Will we manage financially? Will the baby be ok? All those and many more were constantly flickering through my mind.

I did not plan my pregnancy, I had a faint idea that at some point in life I would become a mother.. but when and with whom was still an open-ended question. Neither my partner, nor I, were prepared for this, and the pregnancy changed our lives 180 degrees. From having been living in different countries we decided to move in together — and I ultimately decided to leave the company that I had been building & dedicating endless hours for. I wrote a post about my thoughts after I gave birth — you can read it here.

Now, learning that you are pregnant, I am writing this to you. I am writing this to you out of love. And hope. I hope that some of the thoughts shared below will somehow help you on the transformational journey that you are now on. I am writing this because I would have loved to reading something like this when I was expecting. I am writing this because I hope that you will have a better start on motherhood than I.

How to prepare yourself for Motherhood?

So. Motherhood. Back to realizing that you are pregnant. There are tons of books out there on how your little one is developing and growing throughout these 9 months. I wrote a list about the books that I found really helpful. You can read it here. Download the app “Wonder Weeks”. It really helped me.

What I didn’t find much information on was how my life would change and how I should prepare for this transformation. Because honestly this is what it is. When reading certain books and hearing some people talking about this, it is as if you are now pregnant for 9 months (kinda as a limited disability), then, BAM 💥, baby arrives, and you run back to your work and life goes back to normal. OK. That is superficial bullshit. I think many people that are trying to live life like this often end up dealing with postpartum depression and what not.

Let’s get something straight. LIFE WILL NEVER GO BACK TO NORMAL. This is THE NEW NORMAL. Think about it. You are litereally physically transforming now. Your body is expanding. Your bones are expanding (I went from a shoe size 38 to 39 after birth.. 😳). The genes of your baby will stay in your body beyond the time of pregnancy, and in some cases for as long as decades after the birth of your baby. Your cells will also stay in the baby’s blood and tissues for decades, including in organs like the pancreas, heart, and skin. Just imagine that. I don’t think I even can to be honest.

You are not you anymore, and, thankfully, you will have enough time to figure out who this new you is.

To dive into motherhood and some of the shifts that will be happening, I would wholeheartedly recommend reading these books. Though, there is also time to read them when you will be cluster-feeding your little one.. so you can also wait a bit till the baby is born 😉.

• Motherwhelmed: Challenging Norms, Untangling Truths, and Restoring Our Worth to the World by Beth Berry: This is not a book about parenting. It’s a book about mothers, our greatness, and how important it is that we thrive. It’s about untangling ourselves from the stories keeping us trapped and deconstructing those we’ve outgrown. It’s about daring the lives we’re here to live and, thereby, giving our children permission to do the same.
• Motherhood: Facing and Finding Yourself by Lisa Marchiano: This book is beautifully written and authentically honest. Lisa blends fairytales with Jungian ideas, and the book contains chapters such as: Losing Freedom, Losing Ourselves, Encountering Darkness, and Claiming Transcendence. There are quotes and stories that showcase the aspect of motherhood that fills a needed gap in current exploration- loosing and finding ourselves through the role of motherhood.
• Belonging: Remembering Ourselves Home by Toko-pa Turner: This is not your typical self-help book, focused on improvement or banishment of personal flaws, but is, rather, a book for one’s soul, a book that provides encouragement and sustenance for all of us navigating the hero’s/heroine’s journey. I recognized myself and my struggles on every page. I realized why I have felt angry and irritable. Why I strive so hard to accomplish, to achieve, all the time. I felt recognized and heard. I love the book’s dedication which begins, “For the rebels and the misfits, the black sheep, and the outsiders. For the refugees, the orphans, the scapegoats, and the weirdos. For the uprooted, the abandoned, the shunned, and invisible ones.”. This is not a book specifically about “motherhood”, but something more essential than that — our need to belong. When I became a mother this urge became much stronger and heartfelt than ever before. This book helped to ground me in this and understand it better.
• Untamed by Glennon Doyle: “Being human is not hard because you’re doing it wrong, it’s hard because you’re doing it right. You will never change the fact that being human is hard, so you must change your idea that it was ever supposed to be easy.”. This book made me feel more seen than anything that I have ever heard or read. It grounded me, brought me back to myself, and made me feel a little calmer. It is beautifully written, with some great life tips and skills that can be applied to goals as well as everyday life. If you’re a fan of Elizabeth Gilbert, Cheryl Strayed, and Brene Brown, I think this one will resonate with you.

It is really fascinating to think about, but your early childhood, and relationship with your mother, may deeply affect how you will become as a mother (or being consicous of it may change how you approach motherhood). Did your mother sing for you when you were born? My mother did, and I was surprised to find myself singing & remembering easily all those forgotten words that she had been singing to me 30 years ago.

Did your mother easily connect with you? Or did she go through a difficult postpartum depression? If she was deeply connected with you, chances are pretty high that you will easily connect with your baby as well — If she was emotionally disconnected..this may also re-appear in your own relationship to your little one. Being aware of your own childhood you can emotionally prepare yourself and your partner for some of the challenges that may appear — so you both can support each other and the baby in the best way possible. My best advice would be to start reflecting upon this, keep a journal and write down perhaps experiences you remember..or have a tea with your mother (and father), and ask them about your birth. Was it easy? Did she sing songs for you? Was your dad there? Was their family supportive? Perhaps some questions or answers might be painful, but, I deeply believe that by only facing these truths we can grow ourselves and become better parents for our kids.

I was very suprised to learn that many mental disorders and challenges that we experience as adults, come from childhood traumas. And that we, within our society, have normalized quite a lot of behaviors that can cause traumatic experiences. In some places it is still normal to shout at children, beat/ hit (I was surprised that it is common in what I thought were “civilized modern day families”), to leave small children alone in locked rooms and let them cry.. emotional distancing, bullying. And the list goes on.

To learn about the relationship between you and your mother, and to dive into the importance of trauma and the role that it plays, I would recommend reading the books below:

• The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma by Bessel van der Kolk M.D: A lot is crammed into this book- over 30 years of research into trauma! Most people experience some form of trauma throughout their lives, but the younger you are the more profound the effect is later on in life. It literally passes down from generation to generation and we still don’t discuss or treat trauma as a norm. If everyone was more knowledgeable about trauma and how it affects us then I think our medical advice and how we treat people would be far different from what it is today. This book has been a gamechanger for me and I cannot recommend it enough.
• Discovering the Inner Mother: A Guide to Healing the Mother Wound and Claiming Your Personal Power by Bethany Webster: Why do women keep themselves small and quiet? Why do they hold back professionally and personally? What fuels the uncertainty and lack of confidence so many women often feel? Bethany Webster identifies the source of women’s trauma. She calls it the Mother Wound — the systemic disenfranchisement of women by the patriarchy — and reveals how this cycle is perpetuated by wounded mothers who unconsciously pass on damaging beliefs and behaviors to their daughters. Being able to acknowledge and access the Mother Wound has helped me begin a deeper healing journey because I am able to identify and label so many issues that I couldn’t before. This is a really great read opening up a very different perspective towards trauma and healing.

How to Prepare your Relationship for the Arrival of the Baby?

I wish I had given this more time and thought before becoming a parent. Truth is I don’t think you can fully know your partner before becoming a parent. Because parenthood will push you both into the unknown, will put you under pressure, will force you to face your own childhood, its traumas, its happy moments.. and so on. So. What to do to prepare? I would do everything to try to build a solid foundation in your relationship. As solid as possible that is. There are many ways to do that.. one is to take time off with each other. This will be the last months that you have just the two of you — after this you will become a family and — even though you can take weekends off without the kids and later vacations and what not.. you will never just be the two of you. Go on weekend trips together. Watch movies till the early morning, make love, cook together.. create a good bundle of happy memories.

Then. Discuss your childhoods. What did you like? What did you not like about your upbringing? What did you find difficult? Did your parents do some things that you didn’t like? What can you do in order to ensure that some of these things are not repeated? In my case I had a stepfather who shouted a lot and suffered from anger management issues. For me shouting/ raising voices is a complete no go. What no-gos do you have? What are your boundaries? How can you help your partner and yourself to become truly conscious about your own shadow sides (coming from childhood)? Because there is a pretty high likelyhood that those shadow sides will appear when you become parents.

What memories do you cherish? How can you support one another? Who do you go to when things become difficult? My partner and I went to therapy sessions before becoming parents. It was very useful for us as she held the space for us to share some of the fears and doubts that we had. Another thing I would recommend is to do the exercises that are described in this book by Harville Hendrix — they were very helpful for us in order to get closer to one another.

Besides this I would recommend both of you to read these books. Most of them were completely eye-opening for me and made me realize that I actively had to rethink parenting and how we in our society have normalized certain behaviors (in practice this is much tougher to do than writing about it 😂). Gentle warning — reading these changed the way my partner and I view parenthood. We changed our careers. Moved to a new country, and changed our social circles. So, you have been warned ❤️:

• Jesper Juul (Any book you can find. I was so embarrassed when I realized that he is from Denmark, and that I had never heard about him nor read anything by him. He is exceptionally talented and have done some incredible work).
• “The Awakened Family: How To Raise Empowered, Resilient, and Conscious Children” by Shefali Tsabary.
• “Hold On to Your Kids: Why Parents Need To Matter More Than Peers” by Dr Gordon Neufeld and Gabor Maté
• “Self-Compassion: The Proven Power Of Being Kind To Yourself” By Kristin Neff
• “No Drama Discipline” by Daniel J. Siegel, M.D. and Tina Payne Bryson, Ph.D.
• “The Continuum Concept” by Jean Liedloff
• Janet Lansbury (she has multiple books worth checking out. If you want to dive further into the RIE approach — I really recommend reading Magda Gerber).

How to prepare yourself for the Arrival of the Baby?

I was working full-time untill the arrival of my first baby-girl. Full time as in I was still in meetings when my contractions started. The only things I did to prepare myself was to go to the hospital for the general preparation courses, and, I took some private workshops with a nurse. I was not prepared in any way. In fact, I didn’t help myself at all with that approach. What I would have done differently would be to exercise much more (swimming multiple times per week, long walks, long strecthing exercises.. every day do something). Exercising will help your baby to find the right position in your body, it will make your body strong. It is not helpful to sit on a chair for 8+ hours while being pregnant (I even stumbled on an scientific article somewhere suggesting that the high amount of c-sections these days may also be correlated to the fact that most women sit all day long..making their bodies unable to push the baby out). Find a good place to get a pregnancy massage and go there often.. to help relax your body, and remove muscle tensions. If possible find a doula that can help you through the process. I wish I had one.

Books worth reading & Programmes Worth Following:

• May’s Guide to Childbirth: With each story that Ina May shares, I became less scared and more excited about birth. I felt like I learned all I needed to know and to feel empowered about my choices. Even though it was written a while ago, and some of the approaches have changed, it is still relevant today. Recommended reading for any expecting mother or any mother recovering from a cesarean.
• Spinning Babies: I bought their classes “Daily Essentials” (the exercises really helped me through birth as well) and their “Spinning Babies Parent Class” (it was really great to go through with my partner), and I signed up for their weekly newsletter which sent me weekly pregnancy emails to stay up-to-date on me and my baby’s progress.
• Positive Birth Company: The Hypnobirthing Digital Pack: The Positive Birth Company hypnobirthing program is designed to empower women, birthing people and their birth partners to create positive birth experiences. The Hypnobirthing Digital Pack is The Positive Birth Company’s online program and part of their mission is to make hypnobirthing more accessible. Even though I gave birth in Denmark this was very relevant for me — it is cheap, and you can always go back and forth in the material. Really something I can wholeheartedly recommend. I learned much more in this course than I did at any of the birth preparation classes that I went through. Also! Their app FREYA is really good. Worth the purchase. I used it second time I gave birth.

With time I have learned that even though we say the we follow “science”, “science” really varies from country to country, culture and family. Depending on where you are, data is being highlighted in different ways. I’ll give you an example — in Denmark it is considered ok to drink max 3 cups of coffee when pregnant, in Norway, the recommendation is to drink less than 1 (so, none 😉), in order to avoid a low-birth weight and potential health damages to the baby. In Denmark, if you breastfeed while taking a Plan B pill, it is recommended to stop breastfeeding for 8 hours to allow the potential damaging hormones to leave the body (in order to not harm the baby).. in the US the recommendation is to stop for max. 3–4 hours. In Denmark the benefits of breastfeeding often follow the length of the maternity leave. Back in the days the maternity leave only lasted for 4 months, so, accordingly mothers were encouraged to switch to formula then, now it is untill 10 months (though they recently shortenend the mothers maternity leave back to 7 months, so perhaps the breastfeeding recommendations will change accordingly..). BTW since we are talking about breastfeeding — if you do decide to breastfeed and suddenly can feel mastitis coming up — try massaging your breasts with an electrical brush. Not sure why this advice isn’t common knowledge, but this is way more efficient than massaging yourself for hours while crying under the shower. Oh, and cabbage. Check out cabbage.

After having traveled the world I have realized that these types of “contradictions” appear often, making it crucial that you do proper research when generally people tell you what is right and wrong, and, that you also follow with the decision that you can live with and that you believe is the right for you and your baby. This can also be applied to all the advices and recommendations that you will be receiving from lots of people. Parents. In-laws. Friends. Random people. Whatever you hear — remember that we all have our own realities and backgrounds. Take the advices that make sense to you and your family. Most of us, honestly, don’t really know what we’re talking about. We don’t know the truth. Many of us believe that being born in country X and having position Y in society, means that we have the “correct” beliefs and values. We believe that the truth is somehow dependant on where you are situated on a sociological map. But let’s be honest — the truth is we don’t know the truth. No one knows it. Even if you or someone is right about something, we will quickly be outdated or our opinion will be incomplete.

My sociological reality is that I was raised in Denmark. In Denmark it is illegal to hit/slap children (it is considered a crime). When we give birth skin-2-skin is the focus, meaning that we right away get the baby on our breast. We give birth in private rooms (if giving birth at a hospital). Our partners are invited to give birth with us. It is normal that a partner is present in the process. The baby stays with the parents after birth, and checkups are done with the parents. Breastfeeding is quite normal (also publicly). Parental leave is 9 months, and it is considered quite unnatural for babies to be left in nurseries before this period. We can also, if we live in certain municipalities, get financial support for staying at home with our children. This is my reality.. but it isn’t necessarily yours. And that’s totally ok. I think understanding the realities of other mothers is really useful for all of us. Perhaps knowing this can help us all in building a more beautiful world.

I received a lot of recommendations to give my baby formula right away. Further on I realized that the women that had given me that advice had been unable to breastfeed themselves. This is totally ok.. if you for some reason are unable or don’t want to breastfeed then obviously formula is the way forward. However, if you can and want to breastfeed, then no formula can replace that experience.. and there is no reason to give your baby formula (I’ve also realized that certain companies have managed to so succesfully penetrate the formula market that in some places it is considered that formula is more healthy than breastmilk!).

Another important thing is to check the sources/footnotes of what you are reading. Why? Because content marketing is about making you read something, find it trustworthy, and then buy the product that the piece is advertizing. It may not be that obvious sometimes. For example I have stumbled on really well written content pieces promoting cry-it-out methods — upon further research they were sponsored by companies who were selling equipment for when leaving your baby alone (cameras, heavy blankets, consultancies, special music.. and so on.). Or great content pieces on formula.. more or less suggesting that formula-fed babies will result in independent and successful leaders as adults, while breastfeeding will only lead to attached 45 yo+-livingwiththeirparents adults. Ha! If the world was that simple! I would recommend you to read the books by Emily Oster (and follow her on SoMe) for detailed research regarding parenting & pregnancies. She is really great at removing all the fluffy stuff, and finding the facts.

Finally. Before the arrival of the baby — make sure that you discuss with your partner how you imagine the first few weeks to be.

Who can visit? When can they visit? When I gave birth the first time my birth resulted in an emergency c-section — after 28 hours of trying to give birth. I remember lying on the hospital bed, holding my sleeping baby in my arms, my partner sleeping on the floor next to me, trying to process what had happened while being unable to feel my legs, having a massive cut running through my stomach. My in-laws insisted on visiting with the entire family to see the baby right after birth.. so a couple of hours after I found myself like that. I found it very intrusive. I had almost no energy, was in deep pain, still had blood running out of my body and was not able to go to the toilet, yet I had to find the strength to smile and be present with all the people around me.

Next time I gave birth we said no to any visits the first few weeks (except for my mother and mother-in-law). If anyone truly wanted to support or help we asked them to come with take-away food for us. When we felt recovered and ready we invited other family members over in small groups. This worked really well for us as a family. Discuss with your partner in advance what will work best for you.

Oh, another thing. Instead of baby clothes and stuffed animals and what not. Ask people to give cleaning help as a present. And takeaway boxes/vouchers/coupons. Snack plates with nuts and dried fruits (this my partner prepared for me daily so I always had something healthy I easily could munch on). Do a photoshoot when your little one is born. Time will fly and you will have it as a precious memory!

Finally, motherhood can feel as a very lonely journey. Especially in the beginning. Please know that you are not alone. It may feel like that but there are many others out there. Nowadays you probably will not find a “village” around you, however, you may find one virtually at least. Start searching for one already now while expecting! In Denmark its quite common to be assigned to a little “mother group”. You can make your own mother group with other mothers giving birth at around the same time.

At the end I would like to include some IG accounts that I find useful these days — the people behind them are great at what they do!

• Big Little Feelings — Toddler Experts
• Janet Lansbury (also listen to her podcast ”Unruffled”) — Author. Engaging with babies & toddlers as whole people
• Pinky McKay — Best-Selling Author. Media Personality. podcast host ‘Tits Up’ , Owner Boobie Brands, Lactation Consultant (IBCLC). TEDx Speaker. Anything related to breastfeeding go to her — I hosted her as a guest speaker once, and she is wonderful.
• Dr. Ashley Soderlund — Raise Children with Big Hearts and Strong Minds | Developmental Psychologist | Mama | Mindfulful Parenting| RYT 200 | Trusted Parenting Network Member
• Emily Oster — Data driven information regarding parenthood.

So. Dear Expectant Mother. You are now embarking upon the biggest transformational journey of your life. It will not be easy. It will be hard. It will be beautiful. I have shared with you some of the things that I found helpful for myself. I hope that some of them will help you.

With Love,

Roxane