My worldview
What does our current system/culture suggest ? How am I influenced?
Being pregnant is a cleverly devised process of nature which worked for million of years and is still working. It is the most natural in the world and an aurochs task for women. In our current western system security and a single life of a human is so important, that there are plenty of offers to examine the child. So, for me it is not easy to find a balance between my natural intuition and the plenty of tests I could do in order to find “mistakes” in my child. The western society suggests that only “faultless” children are children, where parents should feel joy for. With pregnancy I am automatically concerned with doctors and prenatal tests. But actually as a pregnant woman I am the expression of pure health and joy! Aren’t I? So why do I have to go to the doctor then and feel like a patient ?
In a healthy pregnancy it is important to find a balance between the trust in life and the use of prenatal examinations. I tried to step out of the doctors routine and informed myself about different interventions. I just did the minimum of medical examinations and even wanted to do less… but my doctor explicitly recommended e.g. all three ultrasounds during pregnancy even if I only wanted to do just two. I felt such a pressure that in the end I did the other ultrasound as well. Only because there are so many different opportunities, a woman in the western culture needs to decide what might be the best for her and her child. In other cultures woman just go through this natural process without having thousands of decisions and often bear their child without any complications.
Welcoming a new person
How is it for me to welcome a new person?
In the first place it is just an awesome feeling that my body feeds and nurtures another small body from the first day of cell existence. I feel honoured that I have the chance to show a small person our world and accompany my child through live. I know that an other chapter in my life has started and I feel that it matures me as a person.
Daily belly massage
Reflection of daily practices and routines (optional)
What worked well?
My daily yoga routine was the essence that I could feel well through my pregnancy and train my changing body. I really recommend daily yoga practice for all pregnant woman. Having a mindful connection to my child every day was naturally very easy for me and I always enjoyed this time. My boyfriend, was also very motivated to strengthen the bond between himself and the child, so we carried out this daily ritual without big effort
What was challenging?
It was more challenging to find a time during the day where I can practice visualization and meditation to prepare for birth. Also because I often felt busy and had not the motivation to calm down for visualization and meditation.
What to do differently the next time?
There are no big things I would do differently the second time, but I would maybe visit an official yoga course. Firstly because you get to know other pregnant woman and you learn real life yoga. Via internet there is no teacher who can correct you or give tips.
View into the future - Our Tiny house-
Our future dream is to live a simple fulfilled life and being partly self-sustaining by growing food. To come a little closer to our dream we decided to build a Tiny House . This mobile home is perfect to change location and life a minimalistic and nature connected life at the same time without relinquishing to a certain comfort. Because of the high price level of a finished Tiny House we looked for other possibilities. Planning and building a Tiny House by ourselves would be very time intensive and we also don't have a lot of trading experience. After some research we found a company who offered a "Tiny House construction kit" to us. Together we designed our small house and after some weeks we received the first material and the first part of the assembly instruction (for more details view the PDF document Tiny House).
We decided to share the building process with a wider area of people by making Tiny House construction videos and uploading them on youtube. This way we can inspire people how to build a 14 square meter mobile home which corresponds with all of the endless guidelines on the street and offers at the same time an adequate living space.
Tiny House
Our first video (German)
Thoughts about uncertainty and how I dealt with it (optional)
What is uncertainty?
To draw a connection to the topic pregnancy I want to say that expecting a child is such an mysterious, uncertain and beautiful thing.
Firstly it is beyond the power of human to plan perception, some woman are waiting for years to get pregnant and others get pregnant on a one-night stand. After perception parents have no security that the child is healthy and everything will develop well. A new human comes into being who is completely dependent on the parents (especially on the mother) the first years of life. The parents have to accept this child, even more they will love it unconditional all their life.
Being pregnant is often strongly linked with a lot of fear. Fear that the child will not be healthy. Fear to loose the baby. Fear that the child will not be as you would like it to be. Fear that mother or child will not survive the birthing process. Naturally life and death are inseparable connected. We never can uncover the secret of life or control it. Without death there is no life and vice versa. The connection between life and death exerts a huge fascination of pregnancy. Humans have a natural fear of death. Early cultures dealt with this fear by carrying out rituals and the telling of myths. Today we have still the same feelings and fears but deal with it in another way. In the western culture we are looking for security in the modern technologies. The scientific and technical progress enables us to see pictures of our babies in the womb and surely the one or the other life was saved by that. And still life stays a wonder which can arouse various feelings in us. Prenatal tests suggest a feeling of security, so that we can keep our fears under control. This feeling of security comes from “the outside”. It can block our own feelings and intuitions. Especially in our modern society many human did unlearn to turn their mindfulness inside and pay attention to the intensive-emotional happening during pregnancy.
So what I want to say in conclusion, is that life in all its facets is uncertain and one can find different ways to deal with uncertainty.
How is my life uncertain?
To come back to the text section “What is uncertainty?” I want to say that I have no problem to trust my feelings and intuitions. I just experienced that people who are not pregnant, heard something bad about pregnancy or experienced a difficult birth want to give you suggestions and tips. Sometimes this information was valuable for me. But often that caused that I felt fear or thought about the “What-could-happen” in life and especially during pregnancy and birth. These negative affirmation of thoughts are really not helpful, but I always managed it to develop a feeling of self-confidence and positive thinking.
“If you realized how powerful your thoughts are you’d never think a negative thought again” Unknown
On another level I sometimes feel how uncertain my life is currently. What I mean by that is that my boyfriend and me want to settle down on a nice place which we haven't found yet. I am studying with an Online University and don’t know in which professional direction I want to develop. So I have no profession with what I could earn money in order to make a living for a family.
What are my steps to deal with uncertainty?
There are several steps I do to deal with uncertainty. On a psychical level I just have a deep basic trust that everything will work out in the end. A positive pro-active attitude helps me to always find solutions and if something will not work out I am just thinking about the next solution. Dealing with the uncertainty of pregnancy is actually relatively easy and natural for me. From the beginning I knew that this is the right time to get pregnant and it felt like an aurochs task and a humbling experience. I just feel so honoured that I may carry out a child.
Dealing with having no home-place was a little more challenging, but now I feel that we found also for that a great solution. We are building a mobile Tiny House, this way we have a home place which we can take where ever we are. And another very important learning is, that a home does not make up a local place. I re-defined the term "home" for myself and learned that the most important for a home place are the people being there. So I can feel home everywhere, as long as I have my small family with me and maybe some other nice people. Changing my attitude towards home, helped me to feel home in many places.