Welcome to Kim Crossman’s brand new column, Pretty Pregnant – this week, Kim’s filling us in on how her Type A personality may have made her fertility journey more frustrating, learning to let go, and embrace her baby bump! We’re very excited here at Capsule to have Kimberly join us every fortnight as she brings us along for the ride of her very exciting pregnancy.
Missed her last edition? Click here to catch up!
TW: Miscarriage
Firstly a massive thank you to everyone who reached out after my first blog here with Capsule a few weeks ago. Honestly, I feel so full of joy and support and it’s such a good reminder that sometimes sharing the raw truth and your most vulnerable moments is actually empowering and attracts the right humans to you. On that note I took some of your advice and that’s what I wanted to write about today, the importance of good energy.
Thanks to many of your recommendations, I spoke with the amazing Cara Lennan who is a fertility energetics expert. I wanted to start by mentioning her because if I had met her 18 months earlier, I can’t help but wonder if my fertility journey would have been as long or frustrating. So, I want to write her name here and tell you to go and listen to the podcast I did with her, so if you are on a fertility journey or you want to be as prepared as you can be before you consider conceiving, that you’re fully informed, because what she talks about is honestly a game changer. (Pretty Depressed Podcast is available where ever you listen to your podcasts)
If you are anything like me – type A, overachieving, perfectionist, people pleaser – then please, please, please open your mind to what Cara talks about. I had to figure this all out via many different methods and research, but it is entirely possible that the way you are living your life and operating (most likely in fight or flight) can be limiting your ability to get pregnant.
There are many amazing things that come with being an achievement junkie but sadly, you cannot logic your way into getting pregnant. Learning to rest and digest, to sit in your feminine energy and find a way to balance some of your core personality traits with some more nourishing habits could make all the difference. It sure did for me.
Secondly, I took part in something that is increasingly popular here in LA and I am sure is available in New Zealand as well: a henna ceremony mixed with a session from a spiritual guide, to speak to your ancestors and to create a sacred ceremony for mum and baby.
Now, I feel like I can hear some of the audible eye rolls from you after reading that sentence! But please, humour me and read on!
One thing I had been honest about is not feeling as much connection with this baby as I did with my previous pregnancy (that ended in miscarriage) because of the fear element of loss that has been at play.
It was recommended to me to try something that was just for me and baby, that felt creative and if I was open to it, talking to any of my lineage who are in the spirit realm if they had any messages they wanted to share.
For anyone who has walked a path of grief or is even slightly open-minded to this concept, this day will now forever be a marker for me where I was able to really embrace joy and feel a mum-baby connection. I am actually bawling writing this because it was so impactful for me.
I think I needed a bit of magic to help me connect since my logical brain was not getting there on its own. If you also believe in epigenetics (a topic I will cover at a later date) some of the ceremony addressed messages from my amazing nana, who was holding baby’s hand, and even a confirmation that Blueberry, our baby girl we lost, was very much there watching and holding this baby’s hand.
Leslie Indigo created such a magical window for me and this baby that I feel I have been able to relax into the joy of this pregnancy a little. To cut ties with a few things and a few people’s energy that was not serving me and feel much more like a little team within my own body.
A little about me… in case you haven’t worked it out by now, I am open to giving almost all things a go. I realised when I started my mental health journey that by not being open to things, I could be limiting my healing. And as someone who is determined to face any of my demons and work to work through them, some of the best and most healing practices I have found have been those that sit just a bit outside my comfort zone.
Another highlight over the past two weeks was hearing baby’s heartbeat. I was able to go to this scan with a lot more ease and still a sliver of anxiety but for sure a vast improvement on the previous visits. I posted a clip on my stories you can see under my baby highlight if you want to hear baby’s very strong and rhythmic beat.
As I now embark on the 19 week mark (almost halfway! Wow!) I feel so stoked to have had some energetic shifts within me. I had some shifts that I believe helped me conceive and then reverted back to some of my old and very well engrained habits.
So this henna practice along with another creative activity, a 100 day commitment to journal writing in the morning, I am only doing one page but I have made a commitment to do 100 days of writing down my thoughts before I reach for my phone. I do not know what this task will do for me, but apparently according to science, it is supposed to make a world of difference creatively, spiritually and energetically in the positive direction. I shall keep you posted.
Something I am both embracing but also learning to adjust to is my body changes. I am both equally impressed and also a little confronted. I am hoping to feel feminine and ethereal and feel a little less like a potato.
I realise this might cause some backlash and I am not saying I am not in awe of what my body can do, I just do not quite look super pregnant and do not fit anything. It is like this strange limbo of insane bloat and being short of breath and also elation that after over 30 years on the planet I have something that resembles boobs.
I think it is the glow part that I am waiting for, it seems I am more on the side of breakouts and an inability to feel full which might lead to some speculation about baby being a boy or a girl according to the wives’ tales.
Looking ahead I would love to hear a bit more about any practices you had to stay in the positive joy state of pregnancy. I do notice more often than not people either want to warn me about how much life will change, to enjoy my sleep now, or to question my decision to not know the gender, than I do people who are just jazzed and have positive birth stories haha.
So if anyone has any joy or delight they want to share in the comments or in my DMs I would love to hear anything you did to celebrate the halfway mark and bring in some good vibes.
x
