Pregnant With Possibility, Bursting With Life: Celebrating the Changes of Pregnancy

The pregnancy test just came back positive. You still feel the same—it’s too soon for most early-pregnancy symptoms to start kicking in—but you are already beginning to anticipate the changes that your body will begin to experience during the amazing months ahead.

Pregnancy is a much more joyful experience if you allow yourself to accept and enjoy the changes that are happening to your body. This is easier to do if you understand and appreciate the reproductive processes that are driving these bodily changes. If you know that the pale blue veins that have appeared on your breasts are evidence that your body is ramping up for milk production; and that your rounded belly reflects the added real estate needed for your expanding uterus and your growing baby, you can feel confident that your body knows exactly what it needs to do to prepare itself for pregnancy, birth, and beyond.

It’s when we try to resist these bodily changes that we run into trouble. Too often this occurs as a result of misguided ideas about female beauty. Here is the problem: our culture’s definitions of female beauty are far too narrow and artificial to take into account the power and wonder of a woman who is quite literally pregnant with possibility and bursting with life.

So don’t allow anyone to steal your pregnant thunder by implying that you’re anything less than beautiful. Celebrate your pregnant body and savor your motherhood metamorphosis.