When a big change announces itself in our life, it can easy to get swayed from side to side between the negatives and positive we've associated with it, and we forget to embrace and acknowledge the 'as-is'. Not what we think it is, not what we fear it to be, not what it we want it to be.
In this blog I pushed myself to look beyond both my positive and negative judgments regarding pregnancy and having a look at the facts.
Source: Pixabay
In my previous blogs I walked through how my general experience of finding out that I was pregnant and how it was negatively tinted, because of how I had associated memories from my past where pregnancy has been in a negative context.Once I realised that pregnancy isn’t ‘bad’, ‘wrong’ or ‘negative’ through understanding where these experiences came from – I saw that pregnancy wasn’t inherently ‘good’ or ‘positive’ either.
If I have a look at definitions of ‘pregnancy’ and ‘pregnant’; they are refer to biological processes where there’s the fertilization of an egg which took place, which then gestates over a period of time to the point of childbirth.
There’s no ‘Shame on you woman who is carrying a fertilized egg’ or ‘The wonderful magical phenomenon of egg and sperm uniting’ or any such value-laden reference to pregnancy, because it is not an actual intrinsic part of pregnancy.
So pregnancy in itself = not good or bad. Does it then matter whether we get pregnant or not if it’s all the same?? Well, of course it does – because whether we think pregnancy is good or is bad, it’s a biological process over time which results in child birth. This means that you’re going to bring another life, another being, another person into this world.
So the decision of whether one should get pregnant or not or whether one should continue one’s pregnancy or not, does not tie into pregnancy itself as much as it does to the actual child that results from it. Are you able to support yourself and a child? Are you emotionally, physically and financially able to support yourself and a child? Is your environment of such nature that it promotes the well-being of a baby/child?
Even though pregnancy is not inherently good or bad – there are external factors and variables which determine whether you find yourself in a favourable time and space to carry on this biological process, or whether you find yourself in a disadvantaged space and time.
So why all this talk of semantics? Well, personally when I looked into the whole topic of pregnancy, I found it useful to explain it to myself, to really look at what it is I am going through and how it relates to me. And basically by breaking it down for myself this way, I see and realise that pregnancy is ‘nothing personal’.
That me being pregnant doesn’t make me a bad or a good person.
That whether I decide to continue a pregnancy or discontinue a pregnancy doesn’t make me a good or a bad person.
That it is never about me, but about best outcomes.
That whatever decision I make is what is best for the child to come (and myself included).
So there we have it, pregnancy is neither good or bad – it’s simply something that can work out and result in the promotion and well-being of a new life; or it is not – and accordingly I would decide to remain or not remain pregnant.