Ring ring ... it's the Bethline

there's a baby inside of me and their name is anxiety!

It’s that time of the month again! No, not my period because, well, pregnant… it’s Bethline time!

Every month I bring my advice column, Bethline, here to Oversharing to answer a question from an anonymous reader. I am not a certified therapist or life coach, or really even anyone who has it all figured out (who does?), but I do love the tough stuff of life, aka: working on oneself and sharing wisdom with others who may need a little sprinkle of it. If you’ve got a question for an armchair therapist, ask me here.

I’m 11 weeks pregnant and have severe health anxiety. The nausea of the first trimester has triggered me so much. Do you suffer anxiety? During pregnancy? I’d love to hear your coping strategies if so.

Dear 11 weeks with a side of anxiety,

First things first - CONGRATULATIONS! Being pregnant is a journey to say the least babe, and I am so excited for you :) By now we have all heard of brat summer, but in my house we are celebrating preggo summer, so welcome.

I am so sorry to hear that you are feeling the first trimester nausea blues, it was a time I did not enjoy very much. I am nearing my third trimester and to be honest with you, am dealing with a whole new landscape of blues, but thankfully, the nausea is a thing of the past. I totally understand how you feel and I’d just like to remind you that you are not alone in feeling anxious. Pregnancy is one giant out of your control season of life, so OF COURSE it brings up all sorts of anxiety, including health and generalized.

Our bodies are basically being taken hostage by a cute little alien inside of us that is completely dictating how we feel, the level of energy we have, how much we cry at car commercials (the Subaru ones specifically always get me!), and literally every other thing going on inside of us at the moment. There is also the whole bit about how you cannot actually see this thing that is living and growing inside of your body except for a few doctor appointments where they glide a wand across a pile of goo on your belly. So yeah. Anxiety makes perfect sense here.

Without getting too woo woo and deep right off the bat (don’t worry, I’ll get there), I will just say that the specific symptoms of the first trimester, for me at least, made it really hard to lean into surrender vibes. Of course, to some extent, we never really have control over our lives, right? There are a handful of things we do have control over in this world, but so much of life is beyond our reach. You go from a place of feeling seemingly in control over your own body, your energy, and what foods you can and can’t eat, and then suddenly you get pregnant, and all of those things slip away from your grasp, and you just feel like a bloated frog on a log. I tried so fucking hard to just act normal in the first trimester. I remember going to my pilates classes in those early weeks and literally feeling like a cartoon character with dizzy stars in my eyes. “I’m fine!” I’d think to myself … But, babe, I wasn’t. My body was trying to tell me to stay home, but I couldn’t possibly accept the idea of letting go of my routine. I live for my morning pilates classes, ok? I am a suburban mom at heart; always have been. Nothing brings me more joy than waking up in the morning, having my iced coffee, and driving to the pilates studio. The idea of having to let go of that made me feel like my world was ending (champagne problems, I KNOW). When I finally had to accept that holding a plank on the reformer for one minute was no longer in the cards for me, so many new anxieties popped up. Ok, but I’m supposed to be exercising; is laying on the couch for hours at a time really good for me? There was so much uncertainty flowing through my brain and I had no choice but to just observe it from my raft on the lazy river. I really didn’t know what was real and what was a work of the little fiction author that lives up in my head. Then, you Google. And let me tell you this now: DON’T GOOGLE. Stay away from that shit as much as you are able to, babe! Because it is almost always going to tell you something is "wrong,” and that is not going to help you at all. The internet is a blessing in so many ways, but it also feeds in to our reassurance seeking, and seeking reassurance all of the time is pulling us further and further away from our own inner knowing of what is best for us. Google can sometimes be an encouraging friend, but I have found that for most of my pregnancy, it is just an enemy who enjoys watching me squirm.

Anyway, back to your question: yes, feeling sick and out of control is a perfectly fine reason for feeling anxious. There is also the whole part about the literal baby growing inside of your own body, right? If we can only see this thing with the wave of the goo-covered wand, how do we know everything is ok in there? How do we know that our own bodies are doing okay, let alone theirs? Feeling sick and low energy all the time doesn’t make me feel like everything is ok. Normally, when I feel sick to my stomach and I can’t get out of bed, it means something is wrong, but in the case of pregnancy, it means something is right. Talk about confusion. But you see, a lot of what we are measuring our current experience up against is now an experience of our past. Our pre-pregnancy bodies are no more. We are going through a forever change. And while yes, the nausea and all of the exhaustion and the diet of sour candy and potato chips is all temporary and we will one day return to some semblance of normal, there is an intrinsic change that happens to us when we are in that liminal space between pregnancy and birth. Every day is a tiny little challenge to learn to be ok with not knowing the outcome of things and accepting that we are not in control. Of course, I am not a girl, not yet a woman, aka, not not a mom, but not yet a mom - so I really cannot speak to the experience of parenthood yet; however, every single mom friend in my life tells me that pregnancy is one of the best opportunities to learn to live with and navigate your experience with being out of control. We’re going to be moms soon! And we are going to have to figure out how to keep these little people alive. And how to live with them as teenagers screaming I HATE YOU at us for simply asking them to call us when they get there (sorry mom!). A whooooooole new journey of life is right in front of us. And look, I hope this isn’t making you more anxious. I know this is a lot to comprehend, but you asked what my coping strategies are, and baby, surrendering to what is is the only one I’ve got.

I’d love to recommend a book to you and anyone else reading this who may also be pregnant or is thinking about getting pregnant. The book is called Transformed by Birth by Britta Bushnell. I have read more books in the last six months than maybe ever in my life, almost all of which are pregnancy/parenthood books, but this one has forever helped me shift my idea of what it means to live a life of surrender. I also would like to point out that while I might sound like I am just sitting over here *letting go and letting God*, I’m not. Last week was brutal for me. I was so lethargic I could barely get off of the couch, and I spiraled over every single choice I have ever made in my life. I felt like my life was over, and I had no idea how I was going to bring a child into a crumbling world and how I would encourage that child to keep going when I, a 37-year-old woman, couldn’t even encourage myself to keep going. I made a TikTok ranting about the experience of existing in the liminal space of pregnancy before the baby gets here, and it got a ton of views, and the comments are filled with other pregnant people mirroring back to me that they have felt the exact same way. It’s SO HARD to not feel isolated in these moments, because again, so much stuff we’re not used to - but I promise you, you are not alone. Have you tried finding a pregnancy support group in your area? There are even Reddit due date groups where you can join and chat with other pregnant people who are in the same stage of the journey as you. I have come to find that connection while pregnant is extremely important. Of course, that is hard to do when a simple walk from the couch to the bathroom feels like running a marathon, so yeah, easier said than done! Which is why the online groups might be a good place to try first if you are looking for a little connection. I mean, hey, even reaching out to me to ask your question is a big step, babe, so good for you.

Pregnancy is just about simply doing your best, and from what I can gather, so is parenthood. I mean honestly, all of life is. We can’t be perfect, and we will never have the answers to life. There is no guidebook that was crafted to tell us how to survive on a burning planet that no one even fully understands how we ended up on! It’s up to us to create meaning and methods to have in our toolbox to help us when we feel stuck. It’s a huge responsibility, and sometimes it is laughable at how hard it all is. Surrender is the only answer. And I think sometimes the idea of surrender gets a bad rap. Surrender is seen as giving up, waving the white flag, and saying, you win. But really, I think it just means you stop resisting what is. You accept that control is an illusion. You stop trying to find a way out, and you just trust that the way out is coming. In the case of pregnancy anxiety, you just keep telling that voice inside of your head that is telling you one hundred things are wrong with you, “Thank you for sharing!” and you move on with your day. It pops up again, and you say once more, THANKS BABE, I HEAR YOU, and you keep going. On a non-pregnancy-related book tip, I also highly recommend the book The Untethered Soul by Michael A. Singer - another book that is paramount in the journey of surrender-core.

Of course, if you feel like the anxiety you are experiencing during pregnancy is too heavy a load to carry or your endless attempts at letting go are not working, ask for help. As I said before, I have found pregnancy to feel really isolating. I have plenty of great friends and people in my life who are available to offer me support, and even though many of them have been pregnant themselves, I still feel this very intense level of I am the only person in the world who has ever felt this way; no one could possibly ever understand me energy that I have to snap myself out of almost daily. While pregnancy is a magical, mystical, goddess-like experience, it is also exhausting, scary, and supremely out of our control. So yes, it comes with a multitude of feelings and fears and “what the fuck is going on?” moments. I have found prenatal yoga classes in my area that have truly saved me and made me feel like I’m part of a community. If you have something like that located near you, you should attempt to take a class (once you’re feeling less nauseous, of course!) and see if being in a room filled with other pregnant people makes you feel any better. I know for me, it did. I walked into that first class and felt so awkward and uncomfortable; I wasn’t even showing yet, but I left that class feeling like I had found a space that would allow me to shed my fears for an hour and to be reminded that so many other people were in my exact same position. I mean, hey, remember, I’m right there with you!

This is where I get a little more woo woo, but sorry, I am who I am. See if you can possibly lean into some form of spirituality too. Even if SpIrItUaLiTy is not your thing, there are so many ways to connect with the divine. It can literally be going on a walk and noticing flowers you’ve never noticed before. Listening to a song with your eyes closed and really deeply taking in every part of it. Cooking dinner and paying attention to the sensory experience. It can also be deeper; meditation, prayer, church services - I can’t define what spirituality is for you, but I can tell you that having some connection to something outside of myself is really the thing that breaks me out of my anxiety prison. One thing I will recommend, which is a little silly, but helps, is this deck of The Power of Surrender Cards. It’s a 52-card deck of random cards that prompts you to let go of things in your life that you may currently be stuck in. I like to pick random cards from this deck when I am reaaaaaaally in it, and most of the time, I pick the exact card I needed. I ask the cards to “show me what I need to see” before I draw one, and usually it’s spot on. Even if it’s not, though, it often helps me by just reminding me that it can be as simple as letting it go. And if it keeps coming up, let it go again, babe. And again. And again. And again. Forever and ever, amen. Here… I went ahead and drew a random card for you. Here’s the message the *universe* wanted you to receive …

ooooooh would you look at that!!!

“The universe is reminding you that you are cared for always. Whether you’re afraid of a change in your job, your health, or a relationship — or if you fear aging or death — repeat the affirmation, “I have faith that all is well.”

VERY INTERESTING!!!!!! Look, all I’m saying is … sometimes, when you ask it to, the universe speaks to you. And it can just nudge you back along to the path that will carry you away from that inner chatter that is convincing you the sky is falling. Guess what? The sky is never falling unless it’s actually falling; you feel me?

I’m sending you a lot of love and a lot of blessings and well wishes for things to get a little smoother. From one preggo girl to another, you’re doing amazing, sweetie.

xoxo, Bethany

If you’d like some life advice from me, make sure to ask me a question here and next month on Bethline I might answer it :)