Pregnancy

Understanding Your Personal Style and Strengths During Pregnancy

NaturalTransition.com is thrilled to publish a series of articles written for pregnant women by Dr. Caron Goode to help them determine an easy way to go through their pregnancy based upon their core temperament or what Dr. Goode calls their personal style.

Personal styles and strengths are the foundation of parent coaching which is taught through the Academy for Coaching Parents, which was founded by Dr. Goode.

Mindfulness During Pregnancy

Dr. Caron Goode
www.acpi.biz

Pregnancy may be the one time in our female lives when we are thrilled and frightened at the same time because we have no control over the physical and hormonal changes. The spaces you control and work with for your well-being are the inner places, what you feel and think.

For example, when we feel nauseated or agitated, we have a tendency to ask ourselves a simple question, “What’s wrong?" The two words, “what’s wrong” ripples through your feelings and body as a fire alarm. Adrenalin pumps and prepares you to evacuate! Only you are not going anywhere! After the adrenalin rush, you get fatigued fast when the adrenalin stops pumping.

If we asked ourselves different questions, it makes a significant difference to our vitality and health. By communicating with our bodies, we learn its rhythms, desires, pains and feelings. Then we learn to move within the personal style of our pregnancy with mindfulness. We stay comfortable, relaxed and attentive.

The Long View

Look at a woman’s life stretched through time to understand that hormones significantly influence moods and feelings throughout our entire lives:
- Puberty
- Onset of Menstruation
- Pregnancy
- Birth
- Postpartum
- Perimenopause
- Menopause

We engage life through the lens of these hormonal events that govern our frame of mind and disposition. Our point is this: moods and feelings are normal for women. Normal is moving in and out of them in a rhythm consistent with personal style and attitudes. All of these events are perfectly normal for women.

How you feel and experience pregnancy is actually completely up to you, though media and medicine heavily influence women. Pregnancy may be the best time in your life to learn that you cannot compare yourself to anyone else.

You are a unique and gifted soul, growing and nourishing a new human being in your pregnancy. In truth, you are also birthing yourself. There isn’t a greater miracle in which you participate to learn strength through vulnerability. There is no way to gauge your experience by another woman’s journey, though their support and presence is invaluable.

Rather, turn inward to your passionate spirit and intelligent heart and mind to intuit and know yourself thoroughly. Work with your feelings and thoughts: learn to talk with your body, bond with your baby, develop a self-care program and a support system during this pregnant time. The skills you learn about how to manage your thoughts and feelings provide you with a successful framework for coping and sustaining resilience through all life events. Here’s why:

- The interlocking links between what you think and how you feel are well documented in medicine, psychology and neuroscience. Once you learn how and why you think and feel the way you do in and around your pregnancy, you can develop a support program according to your needs and desires.
- Anxiety and depression heighten before, during and after pregnancy.
- Pregnancy, birth and postpartum periods make us particularly vulnerable to general mood swings.
- We are so used to being “super” women that we have to unlearn control, and relearn the differences between controlling, holding the tension and surrendering to the pregnancy process.

Leah's story

Leah is a very sensitive and nervous twenty-five-year-old woman. People who notice Leah do a double take at the juxtaposition of a cigarette constantly puffing from the delicate mouth and tawny skin of this auburn-haired beauty. Her straight posture and composure could suggest either a woman of confidence or one who is trying to hold herself together. The chain smoking suggests the latter.

Leah’s husband, Jake, adores his wife, loves to take care of her and was thrilled at her announcement that they were pregnant. Leah had a good pregnancy despite that fact that she could not give up her cigarettes. “They keep me sane,” she justified to her doctor. But then she lowered her voice and confessed that she was scared to death of being in pain during her delivery. Her doctor noted that this was a common complaint of nervous new mothers and suggested that she quit smoking. Leah did not share her fears of delivery with anyone else, and continued to smoke a pack of cigarettes a day.

Leah got out of bed one Saturday morning three weeks before her due date and began hemorrhaging. Her husband rushed her to the hospital where the staff briskly worked to stop the bleeding. The flurry of activity frightened her even more. Her doctor examined her, induced labor and left the room before she could ask what was going on. He did not give her any information, and went to speak with Jake who was left in the waiting room. Meantime the nurses prepared Leah for a C-section, cleaned her bowels and rushed from one task to another. The pain of the induced contractions started and Leah screamed uncontrollably. She was scared she would lose the baby, scared she would die and extremely frustrated that no one would tell her what was going on. Leah was left alone with her pain. She kept screaming until the doctor returned and offered her a choice of pain medications. “Just knock me out and let’s get this over with,” she cried. So he did.

Leah is an example of a woman not educated or prepared about her pregnancy, health habits, birth planning, mental health or the fact that she even had some choices that could have made her pregnancy a happier time. She kept her fears to herself and did not involve her partner much in the experience. No woman wants to have this experience, and no woman has to.

The most pervasive influence in our lives, especially our pregnancy, is our personal style, which is the way we perceive, approach and interact in the world. In this chapter, you’ll find the easiest ways to work with your personal style to feel great immediately and uncover what emotional, mental or spiritual aspects of pregnancy keep you from feeling good.

©2009 by Dr. Caron Goode. Goode is gifted with compassion in assisting others to effect lasting transformation through spiritual coaching, books, classes and seminars. Caron’s continuous education, experience in psychology and professional writing makes her a great resource for parents wishing to create and maintain a nurturing relationship their children. She has positioned the Academy for Coaching Parents International (www.acpi.biz ) at the forefront of the parent coaching movement to disseminate the coaching model of empowerment for parents. Newest book – Raising Intuitive Children at www.raisingintuitivechildren.com

If you found the above column useful, feel free to share it with
friends. To subscribe yourself to Caron’s Coaching Corner, send an email to caron30@gmail.com .Upon subscribing, you will receive the Coaching Corner once a month.

- First Trimester
- Second Trimester
- Third Trimester
- Pregnancy Care Options

Personal Style in Pregnancy Articles By Dr. Caron Goode:

- Part 1- Mindfulness During Pregnancy

- Part 2- You Deserve to Feel Great

- Part 3- Understanding Your Personal Style