Our Conscious Conception Journey

Before I begin, I want to acknowledge all the planning, expecting & real life mammas out there. Whatever your journey has looked like, those who are going through or have gone through IVF, those who have lost, those who are working towards preparing their bodies to welcome their Bub in the future & those who are yet to fall pregnant. Dear mumma to be, you are so seen. And to those who have birthed babies, adopted babes and/or fostered children already, dear mumma, you inspire me so much.

Secondly, a small disclaimer…

This blog is all about my journey, my opinions, thoughts & my processes that are right for me. This is what feels good & what feels safe for us. There is no right or wrong way to bring life into this world, whatever your journey looks like for you, that is absolute perfection. There may be topics I cover in this blog that may be triggering or “against the norm”. Please know, this is not by any means a blog to dictate how your journey should look. I love that there are so many beautiful ways to bring life into our world and mumma, however that looks like for you, that is just beautiful & I honour you for that! The purpose of this blog is to share my personal journey & empower any woman or man out there in their journey to bringing life into the world. Please, take what you love & leave what you dont xx
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CLICK HERE TO WATCH OUR PREGNANCY ANNOUNCEMENT.

Hello!
I am a first-time expecting mum! Wow, that feels crazy to say.
I am 33 years old & we are SO excited.

If I can be completely honest though, I have never been maternal.
I have never “loved” kids.
Naughty, loud, rude, misbehaved children have always irked me & have always been my greatest form of contraception ha ha.

That’s just me being honest :D

WAIT, SO ARE WE READY TO START A FAMILY?

I have never felt “ready” to have children either. Until now of course.

I was starting to get worried about when I would finally feel ready. I remember having a routine pap smear at 30 and my gynecologist told me that I should really consider starting to try as my biological clock was ticking. I thought holy shit… I dont want kids yet, I have too many things I want to experience, achieve, see, learn & I LOVED being selfishly alone with my husband. I went home to Matty and told him about that conversation & we looked at each other and went ‘meh… we’ll do it when we’re ready”.

We have always been on the same page with this topic.
We have had big career and financial goals and truthfully those were big values for us both & so our focus was intently on creating a life we dreamt of & setting ourselves up first before starting a family.

That’s why I married him because we are just like two peas in a pod, we finish each other’s sentences and we think the same thing without having to say anything out loud.

My true soulmate.

Then, I hit 32 years of age last year and it’s like a light flicked on that I wasn’t expecting.

Babies started to look at me in shopping centers and I would smile back and feel something fuzzy.
I would see how Matt was around children and I’d think… “gosh he would be an amazing father”.
Random toddlers would walk past me in public and wave at me & my heart would explode.

“What is HAPP-EN-ING?!” I would think.
I started to open up to the idea.

Then, we got Hozzi, of course, our little french bulldog and she showed me a new level of love, joy and happiness. I just love her SO much. The pure joy and how my heart explodes with this little furry piglet is just next level insane. A love like no other and so it started to make sense to me… We’re so ready for an additional family member. I LOVE this type of feeling.

So, we surrendered to the outlandish (and let’s be honest, totally ridiculous) business and financial goals we had set for ourselves before “we would start trying” & thought now is the time. I couldn’t keep putting off starting a family just because I was waiting for a certain figure to hit our bank accounts. We acknowledged we had already created so much success & abundance, we had set our lives up literally for life already, and no amount of money was truly going to ever be “enough” because we are both over achieving type A psychos who keep pushing the bar up on ourselves lol.

So… our conscious conception journey began…

WHAT IS CONSCIOUS CONCEPTION?

If I really think about it, my conscious conception journey started 8 years ago when I came off contraception.

I was 25 and had been on a holistic health journey for some time already but really started to learn about the damages of contraception on the female body.

I couldn’t believe no one had educated me on this.

I had been on contraception from the age of 18. At first it was for my acne but as I became sexually active I stayed on it because the fear of falling pregnant by accident was SO brainwashed into me that it was as easy and going to a GP, asking for a script & voila.

Why didn’t anyone tell me about the potential risks?

Why didn’t anyone tell me how it would absolutely wreck havoc on my hormones? My gut health? My sleep? My fertility in the future.

Fast forward to 7 years of being on contraception, no menstral cycle and no idea what I was putting my body through, I had an incident at work where I lost vision in my left eye.

It was the scariest thing I have ever experienced.

I was rushed to a specialist & it was determined that I had suffered from a clot and therefore lost temporary vision for 48 hours because of the pill. I was advised to immediately stop taking the pill from my doctor & was assured “this was a side effect” that many women experience.

Um, excuse me?

I get a clot in my frekin eye, that could potentially move to my brain or heart or lungs, and could give me a stroke OR kill me and you only tell me now that this is a potential side effect?

Eff you.

I stopped taking contraception immediately at the age of 25 and started to research all about it. I soon realised this was 1 of many many many many side effects women could experience & so many of us had no idea. I’ve never been on it since.

Two great book recommendations are “Rushing Women Syndrome by Dr. Libby Weaver” & “In The Flo by Alissa Vitti”… two of my favourite humans who educate women on this exact topic in a simple manner.

I also quickly realised if I ever wanted to have children, I needed to heal my body & get it back into balance from the years of damage contraception had done to my reproductive system.

I was by no means thinking about starting a family at 25 but I knew one day, I would want to be a mum.

So, it really began there.

Fast forward to 2020 when we decided the next year would be the year we would be open to starting a family, we began to do some intentional things to prepare our bodies.

• I stopped drinking alcohol in October 2020 but started to really reduce my social drinkypooh’s at the end of 2019. We both kicked this off with the 75 hard challenge & we did it 3 times together. WE FELT AMAZING. I have maybe had a wine or margi on a total of 5 occasions since then in between our challenges & I truely love this new life being alcohol free.

• The 75 hard challenge also helped us get our bodies into peak health condition, we are the fittest, strongest and healthiest we had ever been in our lives. Eating clean & moving our bodies so regularly has done wonders for us in so many ways.

• We understood our cells are made up of how we think, move, eat & breathe. Matt and I are religious when it comes to what we feed our minds, what we listen to, what we subscribe to, our spiritual and personal development we invest in & also our meditation practice. We are both huge fans of Dr. Joe Dispenza and did one of his courses together (mind blowing) & we both meditate each and every morning before we start our day.

• Knowing our baby was going to be made up of two very special sex cells, and that we are what we eat, we consciously cooked at home more and had less take out. We eat mostly vegetarian / pescatarian and avoid carcinogenic foods such as:

  • Canola oil / vegetable oils

  • Dairy

  • Soft drinks

  • Sugary drinks

  • Gum

  • Alcohol

  • Processed meat

  • Sprayed fruits and vegetables

  • Canned foods

  • Preservatives and additives

  • Microwaved food

  • Tap water

  • Fluoride in toothpaste (or from any product)

  • “Sugar free” foods / drinks (filled with aspartame)

• I did an intense detox the month before I fell pregnant. Like, really intense. I had signs of candida overgrowth (on and off for 4 years!!!) and some gut health issues & I knew that if I wanted to house a healthy baby in a healthy environment I needed to get it under control and so I did a 10 day detox given to me by my Ayurvedic Naturopath that was honestly the most horrible experience ever. Without going into too much detail, all I will say my body really detoxed all the shit out of my system (literally) for 10 days straight. But it worked. My skin broke out like crazy, and has only just healed now 5 months later, its was the worst its ever been (you may have seen me talk about this on my IG) BUT I was internally healed & my organs are thriving again. My liver took out all the trash and this body became ready to grow a baby!

  • SIDE NOTE: I highly reccomend doing a full body detox cleanse before falling pregnant, even if you do not have any signs or symptoms of ailments , inflammation, inbalances etc within the body - its still an incredible thing to do to prepare your body. Get in touch with your holistic health care practitioner to reccomend the right type for you.

• I added a nightly routine called abhyanga. Oh my god. Life changing. Its a self massage practice to do before bed, before you shower with organic cold pressed sesame oil with so many benefits including immune boosting, calming, cancer fighting, bacteria and virus fighting, adrenal healing … just to name a few. I plan on doing a whole blog on this but for now head over to my “I AM HEALTHY INSTAGRAM HIGHLIGHT” where you’ll see me talk in depth about it here.

• Lastly, I did a beautiful breath-work course to learn Sudarshan Kriya, a practice you can only strictly learn about when you are not pregnant. You are allowed to do the breath work practice while pregnant, but you cannot do the course during pregnancy. I did a IGTV about it and all the benefits / research on it here and you can purchase it here. This breath work practice has been a God send for my central nervous system, my physical state, immune system, overwhelm, mindset and also now my pregnancy. I can literally feel my baby feeling safe and calm when I do the practice & I know for sure my little babe’s nervous system is going to be so calm and healthy from doing this practice while he / she is growing in my womb. They say a baby who chooses a mumma who meditates and does breath work is a smart & calm baby, so, I was 100% committed to this before falling pregnant & of course now while Im literally 3D printing their brain and nervous system inside of me.

MY “RULES”…
I created some conscious boundaries about how we were going to conceive.

Firstly, I had some people in my circle make me feel “not fun” whilst I prepared my body for that year leading to us conceiving. And honestly, it felt pretty shit, but I vowed to put my values first before anyone else. It’s important to understand others won’t understand why you take your health to the next level, and it’s not like you really want to openly say “we want to have a baby so leave us alone”. Its kind of no ones business too :)

We were called boring, extreme, and lame so many times.

I’ll never forget one of my girlfriends who had her hens party and was so angry at me for not drinking at it. She brought it up a few extra times after her party too and would say things like “I still can’t believe you didn’t drink at my hens, I only get married once”. She even called me a “shit c*nt friend” (yep, I was shocked & really sad about it for a while) one night about a year later because I had a few drinks at a different event and she was pissed I didn’t drink for her at her party. I was so hurt my friend would hold on to a grudge like that and call me such a horrible name but at the time I didn’t feel like I could tell her I was trying to heal my gut from candida (because I was embarrassed) & that I was really wanting to prep & heal my body to conceive soon and to leave me alone.

Looking back I wish I just did. Maybe she would have understood. Maybe she wouldn’t have made me feel so shit. Maybe she would have not acted as she did.

I know she didn’t say it to hurt me intentionally and I still love her & obviously got over it - but the truth is others won’t understand - and if it’s important to you, just stand your ground. My small piece of advice is if you’re open to sharing what you are currently going through, it may be a good idea to tell those you trust that you hope to fall pregnant in the near future and you’re just doing everything you can in your will power to prepare your amazing vessel to house this little miracle.

Secondly, I heard some horror sex stories of people forcing their partners to have sex with them right on the button when they began to ovulate.

Nothing sounds worse to me than forced sex haha.

To me, that should be such a beautiful, intimate and sacred time!

Some of our mates had jokingly shared over the years how they felt “used” or like “sperm machines” and it started to become not fun for them.

Every time I would hear these stories I vowed we would never welcome our baby into the world like that. Eveerrrrrr.

I never wanted to make Matt feel like that & I for sure never wanted to make love-making mechanical. Ew.

Being off contraception for so long now I knew exactly when I was ovulating without using apps or trackers & Matt is so in tune with my body that he knows too - he reads the signs so to speak.

So we never set alarms or reminders. We just let the magic happen naturally!

Lastly, my promise was to avoid using the term “start trying”, instead we changed our verbiage to “open to receiving”.

So we surrendered to the process and promised to just “go with the flow”. What will be, will be.

However long it would take, it would take. This baby was in control, not us, and we knew when he/she was ready, they would come into our lives.

We were very open in our discussion that we were ready to welcome and open to receiving too, we put it out there & we knew our little babe would hear our memo.

There was no force, no controlling the situation, no desperation, no neediness. Just flow. And it has been beautiful.

SO… WE’RE PREGNANT!

I plan to write another blog on our pregnancy once this baby has arrived to share more about what I have done to nourish baby and myself.

I specifically want to share the foods & supplements I am taking (obviously Juice Plus but I have extras), in particular in the first 12 weeks while I was growing baby's brain, nervous system, heart, bones etc.

I have been insanely meticulous & intentional with making sure I’m nourishing myself with the correct foods, so keep your eyes peeled for that one, it’s coming! I am also really lucky to not have been sick & I absolutely know this isn’t the case for everyone. Some of us simply cannot even eat or drink anything in the first trimester. To the women who experience morning sickness - I wish I could take it away for you babe. I’m just so proud of you however you cope with it.

Don’t get me wrong though, there were definitely moments where all I could eat was hot chips & there was 100% absolutely a sneaky dirty drive-through dinner once or twice hehe… Don’t be ashamed if that was you too mamma.

If you were struck with morning sickness and you feel like you didn’t eat enough great food… I’ll share a specific blog on all this soon but please know your baby is PERFECT no matter your experience with morning sickness. Our bodies are so incredibly intelligent and know how to use our nutrient storage to grow your placenta to nourish baby.

What I will share is why we waited so long to announce our pregnancy. We shared our news at 17 weeks with the world and truly, I was hoping to get to the 20-week mark before sharing but I couldn’t hide this bump any longer hehe.

Here are a few reasons why:

• Despite what it may look like running a business on social media & posting lots, we are actually incredibly private people! We don’t share much when it comes to our personal lives and so when we fell pregnant we really wanted to keep our little secret sacred. It was so lovely to be in our little bubble, no outside influence or unsolicited advice. Just us in total awe of our little miracle creation. So we wanted to keep that feeling for as long as possible.
  
  
  
  

• I personally wanted to set myself and my head space up to be unshakable before opening myself up to stories of other mamma’s and their experiences. I wanted to surround myself with positive birth stories and empowered women who birthed in a way that inspires me. I’m so lucky to have a few friends who have had beautiful, empowering & sacred births that I would love to experience myself so I told those friends early, so they could teach me about the beauty of their bodies and the entrance of their incredible babies. As much as any mamma’s birth story can’t be taken away from them, I intentionally have decided to steer clear of any stories that won’t serve me and so building up the courage to politely decline a “horror story” has taken me time to get to.
  
  
  
  

• I was an anaesthetic nurse for 5 years & I would say I have witnessed approximately 500 births “within the system”. So I know, have seen, have heard and have personally witnessed every type of birth you could possibly imagine. Both beautiful, happy and overwhelmingly wonderful and then horrific, sad situations you would never wish upon anyone. So, to say there has always been a part of me that has been fearful of childbirth would be a safe comment to make. Im not naive, I know the stats and risks & unfortunately there was a little bit of trauma / anxiety there and so in those first 17 weeks, as I kept my pregnancy private, I did a lot of mindset work to overcome what I logically know and empower myself with what I trust my body will achieve. I can happily say I am in a beautiful place and mindset now, but I know I had to do that internal work first before sharing my news.
  
  
  
  

• I am taking a very holistic approach to my pregnancy & have decided to birth outside of the system. I have not seen a GP once. I do not have an obstetrician. We have not had scans. I am not planning on giving birth anywhere near a hospital. With this, I have experienced one too many looks of horror, like I am mad (lol) when people have asked all the personal questions one asks when you share your news. So again, we both wanted to get to a point of absolute confidence and unshakable mindset with our decisions before sharing our news because you will have people who will try to put their fears, stories & experiences on you. Obviously, we’re now both at a place where we are 100% confident with our approach to our natural pregnancy and childbirth and nothing will or could change our mind or shake our belief in our ability, but it definitely takes some inner work to get to that place of “full body trust” that your amazing, intelligent body has what it takes to grow and birth your little human in a way that doesn’t require medical intervention.

• My holistic health care & pregnancy/childbirth team consists of 4 incredible people. My Chiropractor, my naturopath who also is an Ayurvedic practitioner and iridologist / actual angel on earth, my acupuncturist & my private midwife. So I spent the first trimester liaising with these 4 incredible, knowledgeable, and empowering people about my natural approach to pregnancy before sharing my news because I needed that for me to be in a healthy & safe place mentally. For me to feel safe & what’s right for me, I don’t plan on birthing in the system. I can’t, I’ve seen too much being a nurse and I absolutely do not want any medical intervention when it comes to birthing baby. In saying that whatever will be will be, and the plan is to not have a plan should I become high risk or I need to be transferred to a hospital to deliver this baby safely. I’m open to whatever has to happen but for now, my plan is to follow my intuition that this is how to prepare.
  
  

I promise to write another blog going more in depth about our holistic approach in the near future.

My last little message I want to leave with you is that YOU, mamma, have this incredible innate intelligence within you.

Trust that your body can and will do this perfectly. It is so smart.

You know how to create life within you, without needing to know how to create life within you.

Why would your body then not know how to birth, without you really “knowing” how to birth.

Me & my beautiful mumma who birthed me into the world! Love her so very much. #17weeks

I have had so much fear about childbirth for so many years, and if i’m honest it is a big reason why I waited so long to have a baby.

I knew I was going to have to do a lot of inner work to overcome what I saw as a nurse and the societal fear that is placed upon women when it comes to birthing.

My viewpoint is that pregnancy and childbirth is not a medical event.

It is beautiful, natural & inbuilt within our DNA.

We have done this for thousands of years and we innately know how to do this.

If you can begin to strengthen your mind now, whether you’re planning, expecting or on to your next child… I think its the most powerful thing you could do for your baby, to bring it into the world without fear and full trust in your body & baby that you both can and will do this like absolute pro’s, however that may look like for you.

In saying that, if birthing your babe in the system, in a hospital, or with drugs, or via C-section makes you feel safe, then again mumma, like I mentioned at the beginning of this blog, that is just so perfect for you and your baby. Whatever makes you feel at ease, safe and secure is what you should follow and dont ever let anyone make you feel inadequate for doing you.

If I can leave you with two books that have helped me over the last year to get me to the place I am mindset wise & with my conscious conception journey, it would be these two:

1/ Well Adjusted Babies by Dr Jennifer Barham-Floreani

2/ Raising Healthy Families in Unhealthy Times by my incredible friend Kate Golle.

Keep your eyes peeled, part 2 to this blog coming soon! x