The Lived Experience of Pregnancy

For most of my career, I’ve been a planner. In government and international development, you learn to thrive on spreadsheets, work plans, and five-year strategies. Everything has a process. Everything has a timeline. Everything has a fallback plan — or at least, it used to.

Pregnancy laughed in the face of all that.

The Plot Twists No One Warned Me About

One week I was setting up my carefully curated to-do list — registry research, F45 classes, birthing book recommendations — and the next I was falling asleep at 3 p.m. on my couch, half-eaten bowl of cereal still in my hand.

Doctor visits became their own version of diplomatic negotiations:

• Me: “So, what’s the plan? What’s the schedule?”
  
• OB: “We’ll see how your body responds.”
  
• Me (internally): “That’s not a plan, that’s chaos.”
  

And then came the ultrasounds. For the life of me, I can’t actually see the baby on the screen. I always end up in that classic Ross-and-Rachel moment from Friends — staring blankly, nodding, smiling, pretending this is the sweetest, most magical moment of my life while internally thinking, “Is that a leg? Or just a shadow?” Somehow, I leave the office feeling like I’ve had a deeply meaningful experience, even though I literally have no clue what I just saw.

And then there were the so-called cravings. Everyone warned me about midnight pickle runs and urgent chocolate demands. Instead, my first trimester was marked by being flat-out ill — not craving anything, just trying to keep food down. Now, in the second trimester, I find myself forcing down bland food just to get enough calories. It’s less “funny pregnancy cravings” and more “cheerleading myself through a plate of plain rice.”

From F45 to… Forkfuls of Toast

Before pregnancy, I was the kind of person who could power through an F45 workout at 6 a.m., fueled by black coffee and sheer willpower. Now, my “training” looks a little different:

• Then: Burpees, kettlebell swings, and sprints.
  
• Now: Waddling to the kitchen without losing my balance.
  
• Then: High-protein recovery shakes.
  
• Now: Saltines, ginger tea, and celebrating if I finish a banana.
  
• Then: Competing against the clock.
  
• Now: Competing against my gag reflex.
  

Pregnancy has turned me into an athlete in a whole new league — one where endurance isn’t measured in reps, but in how many times I can coax myself into one more bite of something bland.

Letting Go of the Illusion of Control

Pregnancy has been humbling in a way my career never was. In Washington, if you worked hard enough, pushed hard enough, and had the right clearance badge, you could usually bend reality to your will. Pregnancy doesn’t work that way.

You can’t policy-memo your way out of morning sickness.
You can’t reschedule exhaustion for a quieter week.
You can’t predict which test result will come back reassuring and which one will send your heart racing.

Instead, you learn to surrender — not in defeat, but in trust.

What Pregnancy Is Teaching Me

• To listen to my body. I used to live in my head, managing crises and strategies. Now, my body leads — sometimes with tenderness, sometimes with stubbornness.
  
• To find humor in the absurd. Like when I cried over dropping a rice cake topped with avocado slices, or when I tried to convince myself plain toast was a gourmet meal.
  
• To hold plans lightly. I still make them — it’s in my DNA — but I’m learning not to mistake plans for guarantees.
  

Pregnancy is teaching me to live in the tension between preparation and surrender. To trust myself, even when the road doesn’t look like the map I would’ve drawn.

Closing Reflection

If international development taught me the art of structure, pregnancy is teaching me the art of letting go. And maybe that’s exactly what I need for this next chapter — not to hold on tighter, but to release, breathe, and trust that life unfolds in ways no work plan ever could.

Because sometimes, the most important lessons come not from five-year strategies, but from nine months of mystery.