Before I Give Birth...

My Pregnancy Story (and Initiation)

Hello, Wild Ones ~ Greetings from the 39th week of pregnancy! It feels like a small eternity has passed since I last wrote to you. And indeed, a lot has happened — quietly closing my creativity coaching business, relocating internationally in the third trimester (and the second time in under a year), backing out of a community land purchase and house build in Costa Rica, and changing the trajectory of our lives right in time for our daughter to arrive.

Today, I’m writing from our quintessential suburban home in Santa Cruz, California, where my husband, Jonny, and I have been “rapid nesting” the past six weeks — a whirlwind of unpacking, furniture assembly, Marketplace thrifting, and cooking.

The complexity and upheaval of the last few months rival the fullness and enormity of my belly. Both have been uncomfortable at times, yet fueled by an immense amount of purpose and clarity.

Despite all of it, I have never been happier or more at peace. And I truly have pregnancy to thank for that — even though it fundamentally rocked me. I was vastly unprepared for how it would stretch, challenge, and change me. How it would reshape my marriage, redefine home, and teach me the crucial lesson of advocating for my wants and needs.

Now that I’m in my last few days of pregnancy, I’d like to share my story with you.

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I found out I was pregnant four days after arriving in Costa Rica. I was recovering from COVID and adjusting to a new country, new climate — and suddenly, the biggest news of my life arrived on a tiny pink line (Jonny had already called it a few days before).

My pregnancy started with joy, as I imagine most planned pregnancies do. But it quickly turned challenging and dark when the first trimester symptoms and hormones appeared.

Couch-ridden for about 3 months, I could barely stand upright and keep food down. I’d vomit upwards of 10x per day, probably only keeping about 20% of what I’d eat. When I’d step outside in the heat and humidity of Nosara’s early rainy season, the thick air would cause me to heave. On several dog walks, I’d stop and vomit in the sand or a bush. I eventually got accustomed to walking and vomiting as if it were a normal way to be in the world. While this was pretty terrible, it wasn’t the hardest part.

Compounding the physical symptoms were a confronting wave of psycho-emotional-spiritual experiences that I was not prepared for. For a period of time, I found myself overwhelmed with what I call “NO energy” — no to this pregnancy, no to my marriage, no to the trajectory of my life. Fortunately, I was familiar with this energy and could (usually) hold the perspective that it wasn’t the truth, but old energy ready to be felt through and healed.

Historically, I spent the majority of my life as a ‘No’ to Motherhood. About seven years ago, I realized this ‘No’ wasn’t mine but inherited through an ancestry of women with complex feelings around being mothers. I worked to neutralize the ‘No’ and create space for my own answer to emerge. When Jonny and I got together six years ago, that ‘No’ gradually softened into a mushy ‘Maybe’ and eventually a lukewarm ‘I think so.’ It wasn’t until a couple’s MDMA journey in September 2023 that I felt the full clarity of a ‘YES’ — a yes that would take about another year and a half to stabilize.

When we began our conception journey, I was relaxed and in full trust around it. It only took three months of “conceiving” (I never used the word “trying”) until our daughter was conceived on the Summer Solstice. When looking at that tiny pink line, I genuinely was excited and happy. So when all this ‘No’ energy re-surfaced, I was blindsided.

But a part of me also knew that the remaining ‘No’ gunk inside my psyche and body was coming up to be cleared out. Despite it being incredibly confronting, confusing, and painful, it was better to happen now than to bring my daughter into the world with that energy still present. This meant looking at all the places in my life where I wasn’t fully in consent or at peace — the regrets, grievances, heartbreaks, and missteps.

I nicknamed first trimester “the Dark Night of Pregnancy.”

The inner work began in earnest.

I began working with a midwife-turned-somatic-coach who knew how to meet me in this muck as a mother of three. I’d go on to work with her throughout my whole pregnancy, which was absolutely life-giving.

As I investigated my ‘No’ parts, I ran into a story that I’d been telling myself: that in order to be a Mother, the Maiden had to die. And my Inner Maiden wasn’t going down without a fight.

One of my dearest friends and a somatic practitioner, Rachel, was visiting the same town in Costa Rica and guided me through a Maiden-to-Mother Ceremony. Using meditation, journaling, and parts work, I made contact with my Inner Maiden and saw how scared she was that her life was being forced to end. But as I welcomed my Inner Mother in, I saw there was room for both of them. In fact, there was room for three.

I saw three thrones. One for Maiden, one for Mother, one for Crone. The Maiden’s shifted ever so slightly back — not removed, just repositioned — as Mother took her place at the center. Mother turned to Maiden and held her in unconditional love and impenetrable patience. Maiden softened. Exhaled. She didn’t need to run the show anymore. Her fire, her adventurous spirit, her playfulness — even her recklessness — could stay. Just channeled now through something, or someone, wiser.

When my Inner Maiden understood she wasn’t being killed off, but rather re-employed, my whole system settled.

Maiden to Mother Ceremony with Rachel

The darkness of the first trimester began to lift right on schedule around week 12. Gradually, the vomiting and weakness subsided. My everyday experience became one of ‘Yes’ — yes to this baby, this partnership, this life.

A yes so deep and steady that I’ve come to believe part of pregnancy’s job is to reveal everywhere inside a woman where she is still in resistance to her life, so that she doesn’t pass it on to her child and can be fully engaged with everything Motherhood will ask of her.

And when people say “parenthood is an initiation,” I’d go further. Pregnancy itself is the initiation. Especially for those of us who come from familial lines where pregnancy, birth, marriage, children, and motherhood are complicated, loaded topics.

As the second trimester arrived and my body felt steadier, a new kind of discomfort began to surface. Something about our relocation to Costa Rica wasn’t sitting right. While I was able to brush it off as “humidity is hard on pregnant bodies” during the first trimester, I felt increasingly dysregulated, and unlike myself the longer we were there.

Jonny and I were both in the inquiry, and neither of us was certain if we should stay or go. We had invested a significant amount into a parcel of land and were intending to build a custom home as part of a 9-family community. Our children would grow up barefoot on a warm beach alongside a vibrant community of other jungle kids. Despite my knowing that ‘raising kids in community’ is the most natural way to do family, I wasn’t sure if this was the version of that which suited us best.

There was a battle between my head and my soma. My head kept building a compelling case for staying — the community, the investment, the chance at living on land with other people. Yet my body was quietly, persistently signaling discomfort — with the climate, the remoteness, the distance from friends and family, and a version of expat life that felt inauthentic to me.

It wasn’t until a visit back to California in November that the clarity fully arrived. We returned to see friends and family and stock up on postpartum and baby gear. On our second day outside of Los Angeles, I went for my first proper hike of the whole pregnancy. Hiking is one of my favorite outdoor activities, and it didn’t really exist for me in the flat, coastal surf town of Nosara.

While wandering up Red Rock Canyon in Topanga, I came across a labyrinth. I stepped into that labyrinth with a prayer for clarity and a desire to feel aligned in my life. By the time I stepped out of it, I was in tears. Tears because it felt so good to be outside at 10 am under the rising sun, with a dry, cool breeze stroking my skin, desert sage filling my senses, and a deep embodied sense that “I belong here.”

In my element in Red Rock Canyon Park, Topanga, California

Despite its complexities, I belong to this country, to the American West, to California. This is where I was born, it’s where my body feels at ease, and all I wanted was to return home.

When I got back to our Airbnb, I was glowing and full of vibrancy. Jonny looked at me and said, “There you are!” I joked that I felt like a 9 out of 10 Kelly. Only to contrast that with the way I’d been feeling in Costa Rica…as a 3 out of 10 Kelly. Those six points of difference would change everything.

Over the coming week, we decided that no life plan was worth seeing through if it meant one of us was only a fraction of ourselves. In this family, we all come alive and feel aligned with our life (we even go to great lengths to ensure our dog feels this way). So we decided to stop the home build and back out of the plan.

Months were spent wrestling with a decision my body had known from the get-go. I kept blaming my dysregulation on pregnancy — the heat, the hormones, the exhaustion.

But pregnancy wasn’t the problem. It was the messenger. It had been trying to reveal something to me all along.

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Nearing third trimester, my body achy with pubic symphysis disorder, a screaming SI joint, and a decreasing capacity for good sleep, I was confronted with the next layer of this lesson. Do we leave Costa Rica before birth or after? A question that had immense logistical consequences no matter what choice was made. But logistics aside, it really came down to whether I was being honest with myself.

I kept telling myself and others that we needed to stay in Costa Rica because the birth plan was already in place. We had prepaid for six months of lodging, and it would be too expensive to back out. And despite saying this and believing it, I was constantly complaining about it. Every few days, I’d break down in tears, saying, “This isn’t the birth vision I would ever want for myself.” For context, the Costa Rica birth plan was to relocate to the capital of San Jose, live in an Airbnb for six weeks, hopefully give birth during that window with the support of a midwife I felt reasonably good about, then relocate four hours away to live at a retreat center for ~2 months.

The more I felt into all of it, the more I didn’t like it. Nothing about the plan felt stable, and it didn’t allow for any degree of nesting — we’d be essentially birthing like the digital nomads we’d been for the early chapter of our partnership.

And yet I couldn’t say it out loud.

In our couples coaching session — with an amazing woman who has held Jonny and me for five years — I found myself completely tongue-tied. We had all the context. She knew our history, our patterns, our capacity for honest conversation. And still, I sat there struggling to form the most basic sentence.

I want to go home…now.

Five words. And I could barely get them out.

Because underneath the logistics — the sunk costs, the prepaid lodging, the birth plan already set in motion — was something far more vulnerable. A belief I hadn’t fully examined: that my wants weren’t reason enough. That I needed a practical justification, a financial case, an airtight argument before I was allowed to say this isn’t right for me.

Pregnancy had been dismantling this story for months. And here it was again, asking for an immediate decision.

When I finally said the words, my nervous system let go, and uncontrollable tears streamed down my face. How terrifying and liberating it was to just say what I want — without logical justification, just for truth’s sake.

And then, almost anticlimactically, the logistics fell into place. The biggest hangup had been the cost of our lodging for the first six months of 2026. After reaching out to our hosts and explaining our change of plans, we got 85% of our money back. We also recovered 100% of the land purchase. We did “lose” some on the architecture fees, but I comfortably placed that in the “Lifestyle R&D” budget and never looked back.

We flew home in January. 32 weeks pregnant with an excessive amount of luggage (I magically had $600 in oversized luggage fees waived), and a very patient dog.

I found us a rental, secured the birth team, and hired contractor after contractor to help us with the immense amount of move-in tasks (since I could no longer lift, bend over, or do anything physically demanding).

That whirlwind of unpacking, furniture assembly, Marketplace thrifting, and cooking I mentioned at the beginning? Every curtain hung, every drawer organized with mine or baby’s clothes, every postpartum meal prepped, frozen, and tagged in our own kitchen. It became exactly the medicine my body had been aching for all along.

Turns out, all I’ve ever really wanted is a house we can unpack into and a town we can call our home. We now know our nomading chapter is done.

It is time to grow roots.

Postpartum cook prep + a sweet support visit from my bestie, Kiki

And now I am writing this from that home, cozy on the first real couch we’ve ever owned, 39 weeks pregnant, golden retriever sleeping soundly next to me, Northern California birds chirping through an open window, a cool temp that encourages cozy socks and a sweater — days, maybe weeks, from the moment everything changes.

An initiated woman, ready for Motherhood, in-tune with my inner compass like never before.

Pregnancy asked me to clear out what was inherited, trust what my body knew, and say out loud what I actually wanted. I didn’t do any of it perfectly or quickly. But I did eventually do it within the biological timeline that pregnancy gifts us — 40ish weeks to get our inner and outer worlds in order.

And because I did, our daughter will be born into a family, a home, and a life that is congruent inside and out. We are a cohesive team — perfectly content with this exact moment, exactly as it is. A full “YES” to all of it.

And that is the greatest, unexpected gift of pregnancy.

Next up, the greatest, expected gift of looking into our daughter’s eyes.