somewhat non traditional random things I did to keep my peace & privacy as a young(er) solo mum
- Hard launch pregnancy on social media at 9 months
- Didn’t tell anyone outside my immediate family until 20 weeks (1/2 way thu)
- No baby shower / registry / gender reveal party / formal maternity photoshoot (when I am not in a great place mentally trying to force or fake certain emotions in front of groups of ppl honestly makes it 10x worse, so keeping privacy until I had the authentic joy, from meeting my baby was so helpful for me)
- Made of list of everything I wanted to try and get done in terms of my personal goals before the baby came (I knew motherhood esp. early motherhood was going to be a huge time commitment so I wanted to make sure I made use of the time I still had all to myself to productive on my long term goals for my family)
- Traveled & spent time in nature w/ friends a lot while pregnant & first 9 months of postpartum
- Created a long-term plan for financial freedom & building lifetime assets
- Starting working again two weeks postpartum but did not go the daycare route
- Journaled my entire pregnancy
- Didn’t force myself to go to every birth class (mainly bc I never liked to feel forced into group activities like that I’d rather learn by reading or listening to a podcast alone. Plus, being the only one without a partner was hard/not fun)
- No social media photos of my son for the first six months / no formal birth announcement with exact details (birth date/weight/etc.)
- No photos of his face on my public profile
- Was super open to guests seeing baby on day 1 & being social the first few weeks of having my son (I felt super weird & isolated all thru pregnancy, but once I had Lido all of that went away instantly. I was super happy w/ life & so I finally felt like celebrating in a non-forced way around the people I love)
- During the summer of 2022, when I was super pregnant and couldn’t travel while a lot of my friends were in Europe, I vowed as motivation & followed thru on taking my son on a solo international trip at 6 months (I wrote a whole entry about this on READ HERE but in short 6 month is the prime time to do a long trip like that on a budget with a baby)
- Valued my new mom friendships as much as my older non mom friendships. All peeps r equal, no matter the season :)
- Learned how to be the supporting character, not the main one in my son's life. College/Graduation/Your Early 20’s are usually about “me”. What do I want to do with my life? How do I want my life to look? Where do I want to live? What are my goals?….you get it. And that is a good thing bc that reflection time is there to lay out what sets up you for life. But when you get pregnant, that shifts, your body is quite literally growing a human that will take priority over you, and that mental preparation esp when you're a main character like me can be so new. So focusing on the concept of being the supporting character in my son really helped me prepare for what amazing sacrifices were involved in becoming a mom.
- Vowed to let motherhood wash over and change me but, at the same time, never fully abandoned the Ella McFarland I was before giving birth. This one was super tough at first bc it can feel like split identities but over time you adjust to just one new beautiful blend of the two.
- Saw an unexpected pregnancy as a gift and opportunity to grow
- Kept a mindset of abundance > scarcity // joy > fear // forgiveness > resentment // surrender > control // Gods plan > mine
