41 Weeks Pregnant // Pregnancy Tips And Advice When you are Overdue // Kids OT Help // PREGNANCY

Hey beautiful mamas and mamas-to-be! What a freaking ride! Today marks the very last day of my pregnancy and I am all sorts of emotional about it because hormones are crazy and also it's just been such a crazy ride and I want to dedicate this video to sharing some very helpful suggestions that have helped me move through these last two weeks of pregnancy as gracefully as possible because once you hit the 40 week mark it gets really tough mentally and physically to move through the rest of the pregnancy. So if you're pregnant or if you're planning on becoming pregnant anytime soon definitely stick around because this is something that I feel a lot of mamas don't hear from other mamas who have gone past due. Coming up! Hello beautiful friends and welcome back to my channel. If you're new here my name is Nicole. I'm an intentional parenting coach as well as a woman's business coach. I'm a pediatric occupational therapist, mama to times two here shortly, as well as a certified lactation counselor and this channel is geared to help make motherhood easier on you. I'm sharing tips, strategies, tools, all of it so if you're into it do me a favor and hit the subscribe button below. All right beauty so today I am 41 weeks and four days pregnant. I am overdue and I'm really feeling it. These last couple of days particularly have been challenging for me physically. Mentally I'm hanging in there. Physically my body is done and so I've had a lot of readjusting and recentering to do over the past few days and some really important lessons have come to light during this time and I want to share some helpful suggestions with you and I really want to share three helpful suggestions. Okay so the first thing I want to share with you is do not be afraid to advocate for yourself and your baby all the way up until the very end. Now this may seem overly simple but here's the thing I have witnessed this time and time again. We all like to defer to the professionals but sometimes we have instincts about what's best for us our body and our baby and so while you and your ob-gyn may have had an initial plan things change right things come up in pregnancy plans shift and so having a conversation with your ob-gyn when things come up is super important and something you can absolutely do. I will give you an example. I would have put money on thinking that this baby was coming early. I never would have imagined I would be this late. I was not this late with my first child and so we had set an induction date for tonight originally and I thought it's not even a thing to think about because I will have had the baby and here I am. I'm hours away from having to go to the hospital to begin the process and yesterday I had just a feeling to call my doctor and see if there was any way we can push it back. I wanted to push it back because I'd been having quite a few contractions and some of them were coming on quite regularly and I just felt like my body was very close to beginning the labor process. After speaking with an ob-gyn at Kaiser you have to talk to a lot of ob-gyn so one of the ob-gyns we came up with a plan that made me feel better and I think made the professionals feel comfortable. I was able to voice my concerns. I was able to speak to them about what I want to avoid and they understood completely where I was coming from and it's going to be this collaborative approach which it absolutely should be. I think a lot of times women get into situations where we just completely defer to the professional but then we end up having an experience that we aren't really on board for or really don't like or doesn't leave the lasting beautiful memories that we were really hoping for and so I just want to tell you up front it is totally okay to advocate for yourself at any point in this process and don't feel bad about changing course if that feels good for you. Ultimately it is your body, it is your baby and you have a voice and you shouldn't be afraid to use it and you'd actually be surprised most doctors are quite accommodating so be sure to have an open dialogue and communication with your professionals about your needs and your desires. Okay so the second suggestion I have for you is one that I've had to come to terms with these last couple of days and that is whatever you are doing it is enough and you are enough. As I have come to the end of this pregnancy and had to come to terms with the fact that I will be induced which was not something I was wanting to do, I really had to just learn to surrender and know that everything that I've been trying to do to encourage this baby to come into this world sooner is all that I could have done. I was on a pretty regular acupuncture regimen, I was going daily for about 10 days you know moving my body, I was drinking the teas and it can become obsessive, there's like a point where you're like okay let me start pumping to get the nipple stimulation, let me do curb walking to get the uneven motions and encourage baby to come out, how many cups of tea am I drinking and like it can become unhealthy and I could see myself kind of heading down this road especially once the induction date was scheduled. It felt like this flip of a switch where I was like here's a deadline and I need something to happen by then and it totally shifted my energy, it put me in so much masculine energy and the whole beauty of this is tapping into your feminine energy and understanding that you have a life inside of you that has their own ecosystem and needs and desires and we literally cannot control when this child comes out, we can do everything we can do and that is it. So it came a point where I just said okay I'm done, I'm done, I've done the things, I trust this process, I trust my body, I trust it's all going to unfold exactly how it should and I'm actually just going to sit back and enjoy these last few days because this is probably my last pregnancy and I want to remember how do I want to remember this on the back side, I want to remember this as like I took time to breathe and hold my belly and to just take in these moments of wonder and curiosity instead of freaking out trying to naturally induce my own labor. It's all okay so letting go and trusting and knowing that your body is super intelligent and there are forces outside of us that are helping us navigate this process so trust, trust some deep surrender, some deep trust and enjoy the last few days that you do have. All right and the final suggestion I have is actually quite related to the first suggestion I made and I would really suggest that you come up with or articulate a vision for your labor delivery or birthing process. A lot of women will create an actual birthing plan that they can hand off to the nurses or their doctors so that way the team is all on the same page and everyone knows what mom's hopes, what the family's hopes are for this process and what's beautiful about actually sitting down and doing this exercise and articulating what it is that you what you want from the experience is that you can hold that in the forefront of your mind as your labor and delivery experience unfolds because as I mentioned before sometimes surprises come up and rarely ever does it go exactly as planned and so when these surprises or these hiccups come up you can hold the vision in the forefront of your mind and in that moment make a decision that's aligned with the vision right so again remembering that we cannot control everything and there are going to be aspects of the process that pop up that are out of our control but also reclaiming your power and remembering that in that moment you have a decision to do the next best thing that's in alignment with your birthing vision right whether that is getting back into a state of peace and grounding by using your essential oils or dimming the lights or turning on the music right like we have these small moments and opportunities to shift our energy so it is back in alignment with how we want this entire process to unfold so don't forget that it's such a powerful thing it seems so small but ultimately this is what's going to help paint the beautiful birthing story that you will tell later on so stepping into your power in the moments where surprises arise or hiccups occur really can help shift the tide and get you back on track to having as close to your vision of labor and delivery and birthing as possible oh my goodness you guys what a journey what a ride for those of you guys who've been watching this pregnancy series all the way through i love you thank you for hanging out with me it's been so much fun seeing your comments and hearing about where you're at and your journey to this point and i feel a connection with you guys and it's just so beautiful to be doing this together in this wild year and i can't wait to share my birthing story with you and introduce you guys to the newest member of our family so i'm sending you so much love again i hope you found this helpful if you have any questions or comments feel free to leave them below otherwise i'm sending you so much love bye