So out of the 11 times that my body has been pregnant, one of them was planned and the rest of them were somewhat surprising. Whew. That’s hard to say out loud, you guys. So I guess I just, I haven’t been a life coach and I haven’t had mindset tools and gotten pregnant. My baby is now two and a half years old. He’s not a baby at all. He’s like a giant McMan. And so I haven’t gone through this process, but I’ve coached many people on this process. And many women have come to me privately and asked me about this because I have always been very forthcoming about not being very happy about getting surprise pregnant. And there aren’t a lot of women who are willing to say that. So that’s kind of the first thing that I want to share with you. Maybe step one is to feel whatever you feel. There is no right way to respond to a surprise pregnancy, whatever comes up for you, just allow it to come up without judgment. If you feel angry, allow yourself to feel angry.

If you feel sad, allow yourself to feel sad. You may feel grief. You may have to grieve for some plans that you had for the year. That probably won’t happen because of your surprise pregnancy. You may feel joy. You may feel trepidation. Maybe you’ve had a miscarriage in the past and you want to feel excited, but scared to feel excited. Maybe you feel embarrassed. I certainly felt embarrassed that it looked like from the outside that I couldn’t stop getting pregnant. And then I would also just feel terrible about having to share that news with someone close to me who was struggling with infertility. It just seems so unfair. But now what I know as a life coach is that when we resist whatever we’re feeling, it just gets louder and stronger. And it comes out in weird, hanky, generally not helpful ways. And so without judgment, allow yourself to feel whatever you are feeling. If it’s helpful for you to journal it out, then just journal it out. You can burn the pages, but do not judge your reaction. Do not hold yourself back from feeling whatever is coming up and don’t confuse any negative emotions. If you feel disappointed, upset, frustrated, angry, sad, anything like that with how you’re gonna love the baby. When the baby comes out, totally separate things.

The last time I got pregnant, I was GRS. I was grumpy pants the whole time, but this brings me to point number two, which is especially if you’ve had a baby before, just remembering how much you goo go. Gaga. Love that baby. When that baby comes out and this is me Sterling, who never really wanted any kids. And I’m not that into kids. And I am still obsessed with my squish baby. When that baby comes out and I’m just like, you’re the cutest? You’re the best. I just wanna kiss your face. I just wanna smell you. I wanna cuddle with you. You have the cutest jammies. You make those sweet little baby noises.

And I just know that that’s how I’m gonna react when the baby comes out. So I don’t make any association with how I feel when I’m pregnant or the thoughts that I have with how I’m gonna love the baby. Those are just separate things. And the next thing is, I would say, don’t rush whatever process you need to go through. So you might need to process your plans. Like I said, you may need to do a hard pivot on the year that you thought you were gonna have. Just take lots of time to think about that and to make different plans and to communicate plans. Like just give yourself time and space.

I feel like this is one of those. As you get older things, you just slow things down. You just give yourself time to really ask yourself, you know, what do I want this year to look like? Okay, now we’re having a baby. And when my husband and I find out we’re having a baby, we kind of go, all right, this is radically actually gonna change the next two years of our life. Cuz there’s like the year you’re pregnant and then the postpartum year. But I think one of the ways that we really get to enjoy our lives is when we pause and we plan them intentionally and we think them through, okay, the baby’s coming in November. We had one baby that was, we had two babies that came in September and my husband usually goes away for a significant amount of time in October. So we’re like, what is that gonna look like? Are you gonna leave for two or three weeks at a time while I’m four weeks postpartum? Can we bring someone to help me?

Okay, this is a bonus one that I didn’t write down in my notes, but also allow your husband to have whatever reaction he’s gonna have. And don’t make that mean that he’s not gonna love the baby. My husband, the last few times, was just pretty devastated when we found out we were pregnant because he knew how much pain I was gonna go through. And he just felt so terrible. I think as a man that he couldn’t protect me from that. And then particularly one of the pregnancies, I don’t remember. He really blamed himself, which I think is so funny because it takes two of us to make a baby .

And so just allowing your, your husband, cuz we just don’t often view them as very emotional creatures and he may not even look emotional on the outside, but just allowing him to have whatever experience he’s gonna have. Here’s the next point I wanna make: stop expecting a secular world, an un-Christian world to be happy about your baby. Just all the time in Catholic mom groups on Facebook that I’m in. Someone’s like, oh my goodness. I shared that I am pregnant again. And that I got all these negative responses and I’m like, of course you did a hundred percent. That’s the world that we live in.

And I, I wish it wasn’t. I wish everyone valued life and thought children were a blessing, but they don’t. So why is that surprising? Because when we add again, when we resist reality, when we think, oh, all those people should be happy for me and they’re not, you just feel terrible in your own body and they’ve already moved on with their day. Let’s take that a step further. Let’s say those people are your parents and you’re deeply upset that your parents aren’t happy for you that you’re having another baby. That sucks. Like if I were your friend, I’d say, I’m really sorry that your mom isn’t happy for you, but I’m also not surprised. Look at the world that we live in.

And so I would say you don’t have to tell your mom, right? When you find out, go tell people that are gonna be happy for you. Send me an email. She’d be like Sterling. I’m surprised I’m pregnant. And I will say, congratulations. That’s amazing. Co-Creating a soul with the Lord is utterly miraculous every single time. And I am filled. Ugh. I wish there was a word to really describe how filled with love. I am for my six kids. It is so deeply satisfying. I love them so much. And it took me I think a while to stop being in survival mode, just back to back pregnancies. But I just look at them now and I’m just so smitten with them. I just adore them.

Life is so lovely with them. It’s loud and potty trained a little too right now. It’s a little gross, but it’s pretty wonderful too. So find people that are gonna be happy for you. Find people that celebrate life. Don’t spend a lot of time with the people who aren’t gonna do that. Don’t worry about them. My last pregnancy, because you guys, I had a baby three months later, I got pregnant. Then I had that baby. And then three months later I got pregnant. Okay. That was the sequence of months . And so I sent out an email that said some, maybe upsetting news. That was my subject line. Some maybe upsetting news. And that is how I told the majority of my friends and that I was pregnant again. And I was not expecting anyone to be happy because they all knew too that I was gonna be in bed on bedrest. And actually a lot of them were pretty supportive, but like, it’s just okay, it’s okay to make an email baby announcement. So my point with this whole episode really comes down to feeling your feelings without judgment. Just like let it all come out. Feelings and thoughts. Don’t make you a horrible person.

Then remember how much you love having a baby. N not necessarily postpartum. That’s not my favorite, but I know how I feel when the baby comes out and I’m just obsessed with them. Even when I’m tired, my boobs hurt. And then remember what a miraculous thing it is that God chose you to steward a soul in this world. It should never stop feeling utterly incredible. When God chooses a woman to create a baby, it is just such a huge privilege, such an amazing gift.

And then from those feelings of just like, ah, and wonderment and love, then I want you to make a plan. I was talking to another mom recently. I was coaching her in masters about what she was eating. And she said, every time I get pregnant, I gear up and I’m trying to make a really great food plan. And then I don’t eat that food. And I said, yeah, that’s what I did six times. And if I got pregnant again, I would just make a plan that I could actually do. Like, Hey Sterling, remember you mostly just wanna eat mashed potatoes. So let’s just make sure we have that stuff on hand all the time. Cuz you’re probably not gonna wanna eat chicken and broccoli, but I would, I would just pick like healthy snack options instead of assuming that I was gonna eat a whole 30, which is what I always wanted to do. I was like, this time I’m gonna eat really healthy and I’m gonna have a strong body, but then I would get stressed and overwhelmed and not have anything. And then I would eat chips. So just again, planning for yourself, just loving yourself. So hard to make a, a plan that supports you

Buy some maternity pants. I was just talking to one of my friends who said, I just bought myself maternity pants. She said she never really did before. She just kind of made it work or wore stretchy things. And she was saying how amazing they were and when that huge gift they were. So really just love yourself and take care of yourself through this pregnancy. Okay. One extra point. I’m gonna attack in the end, which is to ask for help. Oh my goodness. I think one of the reasons God gave me those three bedrest pregnancies is because I struggled with pridefulness, a surprise to no one. And I think he just was like, Hey, I’m gonna humble you so hard that you have to ask for people to watch your kids and clean your toilet in front of you and bring you food and watch you sit in bed and not be able to get up.

And it also just showed me how good humans are, how much they really do wanna help and what a gift it is to let people help you. So if you just found out you were surprised pregnant, I love you. You can do this. You will look back and see why you needed to be pregnant at this time and why your family needed that child. You will love them to pieces. You will get through this. Your life is not over. You will stop having babies. At some point, people want to help you. Your husband loves you. Your husband’s gonna love this baby.

You and your husband Boka to have whatever emotional experience you’re having right now. And that’s okay, God loves you. And he is with you. And all the angels in saints in heaven are smiling down at the awe of humanity and that we get to make babies. It’s pretty cool to think about that kind of cheering crowd, that kind of support. So I wanna invite you to form a really deep relationship with the holy spirit. I think that is such a beautiful goal during pregnancy is just, you know what? I’m gonna use this time to grow even closer to the holy spirit so I can hear God’s voice and I can feel comforted. I think of Mary who was, you know, the spouse of the holy spirit and how much the holy spirit must have just talked to her and guided her and comforted her through that really scary surprise pregnancy. And the holy spirit is on standby. Waiting to do that for you. All you have to do is ask, ask for the gift of wisdom and knowledge and counsel and fortitude and understanding and piety and fear of the Lord. Pray for those gifts and listen, really open your ears in your heart to listen to what God has to tell you. And from someone who has been surprised pregnant 10 times, I will promise you it gets better. Life is beautiful. It is totally worth it. God is with you and you were Made for Greatness.