Pregnancy is a Portal

One thing I’ve noticed supporting women through pregnancy is that every pregnancy seems to bring its own lesson.

Almost like each baby arrives through a doorway that asks something different of us.

Sometimes pregnancy teaches us patience.

Sometimes it teaches us how to slow down.

Sometimes it teaches us how to trust our bodies when the world around us has a lot of opinions.

In many ways, pregnancy feels like a portal.

A crossing between who you were before and who you’re becoming.

And I think that’s part of why the very end of pregnancy can feel so intense.

Something happens around 37, 38, or 39 weeks that many women don’t expect.

Suddenly emotions feel bigger. Life can feel overwhelming. Some women feel restless, anxious, or like everything in their life is somehow crashing in all at once.

And what many women do in that moment is open their phone and start searching.

Scrolling Reddit. Reading old forum posts. Looking for one simple thing:

Am I the only one who feels like this?

As a doula, I can tell you with complete certainty — you are not.

I have spent hours and hours on the phone with women in their final weeks of pregnancy. Thirty-seven weeks. Thirty-eight weeks. Thirty-nine weeks.

And sometimes they’re crying.

Not because anything is medically wrong.

Not because anything terrible is happening.

But because the moment just feels big.

Sometimes they just need someone to listen. Someone to tell them they’re not the only person who has ever felt like this. That they’re not losing it. That they’re not failing somehow.

Because the truth is, the end of pregnancy is a huge threshold.

Your body is preparing to give birth.

Your hormones are shifting.

Your entire life is about to change.

Even when the baby is deeply wanted. Even when you’re excited. Even when everything in your life is stable and good — it can still feel like standing at the edge of something enormous.

Part of you is ready.

Part of you is scared.

Part of you knows that once this baby arrives, life will never quite look the same again.

And all of that can exist at the same time.

In many cultures, pregnancy and birth are seen as rites of passage. A crossing from one version of life into another. And like many big transitions, the moment right before it can feel messy and emotional.

Sometimes even a little like everything is falling apart.

But I don’t think that feeling means something is wrong.

I actually think it’s part of the transformation.

Babies grow in our wombs, but something else grows too.

We grow.

We soften in places we used to be rigid. We learn to trust parts of ourselves we didn’t know were there. We begin stepping into a version of ourselves we haven’t met yet.

That’s why pregnancy can feel like a portal.

Each baby brings us through a doorway into a new chapter of our lives.

And sometimes the lesson that pregnancy is bringing us shows up most clearly right at the end.

Because here’s something else I think about often.

For most of human history, women didn’t sit alone with these feelings.

There were sisters. Mothers. Grandmothers. Midwives. Women sitting together in kitchens and living rooms talking about the strange emotional waves that come before birth.

Today, many women experience this part alone.

So instead of a circle of women, they end up with a phone in their hand at midnight searching the internet for reassurance that they’re not the only ones feeling this way.

And what they’re really looking for isn’t information.

They’re looking for connection.

They’re looking for someone to say, “Yes. I remember that feeling too.”

So if you find yourself in those final weeks of pregnancy feeling emotional in ways you didn’t expect, I want you to know something:

You are not the only one.

You’re not breaking.

You’re standing right at the edge of one of the biggest transformations of your life.

And like so many women before you, you will walk through it.

With love,

Lyndsey at LlaMamma Mothercare 🌿