pregnancy learnings (i)
how I tried to prepare for it...
I’m in the third trimester of my first pregnancy, and I’ve experienced a lot + in many ways between when we started trying till now.
One of the reasons I quit my job at the end of 20221 was because I wanted to start preparing for the next stage of my life, and on my birthday in September 2023, I found out I was pregnant – a baby boy due at the end of next month (May 2024). And though I said I was starting to prepare for the journey, I will say there were a lot of surprises along the way and overall I wasn’t as prepared as I thought I was.
I want to share what I’ve learned about the entire experience so far, and if you’re planning on having kids yourself or if you’re interested in general, maybe this might be insightful to understand the process. Although there were a lot of lows, I do feel really grateful to have the chance to experience this journey, and a lot of good has come out of it as well.
Below I’ll share a timeline of what I did and what I’ve learned since, beginning from when
and I started trying till where we are now. It’s a long one so I split it up into 2 separate posts:Part (i) is about what I did trying to prepare getting pregnant leading up to when I found out.
Part (ii) is about my experience during the first, second, and now third trimester of the pregnancy.
(If you would like to read the Chinese version, I will be posting it on my Facebook soon).
Also as a reminder, everyone and their body is different, and my perspective is just one of many that might give you a view on what it’s like being pregnant for the first time. Most of this is not advice! Many people will try to give you their recommendations but in the end, you know yourself best, so make your own observations and do your own research too 😉
Winter (Nov’ 2022 - Jan’ 2023)
🏃♀️ After quitting my job, I started putting my efforts into getting physically healthier so I started running regularly.
I was very nervous about the pregnancy journey and the physical toll it would take on my body because I haven’t been staying fit for a long time. I was worried that if I didn’t try to get healthy first, I would have a difficult time during the 9 months + labor so I was really motivated to try. I used to run all the time growing up but stopped after graduating college due to (my own fault of) letting work consume my life.
The Garmin watch I got gave me reasonable goals and rests in-between runs that helped me run more confidently within 1-2 months. I recommend getting one if you’re serious about starting to exercise regularly, and it also helped us with other things like improving sleep quality and monitoring my period cycles.
🩸 I got my IUD taken out in January 2023 and we wanted to first try “naturally” then think about other options later.
I had heard that some people got pregnant very quickly while others took much longer, sometimes opting for IVF if it took too long. IVF was definitely a consideration but we decided to save it as a later option.
Many mothers gave me the advice not to over-plan or overthink because giving myself that pressure won’t make things easier, so we decided at first there was no need to get too “scientific” about doing it (lol).
I started tracking my period cycles with my Garmin watch after I took out my IUD. Most women don’t have perfectly regular periods every 28 days, and there’s a 1-3 day window in between cycles for the best time to conceive, which can be hard to predict without some guidance. There’s actually a lot more data you can collect that supposedly makes it easier to understand when the best time to get pregnant is, for example I have a cousin who used her Oura Ring to track her body temperature, but I only really tracked my period cycles.
🥃 We completely stopped drinking alcohol to avoid people guessing when I actually got pregnant + get used to a sober lifestyle.
Usually when a woman finds out they’re pregnant, they don’t share about it publicly until after the first 3 months since miscarriages and other complications are more common than what’s publicized. I didn’t want to suddenly stop drinking when I became pregnant because people would be able to guess based on my lifestyle, so I decided to stop earlier just in case when it happened, it wouldn’t be as obvious.
I was also worried that if I became pregnant, I wouldn’t be able to adjust to quitting drinking cold-turkey because I had been drinking regularly (and oftentimes heavily) since high school. I wanted to adjust my lifestyle first, and Jack joining me in quitting helped a lot. It was difficult not to drink while out socializing so I also had to start going out less to avoid the temptation.
I didn’t want to risk getting pregnant and not knowing, accidentally binge drinking before finding out. I wasn’t planning on using pregnancy tests often based on the motherly advice above of not giving myself too much pressure, so I was relying on my period coming each month to check whether I was pregnant or not. Looking back, I probably should have just drank less rather than being so strict, ironically going against that same motherly advice.
🐝 I kept myself busy by taking on consulting and community-building projects because I wasn’t used to having so much free time and I didn’t want to give myself pressure to try to get pregnant.
I’ve tried to keep busy and working since high school so it was hard to break out of the habit after 10+ years. During this period, I still networked and met up with a lot of people, which led me to taking a part-time consulting role with a startup. I also wanted to get more involved in the crypto space because I was excited by its potential and I could finally take some time to work on the projects I was personally interested in.
I’m definitely thankful I got to learn so much, but I also kind of wish I tried to take a real break after I left my job. By not taking a break, maybe I was subconsciously communicating with my body that I wasn’t ready to have a baby since I prioritized wanting to try new things over resting and having a more balanced life.2
Spring (Feb’ 2023 - Apr’ 2023)
💊 After talking to my psychiatrist, I slowly started reducing the intake amount of my daily schizophrenia meds because once I got pregnant, I would have to stop taking it completely.
There’s been very little research done on mental health in pregnancy so results were inconclusive about women taking psychiatric meds while pregnant. My psychiatrist advised that it was best to stop taking it completely once I found out I was pregnant, especially in the first trimester when the fetus is in a more delicate state.3
Because I had been taking my meds every day for the last 6 years, going off them completely and suddenly may have significant negative side effects or consequences, so he advised I start off by taking 75% of my normal intake, which was eventually reduced to 50%, and then 25% in later months.4
🧠 I started biweekly therapy sessions to be more intentional about building up my mental health.
Parenting is probably some of the hardest work you can really excel at. There’s no comprehensive guidebook to refer to and many people experience lifelong difficulties from their childhood experiences, most of the time unintentionally through well-meaning parents. I didn’t want to pass on unresolved trauma or bad habits to my kids so I started therapy.
Previously, I’ve tried therapy a few times in my life, starting in college and all throughout my working career. Honestly, I found those sessions useless. Even in Taiwan before I settled on my current therapist, I had tried one and I didn’t feel like I could open up to her. It’s quite normal to cycle through a few therapists before finding one that you can connect with, and I do recommend taking the time to try it no matter where you are in your life because it can really help you navigate your thoughts and feelings in a validating way + help you overcome things that might be holding you back.5
🦉 I wanted to improve some basic skills like cooking and reading Chinese while I had free time in preparation to raising a kid in Taiwan.
Both my parents and Jack are great at cooking so I guess I never really had a strong motivation to learn to cook well (though I have tried when I was living in the US). I wanted my kids to experience the same kind of joy I did growing up by having parents who enjoyed cooking for the family, and I also didn’t want Jack to feel overwhelmed about being both the breadwinner and the bread-maker. Although I am still far away from being a confident cook, I do feel a little better about my ability nowadays.
It’s hard to predict the future but Jack and I plan on staying in Taiwan for a while and raising our kid(s) here first. One reason is so they can learn to speak Mandarin and read Chinese more naturally at a younger age. I spent my childhood in the Middle East and only moved to Taiwan when I was 14 years old, so I never really learned to read Chinese. I took daily Chinese classes last year at NTNU6 and I’m glad I have basic reading and writing skills now, but seeing Jack’s natural Mandarin-speaking and Chinese-reading skills (having spent the first 10 years of his life in Taiwan before moving to New Zealand) made me realize that learning in a local environment makes a big difference while you’re young.
Summer (May 2023 - Jul’ 2023)
🍷 Half a year in, I was still getting my period every month so we became more lax about drinking and going out.
By the summer, we realized that maybe being so strict about drinking wasn’t necessarily making progress for getting pregnant. I was hosting and attending a lot of events and gatherings so I started drinking again but not as heavily as I used to.
At the same time, Jack and I were planning our late honeymoon in France (we got married in 2021 when the pandemic was still ongoing) and I definitely wanted to drink a lot of good wine while there. Many parents also told me that a honeymoon is a great time for couples to get pregnant because you’re in a state of relaxation, happiness, and love for each other. I think there’s definitely wisdom in there but it didn’t really apply to us because my period still came as usual once we returned from France.
Fall (Aug’ 2023 - Oct’ 2023)
👩🔬 We tried to be more “scientific” about the process and a month later, I found out I was pregnant! Maybe not necessarily due to what we tried, though being more intentional probably did make a difference.
In August, after coming back from France, we started looking more seriously into how to get pregnant:
Estimating my fertile window using the period cycles tracking data from my Garmin watch.
Sperm count and quality matter so we referred to a few charts like these:
In September, for my birthday dinner, Jack had booked one of our favorite sushi restaurants. While he was at work, I was hanging out with my mom during the day and I told her it had been a while since I drank a good bottle of sake so that was my plan for the evening. She recommended I take a pregnancy test first, just in case (as she knows I like to drink), so I bought two different test brands on the way home and found out I was confirmed positive for both! I texted Jack and our immediate families straight away with the good news (though I am still awaiting the day I can drink a nice bottle of sake 🤤).
The next day, we went to the OBGYN and the doctor told us the estimated time of conception. We were convinced our methods in August worked but according to him, it wasn’t close to the date we tried. I guess we’ll never know for sure (apparently you can’t find out exactly when it happened) but I do think being more intentional helped.
That’s it for now!
In part (ii), I’ll share about what the first trimester was like for me (spoiler alert: it was bad), the second trimester which was pretty chill, and what I’m currently experiencing now in my third trimester.
On that note about resting, if you’ve taken any sort of sport or exercise seriously, you know how important it is to have breaks in between sessions or seasons in order to let your body grow healthily and not get injured easily. I wish it was more common to apply this to our brains as well, instead of our current culture of non-stop grinding, hustling, and over-stimulation.
I recommend my psychiatrist 鐘國軒 Kuo-Hsuan Chung who is very professional and sharp. His partner nurse is also really nice. I saw him monthly at Taipei Medical University Hospital 臺北醫學大學附設醫院 in Xinyi district.
The medication I was prescribed was Abilify (I went through a few at first to find one that was most suitable for me).
If you speak Mandarin, I recommend my therapist 黃峻賢 Derek Huang at 杏語心靈診所 who studied psychology in order to understand and develop a stronger relationship with his mother who has a mental illness. I’ve had other therapists who are more clinical but because Derek’s motivation to become a therapist was for personal reasons, I found his sessions to be more warm and comfortable.
Natalie, really appreciate the sincerity and sharing. I'll get back to sharing some more personal updates of my own.