Hey, we are here with part two of Everybody is Pregnant, and I hope you loved last episode where we talked about just being so kind and compassionate with yourself and why it feels like everybody is. Pregnant after you’ve been through a loss. And I’ll just do a quick recap, which is cuz your brain is in baby mode because your brain is designed to pick up on things that are relevant to you.

And when you have just been pregnant or you have just lost a baby, uh, you are gonna notice all the pregnant people and all the babies. That is just. The way our brain is designed and it’s not a problem. And so it’s really important just to be so, so kind to yourself. If you haven’t listened to that episode, go back.

It’s 1 41. But today I’m gonna give you all the tips you need to really handle this and feel better when everyone around you is pregnant. We can’t really change it. We can’t change the circumstance of our lives where maybe your sister’s pregnant or you know your best friend’s pregnant, or the person you’re pregnant with now has their baby, or whatever it is.

We can’t always change that. But we can change how we feel by looking at what we’re doing, how we’re taking care of ourselves, and how we’re thinking, uh, which is so, so important. I gotta say really quickly first though, if you are struggling with this, I highly recommend that you get a life coach, or really, if you’re struggling with anything in life after loss or you have some big, big goals.

Or you’re pregnant after loss or thinking about it and not sure if you can handle it. Those are the three things that I can help you with the most. I have peace in my pocket. It is my Voxer coaching. It is voice message coaching that is on demand. It’s whenever we just talk back and forth and it’s a really amazing option.

It’s really, really flexible. Then I have my LIFT program, which is really to help you just. Lift yourself up, lift yourself out of grief, lift yourself to the next level. It’s so good. I love it so much. And that is for anyone Living Life after Loss. And then I also have my Pregnancy After Loss Peace program where you’re gonna learn how to connect with your baby, how to deal with the anxiety, how to advocate for yourself, and speak up when you need to with your friends, your family, your medical care team, all of the good things.

If you’ve been thinking about it, come and talk to me. There’s a link in the show notes, I promise. It’s really, really not scary. Uh, we just hop on Zoom, we chat, and I will tell you all about working with me. There is no pressure. I’ve got my prices. Everything is on my website. Just go to smooth stones coaching.com.

Okay, let’s dive in. Here’s the thing I wanted to talk about right off the bat is when we talk about everybody being pregnant, our brain will do this. They’ll just say, well, everyone’s pregnant. Uh, I want you to break that down into some categories because we have a little bit of proximity and you might use different tools for different situations.

So some of the, the ones that I thought of, and you can think of your own, but there’s kind of like strangers or one time sightings, like you’re out at the grocery store, you see somebody with a belly. That one you really can kind of. Learn to take care of yourself and, and use these tools, but it doesn’t have to, you know, you don’t have to put a ton of effort into that.

It is what it is. You know, if you wanna just go down the other aisle, you can do that too. Just make sure you’re taking care of yourself. Then we have acquaintances, celebrities, or people on social media where we have a little bit more control of how much we’re seeing of them, but it is like, it’s around.

Then we have long distance friends and family, so people that we are really close with as far as connection, but they’re not physically in our face. Uh, and then we have people who are in person in our community. Friends or family, people at church, right? People in the same, you know, school as your other living kids or people at work.

So, Those are kind of some of the different proximities that we have, and I think, like I said, we wanna use different tools to deal with those because the people that we just see out and about that, that’s just. You know, we can take care of that on our own, but when we’ve got a close relationship, we probably wanna use some other tools and I have some great episodes on relationships.

But yeah, just just be aware of who bothers you the most. Maybe check in with yourself and just say, is there one person or a couple of people. Uh, or is it just random people jumping outta nowhere? And, and the surprise of it, that really bothers me. Like, what bothers you the most? And so where do you want to put your energy into working on kind of healing and finding some peace around, uh, that so, Really important to kind of differentiate those and apply the tools as needed.

We’re gonna adjust our strategies, really, but all these tips that I’m gonna give you today are gonna help, and I, I want you to notice one thing, some bellies might not bother you at all, so I want you to check in. Is there anybody who’s pregnant? It doesn’t bother you at all, or anybody who has a baby.

Sometimes this can be like if you have lost mom, friends you’ve met in your support group or online and, and they’re pregnant with their rainbow baby and you’re really happy for them and it doesn’t bother you at all, but there might be other ones that really do bother you. Like that mom who, like you see a preschool drop off and uh, you know, she maybe wasn’t your favorite before and now she’s pregnant.

Just notice. Our feelings come from our thoughts. That’s what we talk about here. Our feelings always come from our thoughts. So how can you use the thoughts that you have towards some pregnant people that don’t bother you, and maybe practice using those on the ones that do bother you. Because the thing is, you are the one who is feeling your feelings.

The pregnant friends or whoever are just. Going through life being pregnant, you are the one that has to feel all the uncomfortable emotions when you see them or hear them or talk to them. So if there are some pregnant people that don’t bother you, why don’t they bother you? Why are you happy for them?

What thoughts are you thinking that help you feel that way? And can you transfer them to other people that you see? All right. My first tip is feel your feelings. This is always the best tip for really everything, but as we talked about last week, a lot of times we’ll cover up our feelings with anger. I don’t want you to cover up your feelings with anger.

Don’t run away or avoid your feelings. This is the one where we, we sometimes, uh, want to just. Not go to the baby showers, not go to places. We know that pregnant people will be, not talk to people and just avoid all of it. I want you to allow yourself to just be uncomfortable. It’s really the best thing you can do for yourself to show your brain that you can feel feelings and not die.

I know it feels like you might sometimes, but you won’t, and it will get better the more open we are to all the human experience and all the feelings in the huge spectrum of feelings that are available. The more we can do anything, right? When you’re afraid of feeling upset or sad or triggered, or whatever you’re afraid of, and you just find yourself avoiding and hiding, it’s never gonna get better.

You’re gonna stay stuck. But if we open up to just feeling kind of uncomfortable, Then you do have the opportunity to train your brain that pregnant bellies are not dangerous. They’re actually okay. How we wanna do this is step number two. Take care of yourself first. I have some questions for you. Are you doing everything you can to be equipped to handle seeing bellies?

This could be a lot of things using all these tools. Are you sleeping? Are you fueling your body with healthy foods and are you doing some loving movement? Are you self-coaching each day? Are you doing thought downloads and doing some models and working through what’s going on and why you’re upset? Are you honoring your grief in ways that you like?

To me, this means. Are you like taking care of your grief or are you using your grief to kind of stay in a dark place? Especially when it comes to dealing with other pregnancies, like you can honor your grief and honor where you are and make intentional decisions, or you can just use your grief as an excuse to hide from life.

Are you checking in with your hormones? If you haven’t listened to my episode with Maisie Hill, she’s an amazing coach who talks about hormone awareness. Where are you in your cycle? Where are you in postpartum? Um, you know what is going on? Because it can just be harder when your hormones are all over the place.

Is your nervous system activated? Are you feeling that fight or flight? Around pregnant bellies and why? Why is it so scary? Why does it seem so dangerous? And what can you do to calm your nervous system down? I’ve got a great video and episode on our nervous system. If you’re on my email list, you’re gonna get this video.

If you’re not on my email list, why aren’t you on there? I’m gonna send you so much good stuff. But actually it’s not a ton of stuff. I just send out usually a weekly email and, um, anything cool that I’ve got going on, I’ll let you know. So you just go to smooth Stones coaching.com. Scroll to the bottom, join my email list.

Okay. So once you’ve checked in with yourself, then you can really do some self coaching and see what needs you have emotionally. Take care of your nervous system, take care of your body. Everything is harder when you’re emotionally, physically, spiritually exhausted. So let’s make it easier for ourselves and then it’s just gonna be easier, right?

Do like, if you make it easier by taking care of the basics, everything else goes much more smoothly. Number three, use your imagination for good. When you see a pregnant person, you might think that they have a perfect life, no problems. Their pregnancy is blissful. But you could be completely wrong about that.

Even if you know them well and you think you know everything about them, you might not have the whole story. You’re not in their life. If you’re going to use your imagination, don’t use it on default. Use it on purpose cuz on default it wants to just project kind of, you know, their life is perfect and my life is so hard or they don’t understand me and I’m just so like broken over here for me.

It helped me to just tell myself I had no idea what struggles they were going through. Maybe this was their rainbow baby. Maybe they had 10 miscarriages that I don’t know about. Maybe they have marital struggles or other challenges in their lives. I choose to believe that everyone is fighting a hard battle that I know nothing about, and that helped me to not get too far down the rabbit hole of being jealous of a pregnancy or a baby.

And we don’t have to use our imagination to just create this terrible sob story of their life to make us feel better. But just, just balance it out. Just say, yeah, they’re pregnant. That’s awesome. That’s something that I wish I had right now, but it has nothing to do with me. Really, like their pregnancy has nothing to do with you and we don’t know anything about their life.

Or we might not know everything about their life. And so yes, they have this one thing, but maybe their baby has been diagnosed with a terminal illness. Maybe there’s a lot of health things going on. Maybe like we just don’t know. So I want you to answer these questions. What do you want to imagine about the people you see?

What would help you the most? Try on some different stories and see how they feel. For you and use your imagination for good. This tool is really helpful in so many situations, but especially when it feels like everybody is pregnant and you don’t wanna feel jealous and just so upset around them. Just imagine that they have a human life that is 50 50 just like we do.

Like everybody has a life that’s partly hard and partly amazing. Use your imagination for a good. Number four, pregnancy and motherhood is hard period. End of sentence. This is not a competition. People are allowed to complain. They’re even allowed to get frustrated. When you see someone who has what you want, give them full permission to whine about it.

This is a gift you’re gonna give yourself and this is gonna help you later. When you have blessings that are also stressful, whatever that may be in the future. But the thing is, our brain is a liar. It tells us, well, if I was pregnant, I would never complain about being uncomfortable. I would love getting up all night with a crying baby, and I would never lose my temper if my toddler had a meltdown in the store.

But you know what? You are a human and humans get tired and uncomfortable and impatient. Even with things that they love and are grateful for, humans are self-centered and they don’t think about how their words sound to someone who is grieving a baby. So if someone nearby you in that close proximity circle, um, says things or complains about things and, and you tell yourself this story of like, how dare they, how could they say these things?

Like, don’t they understand how painful this is and how lucky they are, just. Don’t go down that road. Like what does it accomplish to really just like have this, this anger towards someone who just is living their life and being self-centered just like you are. You are also self-centered. I am also self-centered.

I see life through my lens. You see life through your lens and they see life through their lens, and that is okay when you see your brain telling you. That other people shouldn’t be human and that they shouldn’t be self-centered and they shouldn’t be focused on their whole deal. And when your brain’s telling you that parenthood wouldn’t be hard for you, cuz you’d be so grateful, you gotta call it out.

It feels terrible to judge other people’s parenting and their experience. And if you judge others, you’re gonna end up judging yourself. And what I see a lot is some exhausted moms of rainbow babies who feel like they can’t ever complain because they know what a miracle this is. You can be grateful and overwhelmed.

Parenting a Heaven baby is hard and beautiful. Parenting Earth babies is also hard and beautiful. Let’s just make space for both. It feels so much better. And then number five, we love babies. Love is the best feeling ever. It’s funny how often we choose not to feel it, but it is always available to us. Yes, even after loss.

What if instead of being upset about babies and bellies and announcements, we just celebrated each little life that was making its way to earth. It is truly a miracle, and I’m not saying this in a like cover yourself in pink, marshmallow love, everything is fine and dandy kind of way. But seriously, babies are so easy to love.

You don’t have to be afraid of them or avoid them. You don’t have to avoid talking about birth or breastfeeding or blankets. Smile at the cute babies. Pick up their pacifier when it drops. Say congratulations when you see an announcement. This world has a lot of darkness, but babies are such a light. Give yourself the gift of loving them.

When you’re ready, hold them. Connect with the babies, especially the ones who are going to be a part of your world. They didn’t do anything to you. They can be a healing balm if you let them. I remember holding one of my best friends’ babies, and he was due at the same day as Lauren, and it took me a while to get up the courage to meet him and like I didn’t live in the same city as my friend, so we had to plan something, but I did it and it was really special.

It was a special moment that I will never forget, and it was a special milestone for me to hold that baby that was the exact same age as Lauren. I want that for you. Love the babies, and as always, I’m gonna add a bonus tip to really take care of your energy, trust yourself to know what you can handle on any given day.

But also question yourself when your brain tells you that going to a family baby shower is too overwhelming. Question it. Ask yourself, how much energy does it take to not be there with the people you love most? How much energy does it take to not love this new little one? How much energy are you spending?

Avoiding all things, baby. Yes, be gentle with your grieving heart, but don’t doubt what it can handle. So many times the fear and the buildup is so much worse than actually just getting in there. Don’t let fear drive you self-care and honoring your grief. Yes, telling yourself you can’t handle something.

Nah. You are amazing. You are in baby mode. Just like the other parents who are pregnant right now. You can learn how to navigate this and it doesn’t have to be hard. When you take care of yourself. Feel your feelings. Use your imagination for good. Let motherhood be hard and let love guide you. You can do this.

And I am here to help you. Like I said, if you feel really stuck or really surrounded by these bellies and you feel trapped, come and talk to me. The link is in the show notes. I’ll see you next week. Are you tired of feeling like your baby’s dad was somehow your fault? Go to Smooth Stones coaching com and get my free mini course.

How to Stop Blaming Yourself After Loss.