process of creation is not one that can be controlled — there are so many unknowns — and this can be a little unsettling for a lot of women. However, creation emerges out of vulnerability and even darkness. Creation is dominated by unseen forces that later give rise to something tangible and seen.
If you are considering having a child and you want the experience to be as joyous as possible, then first you must understand the process of how things are created and surrender to it. Creation comes from the need for change. It doesn’t come when things are in perfect order. Otherwise, you wouldn’t need anything different to happen in your life; there would be no space for something new.
There are variations on how conception occurs. Some women surrender to this process easily, and some after a glass of wine. Some women need to have doctors do it for them. Even when a woman goes to see a doctor for IVF or egg freezing or any other type of intervention used for conception, there is a form of surrender. It is just a different kind of surrender than getting pregnant the old-fashioned way.
Your job is to start to get comfortable in the darkness of space — when you don’t have the answers or conclusions. Furthermore, your job as the female is specifically to let creativity happen through you. Yup, it’s time to give up some of that control.
How do I sell this idea to you, though, if you are like a lot of other modern women and like to make vision boards and execute plans to get toward where you want to go? It can feel like a real struggle when we cannot make something happen via our own thinking and doing, can’t it? It may feel difficult to let things unfold naturally until we feel we’ve done all we can. However, because conception takes more than one entity, a state of receptivity is important, and this can become compromised if we are trying to control everything. I’m not saying this is easy — receptivity and surrender challenge our fears around trust and even our own self-confidence.
In having a baby, you are not the one “making” anything when it actually happens. You are a vessel. You cannot control the outcome. You can try to influence it, but you can’t control it. This is part of why a fertility journey — like any creative endeavor — is a spiritual journey for the modern woman who has a hard time relinquishing control. First, you do the best you can to take care of yourself in your environment, you connect deeply with your partner (literally and figuratively!), and then you roll the dice. You may experience mental anguish in the void, and this is where it’s handy to hold a sense of faith and wonder. Allowing yourself to be surprised by the universe can actually be a really magical thing, sometimes even more fun than planning everything to a T and getting exactly what you want when you want it. Remember the saying “A watched pot never boils”? Well, it applies when you are trying to get pregnant, too.
Women who feel the call to conceive often start to grasp for a baby. They want to reach out and grab it, and they will do whatever they can to get it. Sometimes this works, and sometimes it sabotages the whole thing — because if there is too much grasping for the outcome, then there is no room for receiving the gifts that take you to the outcome. The baby you were meant to have will not come by your forcing. It will come by magic.
Pathologies are created energetically and physically when there are imbalances of giving, receiving, and grasping. Conception becomes blocked, elusive, or rejected when such pathologies are present. The balance point between receiving and giving is where you find the fertile ground for conception to take place.
How You Treat Your Body Matters
Physically, issues of under- or overnourishment of certain reproductive tissues will interfere with conception, so your diet and metabolism affect fertility. Some women are so undernourished that they don’t have any energy for their menstrual cycle, and others are so overnourished (or wrongly nourished) that toxins and blockages begin to interfere with their normal metabolic processes, throwing off hormones and monthly cycles. Therefore, it is extremely important to get your diet and lifestyle equalized prior to trying to have a child. Some women benefit from cleansing and fasting to remove toxins and blockages, while others need more rejuvenation. Everyone, though, benefits by understanding their body type.
You want to take very good care of your body, internally and externally, especially if you wait until you are on the older end of the fertility spectrum. Older women generally pump out fewer follicles each month than younger women, and their bodies are often less moist and pliable. They typically do not get pregnant as easily and are more likely to have a C-section. You also need to take better care of your body if you’ve had any health issues that interfere with your general health or menstrual cycles.
Regardless of your age and health condition, having vigor and the ability to recover quickly is helpful, because being pregnant, giving birth, and nursing a small baby are all paradigm-shifting events for a body that can cause sleep deprivation, depletion, depression, and a whole host of not-so-fun things that you never hear about until you have a child. This is why it’s important for you to focus on your own health before you get pregnant. It will make everything easier before, during, and after pregnancy.
Fertility through the Ages
Shortly after I had my own child at age thirty-nine, I was watching a group of young mothers on blankets at the beach with their little babies. They were energized, throwing their babies around, laughing, chatting, and smiling — all of them. Not one of the mothers looked the way I felt, which was completely zapped. I longingly mumbled under my breath, “They are so young.” I envied their energy and resilience. At the same time, when I heard the bubbly, twentysomething naivete of their conversations, I suddenly was happy I was bringing a child into the world with more years on me. There are pros and cons at every age. However, when it comes to fertility, the condition of the body is more important than what the mind says about anything, because the body always wins.
There are clear stages of biological life for a woman, beginning with infancy; going through childhood, puberty, adulthood, and perimenopause; and beyond menopause. The stages do not fall on exactly the same years for all women, because women have different birth constitutions and age at different rates for various reasons, but the general pathway is the same. The first part of life is a time for building the body, the middle is for maintenance, and the body breaks down more in the final phase of life.
Figure 1: The life stages of a woman
There are different strengths, weaknesses, and vulnerabilities in each of life’s phases. When it comes to deciding when to have a child, every woman has to find her own sweet spot based on her own constitution, how she lives her life, her intimate relationships, and the sort of support she has around her, although I would argue that the current trend of women having children later and later may be socially and financially beneficial but generally is not biologically beneficial. The body is more resilient when it is younger, which is very handy when having a kid because gestating, birthing, breastfeeding, and lugging around a toddler can be seriously physically challenging athletic endeavors. It’s also easier to deal with sleep deprivation when you are younger, and new parents inevitably become wickedly sleep challenged for a few months and even a few years.
It All Starts in the Teenage Years
When we look at a child or even a teenager, it can feel a little weird to think of that individual as a sexual creature, but the reality is that most girls and boys hit puberty when they are still children — many even before they are teenagers. Not only that, but most females become sexually active in their teenage years. Only 17 percent of women are still virgins into their nineteenth year. Assuming you are an adult woman now, the defining relationship with your reproductive system started a very long time ago.
The early years after puberty, typically the teens, are not an optimal
