12/31/2025
💜
During pregnancy, a woman's body undergoes countless physical and physiological changes to accommodate the growing foetus and prepare for childbirth and breastfeeding.
✨Your uterus expands from a pear sized organ to the size of a watermelon. All your other organs get pushed aside, rotated and lie differently to accommodate this.
No wonder you had heartburn and constipation!
✨Your cardiac output increases by up to 60% to help with increased oxygenation requirement.
✨Your blood volumes increases by up to 50% to support your growing baby.
✨Your lung capacity is slightly reduced as the diagram puts pressure on them as your uterus expands, so you start to breathe more quickly to ensure adequate oxygenation. No wonder you were short of breath!
✨Your breasts have grown, your ar**la is darkened and enlarged, all to prepare for breastfeeding. They've been making colostrum, that magical first milk, from about 20 weeks gestation.
✨You are making a tiny heart and lungs. You are crafting a brain and billions of blood vessels and nerves. Bones, cartilage, muscles and tendons....you've done that.
✨You birthed a human, a whole human, that YOU made. Either vaginally or abdominally. You probably went through labour, the most intense, primal, insane experience. A human exited your body. A whole human, that YOU created.
✨Baby is born, so now you are responsible for every need your baby has. Hunger, thirst, comfort, fear, loneliness, tiredness and the overwhelm of being Earthside.
✨You have the ability to feed your baby with the perfect baby food that magically springs from your breasts. It is nutrition, comfort and immunisation and is, somehow, perfectly tailored to your individual baby.
✨You are knackered, overwhelmed with the responsibility but you are never failing. Bin the guilt. Give yourself a huge break and then a pat on the back. You're a walking, talking celestial being and I am still in awe of myself, and all who did it before me and all of you doing it still
Quite literally... ✨ G O D S ✨
Lactation Nurse
www.thelactationnurse.co.uk
