Before Your Baby Arrives

By Henrieta Haniskova, Former Nurse, Certified Clinical Aromatherapist, and Somatic Experiencing Practitioner

Right now, you have more freedom than you realize.

Do you feel like a walrus rolling down the beach every time you wake at night for another pee? They said have a baby, it will be fun. But nobody warns you about the weight pressing down on your pelvis and the kicks in your ribs. And that this will be your reality for a few months yet, before your baby gets the eviction notice and decides to move out.

Before your baby arrives and your world reorganizes around their needs, here is something I wish someone had explained to me before my life was swept into the intensity of early motherhood.

Your baby's nervous system is already borrowing from yours.

Did you know your baby has been picking up on you since as early as eight weeks? Touch comes online first, movement not far behind, and hearing catches up by around week 25. By now, your baby is catching your heartbeat, your breath, even the tension sitting in your shoulders. None of it lands as a thought. Your body is the climate they have been living in, and researchers who study maternal stress in pregnancy (Glover, 2014) have found exactly that: your own state shapes the environment your baby is developing inside, months before birth.

And that only gets more intense once they're born.

For that whole first year, and honestly for years after, your baby borrows their calm from yours. Researchers who study this kind of synchrony (Feldman, 2007, 2015) have found it's measurable, not just a feeling: infant and caregiver heart rates actually move together when things are calm between them. Self-regulation doesn't arrive on a schedule. It's built slowly, over years, with patience and a steady example, and plenty of grown adults still haven't figured it out. Right now, though, you're the only calm within reach: the one your baby knows, the one they'll actually settle for at 3am when nothing else works. This is exactly where Touch More: Early Motherhood picks up, once they're actually here.

So here's the plot twist: the biggest thing you can do for them has nothing to do with the nursery, or the feeding plan, or the seventeen browser tabs comparing strollers. It's staying soft.

Soft doesn't mean fragile. It means having the capacity to regulate two nervous systems at once: yours, running on little sleep, and theirs, still too new to do any of this without you.

Have you noticed how some mothers seem to be thriving, present, actually enjoying motherhood, while others are quietly fading, disappearing into the role? The thriving ones found real ways to get support and to stay regulated with a baby in their arms. That's the actual work, and it's exactly what I teach.

Can we talk about what you actually have right now, while it's still yours?

Sleeping until your body decides to wake up on its own. Coffee that's still hot by the time you drink it. Finishing a sentence, a chapter, a whole thought, without any frustrating distractions.

Once your baby arrives, that space shrinks. This is why they say, the days are long but the years are short. It is impossible to understand until you live it. Suddenly your attention lives outside of you, feeding and holding and soothing, and even a quiet room can feel like you're still on duty. Your nervous system is quietly scanning for safety, for your sleeping baby, the whole time.

Somewhere in the middle of all that, you may start feeling lost in the role. The opinionated, curious, joyful person you once were can seem like a distant memory. Noticing what settles your body now makes it easier to reach for it later, when your cup needs refilling.

How to prepare for motherhood emotionally: turn toward yourself

So before your baby arrives: turn toward yourself. You're about to spend a long stretch holding two nervous systems steady: yours, and one that hasn't learned how yet. You'll do it better if you already know what actually calms you down, what your body feels like when it's not braced for a stressful situation, what your own rhythm is before someone else's takes over.

Try asking yourself the questions nobody else thinks to:

Who am I outside of every role I carry right now?

What does being held feel like to me, and when was the last time I received care without having to ask for it?

What part of my life am I most afraid of losing?

When do I feel most at ease?

Who are the people who help me feel myself again?

You don't need a journal for this. A single voice memo on your phone tonight, just you talking through one question out loud, is enough to start.

Answers like these are the map you'll want later, on the nights everything is foggy and you need to find your way back to yourself.

Your baby is coming, and they're going to need you soft, not braced. Good thing you've already started. For what staying soft actually looks like once they're here, Touch More: Calm is the next place to go.

The Threshold series continues next week.