I’m Pregnant With Baby #3: My Mindset, Decision Making, and So Much More

Welcome to Mom On Purpose, where it’s all about helping moms overcome challenges and live their best lives. My hope is by being here, you are more inspired to become the mom you are made to be. I’m Natalie, your host, a wife, boy, mom, dog, mama, Chicagoan, and former lawyer turned professionally certified coach. If you’re here to grow, I can help. Let’s go.

Hello, my beautiful friends. Today I want to talk with you about so much around the topic of being pregnant. I am pregnant with baby number three. If you missed it or if you’re not following along on Instagram over at mom.onpurpose. I shared the news there, and I’ll continue to kind of share behind the scenes. I had been a little bit quieter over there because of the severe morning sickness or all day and night sickness that I get. So to not spoil the news ahead of time I hadn’t been on, but I will be on much more now that I can just show that I am sick all of the time. Other than that, I want to talk about my mindset, kind of the questions that I’ve been getting and the decision making process and just kind of all of it, like how I apply these tools to my life to make decisions and to live into my future instead of repeating my past. And it truly is kind of just mind blowing to take a step back and reflect and see how far I’ve come with using these tools in my life and the type of life that I’m able to create and how extraordinary it is for me, given my upbringing and my circumstances and, to other people. It, it might not be extraordinary at all. In fact, I always kind of,like wince or just kinda disagree with anyone who says, you know, like, don’t, don’t put off your dreams and wake up one day with a bunch of kids and nothing else going for you.

And,that mindset comes from this idea that, you know, having kids and having a family is just so ordinary. And if you are like me and you did not grow up with, just very stable, typical, home, then that couldn’t be further from the truth. That stable typical home is such a privilege and it is such a privilege to provide it for my now family, my my kids and,my home. And it’s just, it is my dream. I I didn’t grow up with that. If you’re a new listener, I grew up, you know, middle class, have a great family, but my dad was an alcoholic before he passed away. And we had all of the kind of typical challenges that come with, living with a full-blown alcoholic. It was very tumultuous, very,dramatic, lots of yelling, lots of ups and downs.

There wasn’t that sense of like, what I call like boring, calm safety. It wasn’t, it wasn’t like that. And of course there were lots of happy times and it’s, it was wonderful. But I just personally, and I think, our desires are, are God-given, right? Not everyone has this desire, and not even everyone in circumstances similar to mine have this desire, but I have had this desire to have the family that I’ve always wanted to create it, to have children, to be a mom like that has been my dream and I am living it. And so the narrative, you know, of, you know, don’t wake up one day and you just have kids and nothing else going for you, I totally disagree. I think that for me, this, this is the dream sometimes motherhood and kids and family and creating, those relationships and that stable home, that wonderful family life.

Sometimes that is the dream and that is my dream. And, I know it’s a privilege. And I think because of that perspective, because of that mindset, it’s so deeply rooted in me because of my childhood, I’m able to tolerate a lot of overwhelm, and a lot of the kind of challenges that come with raising little kids. And I think that I’m able to kind of just say like, oh yeah, that’s just, that’s just part of it. Like sleepless nights, that’s just part of it. I still like to take care of myself. I still accept help , but I know too that it’s hard with little ones. And so that kind of brings me to one of the common questions that I’ve been getting from a couple of my girlfriends who have two kids, you know, they’ve said to me in different ways, but kind of the same questions, like, how did you decide to have a third child?

One of them just asked me yesterday, like, was it hard for you to decide to have a third? And another one said, you know, what made you decide to have a third? And I think, I want to share that with you because I think it’s kind of unique in the way that I do it. I apply the tools that I teach you here, and so maybe it won’t be a surprise, but I think seeing it in this real time example might be helpful. At least I hope it’s so, I don’t make the decision based on my current level of happiness. I make the decision based on long-term fulfillment. IE instead of using my lower brain that is easily overwhelmed and fueled by kind of fear and worry, or just wants to seek more pleasure in the moment and avoid pain, I don’t access that part of the brain for the decision.

I use my prefrontal cortex that is so much more intentional and future focused and thinking about kind of the long-term outlook, the, the life that I want to create in the future. So very practically what that looks like is I’m not thinking about how much harder it’s going to be in the immediate future. In my short term, I’m thinking about the long-term fulfillment that will come from making the decision to create the life that I want. And I know that it’s even better than I can imagine. And the reason I know that is because I have proven that true time and time again. So I think back to starting my business and I remember getting up at four in the morning to work on my business. I had the best attitude. I was so excited. I was working on my business before my day job, then working all day.

I would work an hour on my business at lunch, and then I would continue to work on my business at night if there was anything left to do. So I got at least three hours of work in on my business while working full-time. I did this and the payoff was extraordinary. That short-term discomfort of heavily focusing on my work at that time and building my business. And that meant saying no to so many fun activities. I was in my twenties, there’s always stuff going on. I have lots of friends and saying no, I said no to so much travel. I said no to so many friend opportunities so that I could create the future that I wanted. And now I have an online business, a coaching practice where I get to serve my clients, give them the highest value that I possibly can. It is so rewarding and fulfilling and I get to do that working.

What, you know, compared to a lawyer, I would consider his very part-time hours. And that means I get to spend a ton of time with my kids. I love that I’m the primary caregiver for my kids. That has truly been my dream. And you know, it doesn’t mean it’s the right way or the only way, but it is the way that I’ve designed and that’s only possible because I front loaded, that’s what I call this frontloading the hard. So frontloading is when you decide to do the harder upfront for the benefit in the long run. So, I went to law school, grueling three years, took the bar exam, passed the bar exam. That was a very challenging period academically and just from a time management standpoint and a balance standpoint. But it was totally worth it because for the rest of my life I am now licensed as an attorney.

Of course I’m inactive now, but it’s amazing that I did that. The same is true when I front loaded working on my business. I did that for, gosh, I’m trying to remember a couple years I did building the business on the side of my full-time job because I was paying off massive student loan debt from law school. But I did that and oh my gosh, was it worth it? Because I paid off all of my debt, I transitioned careers, I was able to become a professionally certified coach, and now I have an online business. I front loaded my friends and it is worth it. It is worth it to delay the gratification. It is worth it to work hard for a period to get the long-term results that you want. I think that’s what this is really about. If you’re unwilling to do the work and the hard upfront, then you don’t get the long-term results.

It’s like the saying goes, you want to do what I do, but are you willing to do what I did to get here? And for a lot of us, the answer is no. And so I like to remind myself that my desires matter and I can get stronger and it is worth it to do the hard thing. So, the only thing that I’ll kind of add in about frontloading is that you want to make sure that you’re not constantly frontloading. So I front loaded becoming a lawyer and then I got to reap the benefits of being a lawyer. I front loaded building my business and now every single day I get to benefit from that. I’m still not waking up at 4:00 AM and saying, okay, well one day, right? Like, we don’t want to do this into retirement. You want there to be kind of ebbs and flows and seasons, just like kind of tying it back to this topic.

I’m front loading, having three kids back to back to back close in age. It’s going to be harder now and it’s going to be worth it a hundred percent. It will be worth it. I love the age that my oldest son is at right now, like middle of the toddler years. It’s so fun. And I just think like, wow, one day my youngest is going to be this old and it’s not that far away and that is going to be freaking awesome. And how fun is that going to be? And you know, there’s fun in all stages for sure. But by thinking about it in this way, like having the mindset that I’m front loading the hard for the long-term fulfillment that I want in the family that I’m creating, it really helps me kind of expect hard, like I don’t expect it to be easy.

I don’t expect to get full nights of sleep. I don’t expect, to do a lot outside of the home. Like I expect that this is the season of raising littles and the season of overwhelm. And it is a freaking privilege. It is a delight. And one of my favorite thoughts to go to is, oh, this is harder than I thought. And that’s okay. So it’s a reminder that yes, this is what I want and it’s just harder than I thought, and that’s okay. And so I’m acknowledging that there’s capacity and there’s room for me to grow and get stronger. Because if I’m blaming my circumstances, if I’m blaming my kids, if I’m blaming my spouse, if I’m blaming my home, then I’m powerless, then I’m not empowered, then I can’t change and get the support that I want or need. And so when I take full ownership of my life and my decisions, and I also make space for acknowledging, yeah, it’s hard, that is when the magic happens because then I can create change and I can create the exact life that I want.

Another mindset and tool that I use in my family and with respect to pregnancy and just in every area of my life that I have a desire. So I use it in my business as well, is I’m really willing to do the hard things for like an extended period of time. I’m not saying this is necessarily what I suggest, but it keeps me going. And so one kind of rule that I have for myself is that I can quit anything I want at any time, but not because it’s hard. So I ask myself if this was easier, if I was getting the results that I wanted, would I keep going? And if the answer is yes, that tells me then the reason I’m considering slowing down or stopping is just because it’s hard. And I just personally don’t like that reason. I’m actually a huge fan of quitting.

I was talking to one of my girlfriends whose daughter quit gymnastics recently, and she was like, no, you know, you know, she’s not quitting, she’s not resigning up. I was like, no, I love that she’s quitting. Like quit everything that you don’t want to do anymore. I think we attach this negative attitude towards quitting, and instead I think we should quit way more often so that it can lead us to new and better things that are more meant for us. And so I’m a big fan of quitting, but the reason behind the quit matters. So quit just because you want to quit because you want to go in a different direction. Quit because it feels more aligned with what you want to do next. So I think back to when I’ve made changes in my business, I used to sell courses, for example, and I remember I quit those courses.

I closed down that part of the business and I started selling a membership and making that decision was important for my business and it was really aligned with where I wanted to go, and it would’ve been a lot easier to just continue to keep repeating what I’ve always done in the past. And so applying this to kind of motherhood, it’s like, and, and let me actually back up and apply this to marriage, I was willing to like never give up. I was willing to just keep trying forever even if I never got married because that’s who I wanted to be. So I’ll coach women who are considering having another child and it’s challenging for them, or they’re divorced and would like to get remarried and it’s challenging for them. And what really, whatever path you’re on right now, whatever is making it challenging. You know, it can be weight loss.

If you’ve been trying to lose weight for decades and it hasn’t worked, quit because you decide I don’t want to lose weight anymore. I want to just be content with my life and my body as it is right now, decide to quit pursuing a partner because you genuinely just decided, yeah, I don’t want to get remarried. Those are beautiful reasons to quit just because that’s more aligned with who you want to be. Do not quit because it’s hard in that instance. Yes, give yourself space to feel your negative emotions, but work on getting stronger mentally and emotionally. That’s what this is about, right? It’s not like, you know, finding a a life partner is physically hard. It is a mentally and emotionally maybe challenging. And so when I notice my temptation to slow down or take breaks or quit anything, whether it’s in my personal life or in my business life, I ask myself what the reason is.

And a really easy way to determine that is if I was getting the results that I wanted, would I still quit? And if the answer is yes, then you know, you’re kind of clean about your reason for quitting. If the answer is no, you definitely wouldn’t quit If you were getting the results, then the reason that you’re quitting is just because it’s hard and you’re unwilling to feel negative emotion. And to me, I’m like, I don’t, I don’t like that reason. I don’t want to quit because it’s hard. I just want to get stronger. So where do I need to get stronger? Oh, in my mental and emotional capacities, because what we’re talking about hard here, it’s hard to experience emotionally. We experience things emotionally. So if it’s hard to date, it’s hard to date. Not because like it’s physically hard or something, it’s, it’s mentally hard, it’s emotionally hard.

And to me that’s like, a challenge. That’s why I do this work. It’s like, okay, well let’s get better at that. Let’s get stronger at that. Let’s try a different approach. But I’m not going to quit because it’s hard just because that’s who I want to be in the world. Not because I need to get this result in order to be happy, but because if the desire is on my heart, then I want to be someone who pursues that desire, even if I don’t get the result. And kind of having that identity really helps me continue to get things that I want no matter how long it takes. And I’m laughing because some things I get right away and other things take years. I mean, getting married, I, uh, probably 15 years of dating and I just decided like it could take as long as it takes. I love the Abraham Hicks saying, nothing takes time. It just takes alignment. And you know this because some people get the result that you want in an area so quickly. Other people, it takes forever.

And so it’s not time, it’s alignment. You have to be aligned. It’s very interesting when I think about this pregnancy, we wanted three kids. The third pregnancy happened more quickly than the first two. And I think a very real part of that was being in total alignment with having kids. A lot of times we block ourselves when we’re focusing on what we don’t have, right? You know, that it’s not uncommon to hear stories about people who have struggled with fertility for years and they finally decide they want to adopt and then they adopt and or they get pregnant at the same time. There is an influencer who I follow who this happened to. She, had several miscarriages over the course of some years and they decided to adopt and they did adopt. And within six months of adopting their baby, they got pregnant.

And so now they have two beautiful kids who are six months apart. And it’s just such a beautiful story. And I just think about alignment and how often when we focus on what we don’t have, that is what we create more of. And , I just think for me, with respect to having my third, I was in such alignment that it happened so fast. Oh my goodness. And we’re so grateful and appreciative of that. We want to have a big family and, and we love that we are able to do that. There are other areas of my life that have not happened quickly. I think about some of my business goals that have taken very long, and I always revisit if I want to recommit to the goal, to what I want. I like quitting, like I said, but I want to quit for a reason that feels good to me and quitting just because I want to quit that I no longer want.

That thing is a great reason. But quitting because it’s taking longer than I want quitting because it’s harder than I thought. Not good reasons, not for me at least, because that just tells me that I have more work to do and why not do the work and see what’s possible. And maybe I’ll get the thing and maybe I won’t. But either way, I’m proud of myself for trying, because that’s who I want be because I have this desire on my heart.

So what did we talk about? My mindset. We talked about front loading, we talked about decision making, we talked a little bit about future self. I’m always accessing my future self to kind of make decisions instead of my past. In fact, if I think about what I have capacity for and what life will look like with another baby right now, it feels much scarier and much worse than when I think about, oh my gosh, how many kids do we want in the future as we’re growing our family, what does our family look like? And thinking about growing a family with three kids and thinking about, the future. It, it doesn’t feel scary at all. It feels amazing. And so again, it’s focusing on kind of that long-term outlook instead of what it takes to get there. It’s kind of like focusing on the destination instead of focusing on the travel.

So if we focus on going to Hawaii, like let’s think about the palm trees and the sunshine. Let’s not think about going through, you know, TSA and getting your bags and the airport and the travel. Like if I really thought about that, it would not be as enjoyable. And so your perspective matters. The mindset that you have matters because it will influence heavily your decisions and the decisions that you make, create your life. So with that, I’m excited for baby number three to come and be a part of our family. And thank you so much for being here and being a part of my journey and my family’s journey and for doing this work right alongside me. It is work worth doing, my friend. I love you so much. Take care.

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