How to Be Happy When Expecting a Baby

There’s more to preparing for a baby than stocking the nursery and checking nine months off the calendar. For a pregnancy experience that is full and satisfying you must think great and glorious thoughts. Thoughts are the architect of your world—and unborn babies absorb more than vitamins and minerals. Just as what you’re eating affects your health, what you’re thinking influences your feelings, which your baby absorbs like a sponge. Being pregnant is a formidable undertaking—and you're bound to be moody and down in the dumps occasionally—but with a slight shift in your focus you can more easily face the challenges ahead. Here are nine ways to stay happy.

Instructions

Difficulty: Easy

1. Accentuate the positive. It’s just as easy to emphasize the positive and be happy as to think negatively and be burdened. Your thoughts can be nourishing or toxic, pull your spirits up or drag you down. Thinking "this is too hard" makes pregnancy a chore; thinking "I’m bringing in a loved child" accentuates your joy.
2. Be watchful of what material, information, thoughts and words you take in. The music you listen to, the movies you watch, the books you read and the radio and television you tune into can agitate you and make you nervous, or refresh you and calm you down.
3. Surround yourself with cheerful people. You probably know a Mr. or Ms. Grumpy who can’t find anything pleasant to say and spread horror stories about pregnancy. You don’t need that. A little crankiness now and then is understandable, but you don’t need a steady dose of negativism; you need inspiration. Make friends with smiling, laughing people, and you will feel happy too.
4. Fill your home with positive vibrations. Buy fresh flowers, fill a bowl with potpourri, put a rocking chair by a window.
5. Do a daily attitude check and read words of inspiration, pray and count your blessings.
6. Give encouragement to your partner and your other children. Let them participate in picking out names. Spread happiness around and you’ll feel positive in return.
7. Make a list of what you like to do for fun that takes only 5 minutes and then put 5-minute fun breaks into each day. Ask your husband and children what they like to do for fun that takes 30 minutes and add that to your weekly activities. These nine months are jam-packed with plenty of stuff that has to get done; everyone is better off when you balance it with fun activities.
8. Stop comparing yourself to others or to the imaginary perfect mother-to-be in your head. Your pregnancy is unique. Remind yourself that the continuum of experiences is vast.
9. Ponder babies. You can’t be pregnant without thinking about babies—cute, cuddly, roly-poly, rollicking babies. You’ll spot them wherever you go. In the presence of babies your heart melts, your mind clears, your face lights up, time slows done. Babies are the ambassadors of goodwill.

Tips & Warnings

• Read my book: "Expecting Baby: Nine Months of Wonder, Reflection and Sweet Anticipation" (see links in Resources below).