Preparing for Pregnancy: Why I Am Giving It Years, Not Months

Three months is the number you will hear most often when you start preparing for pregnancy, and it is a good one. It comes from the body. Sperm take somewhere around three months to make, and an egg's last stretch of growing runs about the same, though the whole journey, from a follicle sitting dormant to the one that finally releases, is closer to a year. The standard advice is to start before you conceive rather than after, and for a great many women three months is exactly the right amount.

I have needed longer, because most of what I wanted ready was never in my body at all. It was in my head, and in my life. This is what those years have actually looked like: my nervous system, my body, the food I come back to, my relationship, and the people I want around me before there is a baby in the house.

Why I decided to take years to prepare

It started with imagining, which is how most things in my life start. When I want something, I live my days as though it is already here. I did it before my partner arrived. When I cooked, I pictured what it would be to be cooking for someone else. When I went to bed, I pictured what it would be to share it every night. Living that way brings me into alignment with what I am asking for, and it has worked every time.

So when children began to feel like something I actually wanted rather than an idea, I started doing it with a baby in the picture. What came back was a reality check. There were things that needed finishing, and things that needed actioning, before I would truly feel ready to make a commitment and a change that big. Bringing new life into this world is an enormous responsibility, and in my opinion it is one that gets taken far more lightly than it should.

My home. Who I could actually call on. My nervous system, and a burnout I am still coming out of. The projects of my own that are unfinished, because every friend I have with children tells me the same thing. For the first couple of years at least, there is no time for anything like that.

None of that moves quickly. A nervous system running flat for years does not refill in twelve weeks, and I would rather go in with an overflowing cup, because the year after a birth draws on it either way. The work inside a relationship is far easier while there are still only two of you. And people close enough to actually turn up take longest of all to gather, which is the part I am still in. I only recently settled here on the Sunshine Coast, and I am still forming my tribe and my connections.

Change is slow work for me anyway, partly because I am neurodivergent and too much at once puts my system under strain. Sleep, food, training, the amount I carry for other people: I move one thing, let it settle, then start the next. So three months was never going to be my answer. We all move at different speeds, and the work is finding your own.

If you do not have years, none of this is a standard you have fallen short of. Starting eight weeks out is not a failure, and neither is finding out you are pregnant having done none of it. Plenty of women go in on an empty cup and manage beautifully. This has been my way and my choice, and it is what I wanted to share with you today.

"You are never ready"

So many people you speak to about having children will say that you will never be truly ready.

I agree with them, mostly. You cannot rehearse it, the feeling does not arrive fully formed, and you never know what cards you will be dealt or what your child will be like. However, I do think there is still a level of readiness each of us has to come to terms with on our own, and mine is what I have just shared with you.

It is about creating a safe environment for a child, and it is about creating a safe environment for the mother, which is the half that gets left out.

The postnatal period is the least talked about part of all of this. Postnatal depression is far more common than most people realise, and the first year is harder than most people say out loud. You cannot prepare your way out of either of those and I would never suggest you could. What you can do is have things in place, so that when the hard part comes it lands on a life that is set up to hold it. If you are in it now, or you can feel it coming, PANDA run a national perinatal helpline in Australia on 1300 726 306, seven days, and Find a Helpline will give you the equivalent wherever you are reading from.

So here is my readiness list. Yours will look different:

• •A nervous system that is not running on empty, and practices I can reach for on the days it is
• •A body that is strong and well nourished, and that feels good to live in
• •More time and space for each other after a few years of us both working hard, and quicker repair when we do fall out
• •People near me who would notice if I disappeared for a fortnight, and turn up with a slow-cooked dinner on a hard week
• •A home that works with a child in it, rather than one that only suits the two of us now
• •Enough money put aside that a massage, a day to myself, or help in the house is a decision rather than a problem

None of that is finished, and some of it never will be. There is a difference between something that is underway and something I have not started, though, and I can tell which is which.

There is a fine line between perfectionism and care, and I know which side of it I am trying to stand on. I am not chasing a perfect setup. I am asking what will actually let the three of us live well. There will be hard moments regardless, things I cannot foresee, and no version of this where I am truly ready. I know that. I would rather meet it from a good place, that is all.

What I am doing to prepare for pregnancy

My nervous system, first

I travelled for years, and by the end of it I had a bit of a burnout. Recovering my nervous system has taken time. It has come a long way and it is still not all the way back, and that is why it is the piece I put first. It is daily habit rather than anything dramatic. Sleeping properly. Staying in one place. Keeping routines, saying no a lot, and holding better boundaries. Making space in my life, slowing down, learning to just sit. Working out what my real energy drainers were, and doing a big life cleanup on the back of that.

Getting strong again

This is where I am furthest behind of everything on the list. On the road I was not lifting anything, so there is not much of a practice to build on, and now that I am in perimenopause the weights matter more and strength takes me longer to build than it used to. The habit is the harder half of it. So I am putting together a gym routine I can actually keep, with more Pilates and yoga. This is one of the more important pieces for me, because I believe it only gets harder to start later. I want strength through my whole body going into this, and some reserve behind it.

Eating with my cycle

I eat differently depending on where I am in the month. Lighter and fresher in the first half, warmer and heavier in the second, more iron around my period, and I stop expecting the same appetite from myself every week.

Mostly it is about variety, and eating as much in season and as fresh as I can. A range of proteins from meat, chicken and oily fish, always grass-fed and always really good quality. Cooked vegetables, good fats, eggs, broths, lentils and beans, leafy greens, seeds, and whole grains that I have soaked. Warm food over raw for most of the month, and more so in the second half of my cycle.

I have written the long version in eating for your cycle, and the phases themselves in cyclical living. My free guide to balancing your hormones walks through the same rhythm, and the recipes themselves are in my recipe book.

Food is one of my favourite things and also one of the things that overwhelms me. I am sensitive to a lot of it and particular about what I eat, so a second recipe book, this one for pregnancy and for breastfeeding, is something I want finished before that chapter starts. I have been reading, and slowly gathering inspiration for what I want to be eating then, and all of it will go into a book built on my own findings and what actually resonates with me. I know exactly how I am when I am tired and hungry and have not decided what to eat, and I would like that decision already made.

Things I go gently with

Alcohol, coffee past the morning, ultra-processed food, and long gaps without eating. Not as rules. As dials.

Creating harmony in my relationship

I have watched friends walk into this with something unresolved between them and come out the other side on their own.

I need to say that carefully, because it is not a judgement of anybody. A child changes people. Some women have a complete shift in how they see their life afterwards and find that what they had no longer fits. Sometimes a partner does not show up the way everybody assumed he would. Sometimes it is nobody's fault at all.

Watching that taught me these conversations are far easier to have now. So my partner and I are having them on purpose, while they are still theoretical and nobody is exhausted.

Most of it comes from noticing. We are at the park, or with friends who have children, something happens, and one of us asks the other how they would have handled it. That is how we have ended up talking about food, about medical decisions, about behaviour. Sometimes he will say that something I do is not what he would want in front of our child, and we talk about that too. We do not agree on all of it, and some of it is still open. I would rather know where those gaps are now, while there is time for each of us to do our own work on them.

We have looked after our friends' children a few times as well, which is its own kind of practice. None of this is quick, and there is no version of it that takes three months.

The particular thing I am working on is repair. Not avoiding disagreement, which is not realistic, but getting better at closing one properly and quickly once it has happened. Everything I have read says children take a great deal from the way conflict is handled around them, and that resolving it matters more than never having it, and how we manage our energy with each other is the piece I would like to have well practised before anybody is watching.

A support network where I actually live

This is the biggest one for me and the least anchored, and it is the one holding my timeline most. We have no family close by.

What I mean by it is people in the same postcode who would drop in. Not people online, and not the ones I love most, who are scattered after years of living abroad. Bali, Ibiza, Turkey, Mexico. My family is in Adelaide. We are on the Sunshine Coast of Australia now, and the friendships here are coming slowly.

I know how hard that loneliness can be, because my mother lived it. She moved to Australia not long before I was born, without her own mum and without her family around her, and she has told me since how alone she felt. I have always known what that cost her. Friends of mine have been through their own version of it. And when I ask the ones with children what mattered most, the answer is always the same, which is the people around them.

So I am staying put, building my support network, and letting it take the time it takes. Out of everything on this page, this is the one that feels most important to me right now.

Finding the home we will stay in

I am looking now. There is no bathtub in this one, the neighbourhood is not what I would choose for a child, and our lease is up in six months. What I want is somewhere we can stay for the next three to five years, big enough for a small child, with a spare room so somebody can come and stay when we need the help. Quiet, with walking paths and a park nearby. I would rather find that now than be house hunting with a newborn.

Making the business run without me

This one is less about the money than about not being needed. My partner and I run a business together, Inphinity Design, and it has taken most of our attention these past few years. So we have been separating our roles, bringing help in, and writing down how everything works, so that a sale or a client does not need me personally to deal with it. He has automated a great deal of the rest. I am also finishing things that keep working when I am not, the recipe books among them. It is so that when the time comes I can step back without anything falling over, and be properly present rather than half in and half out.

The practitioners I work with

My naturopath specialises in fertility. So does my acupuncturist. My Arvigo massage therapist works specifically with fertility and hormones. I see a pelvic floor physiotherapist, which almost nobody suggests until something has already gone wrong. And my doctor knows what I am planning, so it sits in my file rather than being news to her later.

The point is not who is on that list. It is that I am not doing any of this on my own, and there is nothing on this page I have not run past somebody who knows my history. If this matters to you, please do the same. Build your own team rather than working from my list, because everything here suits me and I have people whose job it is to check that it still does.

Building that team slowly is its own reason to start early. Finding people you trust, and who know your history, takes far longer than three months.

I have also started following doulas and midwives on Instagram, just to absorb that world before I need it. Nothing is decided. It means that when the time comes I will have some sense of who I might want beside me, rather than choosing in a hurry.

The testing I chose to do

I have had a full gut microbiome test and hormone testing done, and I take my waking temperature.

I want to be careful here, because numbers on a page are not a plan. What testing gave me was a starting point and something concrete to work through with my naturopath and my doctor, rather than guessing. If you do any of it, take the results back to whoever you work with and read them together. That is the part that matters, and it is worth more than the test itself.

What mine showed is that I am in the early stages of perimenopause, which I had suspected. My oestrogen is still in the normal range, which is part of why it is early. My progesterone sits on the low side, my waking temperatures run a little low, and my cortisol has not been where I would like it. Ovulation itself looks good, which was a relief to see.

Progesterone is the one I care most about. It rises after ovulation, and its work is to prepare the lining of the uterus to receive a fertilised egg, and then to hold an early pregnancy until the placenta takes that over at around ten weeks. That is why I would rather go into this with mine in a better place than it is now.

All of that is being worked on with the practitioners above rather than by me alone. The aim is to bring my hormones back into balance, lift my waking temperature, build my iron stores up, my ferritin in particular, and get my nervous system into a calmer state. Whether it all lands the way I want it to I do not know yet. What I do know is that I would rather be looking at it now, in the early stages of perimenopause, than find out about any of it later.

If your cycles are very irregular or absent, if periods are severely painful, or if you have been trying for a while without success, please get that looked at properly rather than working on it alone. Do not spend a year on food and rest hoping it resolves something a doctor could have identified in a fortnight. I have watched women do that, and the time mattered to them. A preconception consult is an ordinary thing to book.

If you want to start with something free instead, tracking your cycle costs nothing and tells you a great deal, and if your cycle has been difficult it gives you something real to take to an appointment. If you are also coming off the pill somewhere in here, that has a rhythm of its own and I have written about it separately.

Where to go next

• •How to track your cycle, if you want to know which day you are actually on
• •Symptoms of hormonal imbalance in women, if your cycle is part of what is worrying you
• •Cyclical living, for the four phases in more detail
• •Eating for your cycle, if the food side is what you want to start with
• •My recipe book, if you would like something to cook from that follows the same rhythm

Wherever you are in your own journey, may you find the level of readiness that is perfect for you, and may your becoming a mother be beautiful.

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