How to Make the Most of Forced Rest in Pregnancy

In the frenzy of Western life, in which women submit to the hectic pace that governs family, social, and working life, motherhood, however deeply desired, often represents a hitch in the normal routine that is hard to get used to. Having to slow down one's schedule, whether on a doctor's advice or because one becomes aware of a growing need for rest and self-care, is not always readily accepted in practice as a positive thing. Even though it is rationally seen as necessary, having to delegate certain tasks, cut back on commitments, and slow down the pace of one's professional performance, up to and including, for some, complete bed rest or having to leave one's job early, represents a sharp break and can trigger feelings of frustration.

It is highly likely that such a sudden, forced change of habits generates a sense of helplessness and uselessness in someone who, for years, has managed activities, teams, and responsibilities while also juggling her own personal needs into whatever scraps of time were left, like a game of Tetris; now the needs of the baby on the way and of the pregnant condition itself claim center stage, and it is only natural that this should happen, since they are the prelude to the months and years to come, a period in which the mother's life will need to shape itself around her child's needs well into the teenage years and beyond.

This «forced rest» holds an immense treasure on an energetic level, and it is worth living it to the fullest and truly enjoying it. Just as in nature the biological cycles of blossoming and flowering alternate with cycles of apparent stillness and uselessness, in which the plant remains motionless for months, shedding its leaves and sleeping through the harshness of winter, so too does the human being need equally long periods of rest and «pause», at times forced upon us by events, in which we simply «are», we exist, without doing anything. Like the hen that broods her eggs, giving up scratching about the yard, so the mother on early leave and the one confined to bed rest must entrust to time, and to Mother Nature, the work of «doing», which becomes wholly concentrated in the silent shaping of the creature in her womb.

Just as fields left fallow between one sowing and the next are strengthened and enriched ahead of a new season, so the time of pre-birth rest for mothers, if not lived with frustration and boredom, is rich with opportunity. One can, calmly, prepare the baby's layette, cook meals to keep in the freezer for the first weeks after the hospital, reclaim for oneself that time of care and pampering so often denied and so slow to find a place again in the days after birth, enjoying an essential-oil massage or two, sleeping and resting ahead of quite different exertions, or simply thinking and meditating, experiencing that long-forgotten «sweetness of doing nothing».

Time spent resting is healthy and necessary; the cycle of activity and stillness, when lived naturally, often unleashes a creative power that can be channeled into future activities, new and stimulating, precisely as a fruit of the absence of urgent tasks, which have given us time finally spent thinking about the future we would like for ourselves, giving us the chance to plan it.