My pregnancy
JOURNEY
Our cover model, Megan Hutchison of Pregnancy Journal (shesaidyes.co.nz), created made with love, a beautiful bespoke fertility and pregnancy organiser. Here, she tells us about her journey to motherhood and the inspiration behind her business. My journey to motherhood hasn’t been straightforward. Blair and I have been together for more than 10 years, and after losing lots of people close to us, it has been so important for us to be able to start a family together. When my mum died five years ago, I lost a lot of weight and lost my periods. Getting engaged the following year and staying extremely fit and slim to fit my wedding dress sadly made things worse, and in the end I was treated by the hospital for hypothalamic amenorrhea. Four years on, my periods returned, though irregularly, as my hormones were still settling, so I hoped pregnancy would eventually happen naturally, but I was also very prepared for challenges and the need for medical assistance. I had begun tracking my periods, but it seemed impossible to think properly about trying to conceive while they were so irregular – I was just happy to get one every couple of months, so the pregnancy was actually a huge surprise!
My favourite part of pregnancy is feeling my baby’s movements. Feeling the baby move inside me is hands-down the most incredible experience of my life. I had been lying perfectly still in bed, with my hands on my stomach, from around 18 weeks pregnant, and around 21 weeks I finally felt what seemed like a tiny piece of popcorn popping. It was so exciting when it eventually became strong
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Pregnancy BUMP & baby
enough that I could share it with Blair, though now it is almost constant, and sometimes I’d like a break from having a foot in my ribs! Every scan has also been more exciting than the last, seeing the baby develop and grow – and at my 32 week scan I was able to see the most beautiful little face, making it all feel very real and exciting.
and includes all postnatal care. It’s called made with love and I hope the name also reflects how much love I really put into creating it.
I really wanted a pregnancy journal that felt user-friendly and personal.
Pregnancy can come with such a cascade of emotions, and journalling is so therapeutic and beneficial – especially in the early days before you feel comfortable sharing the news with many people, or talking about it openly. Pregnancy also has its challenges, both mental and physical, and writing those down is a helpful way to manage them too. I hope it will be an incredible record for women to look back on in the future, whether comparing to their following pregnancies, sharing with their children, or just reminiscing. For both women trying to conceive and those already pregnant, I also hope the first sections on health and wellbeing will really assist in encouraging a healthy pregnancy. Nutrition, fitness, mental health, and general wellbeing are so important to me, and I know how crucial it was for me to stabilise my health and hormones through diet, exercise and stress-reduction – to be able to conceive, and carry the baby throughout my pregnancy. Finally, I hope it will make women feel empowered about their bodies, their choices and their journeys – pregnancy is so special, it should be celebrated, and I want to encourage women to spend time reflecting on how amazing they are.
Following the little white book (a journal I designed for wedding planning), a lot of my customers had asked me about a pregnancy journal, but I didn’t think I could possibly create something so important and personal without having experienced pregnancy myself. Over the years, as the fertility journey became as significant to me as the eventual pregnancy journey I hoped to soon be on, it was really important to me to also include within the journal a section on fertility and trying to conceive. I also thought it would be helpful to have unique prompts for each week of pregnancy that corresponded specifically to the changes going on, rather than asking the same questions on each week (as most tend to), and include dedicated pages in each trimester for organisation checklists, partner’s notes, antenatal appointments, etc. It was also important to me that the journal didn’t end with birth, as the fourth trimester is so momentous in itself, so the journal continues a little after,
I hope made with love will be a keepsake for pregnant women.
