The Headspace Guide To … A Mindful Pregnancy (9 page)

Any fertility expert will tell you that a woman is most likely to conceive when the body and mind are at ease. This is why couples are sometimes advised to take a holiday or to reduce the number of hours at work where possible, because high stress and anxiety form a barrier to conception, putting the body in a non-receptive state. Look at it this way: if you’re a zebra fleeing from a lion that wants to maul you, your body will be gripped by fear and stress and in no position to ovulate. Granted, as a couple yearning for a baby, you may not be able to fully identify with a zebra on the run across the savannah, but your anxiety and worries illicit the same biological responses. Hence, fertility experts will so often prescribe stress-reduction techniques – and none is more effective than mindfulness.

Stress reduction improves blood flow to the reproductive organs and aids with regulating the menstrual cycle, helping to achieve optimal ovulation. Women tend to find their sensitivity to hormone production then increases, which leads to a more receptive environment for conception. With reduced cortisol and adrenaline levels, combined with a spike in the secretion of endorphins, the entire body becomes a healthier, more inviting place for human life to take form. The irony, of course, is that this state of relaxation so often occurs when couples have tried very hard for a period of time and have then given up. It is almost as though in the relief of no longer trying, the mind at last surrenders and the body is able to relax and conceive.

This demonstrates very well the power of letting go. But that doesn’t mean letting go of your intention to have a child and becoming passive. Not at all. It means letting go of the attachment that creates so much worry, fear and suffering. In letting go in this way, you help to create the conditions in which to conceive.

Any couple considering starting a family will want to do what they can to optimise their fertility. Traditional advice will cover the fundamentals, including removing unnecessary medication, incorporating exercise, ensuring adequate sleep and maintaining a healthy diet. These days, many fertility clinics, specialist doctors and midwives are now prescribing mindfulness as a matter of course. The science of fertility clearly demonstrates the wisdom of incorporating such a stress-reduction tool, and while mindfulness cannot
cure
infertility, it does help cultivate an optimal environment for life to grow.

Research carried out in 2005, as part of a study at the University of California, San Diego, revealed that women with high stress levels were 20 per cent less likely to get pregnant. A similar study at Oxford University also linked prolonged periods of stress with the struggle to conceive. Now, we’ve already established that mindfulness combats stress, so although there is no guarantee of the outcome, we can see how it helps to reduce one of the key factors in infertility.

But the research into mindfulness and fertility goes a little bit deeper than simple stress reduction. What seemingly fascinates scientists is that increased awareness not only creates a much more open way of dealing with painful emotions, but also promotes self-compassion and self-forgiveness, meaning there is less self-judgement attached to fertility issues that are beyond our control.

In one clinical trial in 2013, fifty-five infertile women attended ten weekly meditation classes, with each session lasting around two hours. Much of the session was taken up with discussion, with just a small portion allocated for the meditation itself. Before the trial started, the participants reported feelings of depression, anxiety, shame and a sense that they felt trapped within their circumstances. By the end of the ten weeks, those women revealed ‘a significant decrease in depressive symptoms, shame, entrapment and defeat’, leading researchers to conclude that ‘increasing mindfulness and acceptance skills … seems to help women to experience negative inner states in new ways, decreasing their entanglement with them and, thus, their psychological distress’.

A Headspace user named Patricia was thirty-three when she married her long-term partner in the summer and decided to stop birth control and start a family. She thought she’d be pregnant by Christmas. Two years later, it hadn’t happened and she started to experience signs of anxiety and depression. Her doctor prescribed antidepressants and referred her to a counsellor but, as Patricia said, ‘I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life being medicated, and then a fertility doctor said medication was not safe for pregnancy. That’s when a close friend suggested mindfulness.’

Patricia’s experience thereafter mirrors the findings of that 2013 study. She says:

I have stopped my antidepressants altogether, I have learned to cope better with the negative emotions and thoughts, and I have learned to be more in the moment. Mindfulness has guided me through bad test results, invasive medical procedures and some tough decisions. It will also guide me through the IVF treatment we’re about to start, three and a half years after throwing away my birth-control pills.

Fertility is a partnership, requiring a commitment from both individuals to be as healthy and relaxed as they can possibly be. What matters as much as everything else is that you, the couple, are holding hands throughout, looking at life through the same window. I’ve known so many people go through fertility issues and not talk about their innermost fears and anxieties, leaving a big, fat, bright-white elephant sitting in the corner of the room. The danger of suppressed emotions is that not only do you hold on to them for longer, but they tend to build and simmer, often coming out in other ways, disguised as resentment, anxiety or sadness.

Living mindfully allows you the opportunity to not only better understand yourself, but also to understand your partner’s perspective. The ability to sit down, listen to that person, relate to their experience and truly hear their fears and concerns – free of interruption or judgement – is vitally important in fostering a healthy relationship. This small step alone can remove a huge weight, allowing you to meet one another ‘
as it is
’, free from the burden of expectation or remorse. Think of it as meditation in action, creating the space in your own mind to share things in a calm and clear way, while at the same time being there for your partner. When trying for a baby it is not about the mother or the father, ‘you’ or ‘me’; it is about ‘us’ – the unit – and how we can best support one another.

A study undertaken at the University of North Carolina evaluated the ‘relationship enhancement’ of mindfulness during a clinical trial that involved ‘relatively happy’ couples. While I’m not entirely sure what ‘relatively happy’ means, the results were interesting because the practice improved ‘relatedness, closeness and acceptance of one another’, while simultaneously decreasing any tension.

In letting go of expectation, we open ourselves to every possibility. No matter how sad and difficult it is to confront, we cannot avoid the simple yet painful truth that some couples are unable to conceive, in the same way that some will inevitably miscarry and others – who have been able to conceive once (or even twice) in the past – are never able to do so again. Mindfulness does not ask us to disregard this painful truth, to dissociate or escape its glare. On the contrary, it asks us to look at it head on, to acknowledge this fact as part of the human condition.

Compounding the sense of sadness, there can often be a deep sense of frustration in not understanding the reasons behind infertility, because while these can sometimes be explained and even addressed, in over 40 per cent of couples struggling with fertility issues, no medical explanation is ever found. It is much like when we lose someone close to us ‘before their time’ – it can appear so unfair, making us question how life can work in this way and leaving us wishing that things could be different. But mindfulness reminds us that the space between ‘how we think life
should
be’ and ‘life
as it is
’ is equal to our level of suffering; the farther away we are from accepting things as they are, the more anguish, worry and anxiety is caused. And that reminder is aimed at gently bringing us back to the present moment, with a deep appreciation for this precious human life and all of those around us.

As much as mindfulness can help us on our journey to parenthood, so it can help us on our journey with heartache and grief. It may not change the outcome, but it
will
change our experience of the journey – and there is no greater friend to have with you along the way.

There are many stories I remember from the monastery, but one of my favourites concerns a Zen master, who was something of a legend in the late 1600s.

Hakuin Ekaku lived in a small Japanese village and, being the only abbot for miles around, many locals and monks visited him at his run-down temple, seeking out his teachings.

One day, when he was quite elderly, there was a knock on the door, and he was confronted by the outraged parents of a beautiful young girl who lived nearby. She had accidentally fallen pregnant and, in an attempt to protect the identity of the father, had blurted out that Hakuin seduced her during a visit to the temple.

‘Is that so?’ he said when confronted with the accusation.

Without reacting, he allowed the father to vent and storm off, knowing that word would soon spread around the village, but that didn’t matter; it was, after all, outside of his control.

Some months later, with his reputation in tatters, there was another knock at the door. There, at the entrance to the temple, lay a wicker basket containing the newborn, just days old. Hakuin leaned down, read the attached note and discovered the girl had left for the city; ‘their’ son was his responsibility now.

‘Is that so?’ he mumbled to himself, and he took the baby inside.

He accepted what life had delivered and, over the following year, fed, cared for and nurtured the little one like his own. One year later, the baby’s mother, unable to live with the guilt any longer, confessed to her lie, revealing that a man who worked at the local market was the father. The couple, by now engaged to be married, turned up at the temple door, begging not only for forgiveness but to take back their one-year-old boy, explaining what had happened and how they had been scared.

‘Is that so?’ said Hakuin.

He handed over the baby without protest, continued with his life, and, when the story travelled around the village, his reputation was not only restored, but reinvigorated.

Admittedly, none of us is going to be so enlightened that when life presents us with a baby, we’ll simply shrug our shoulders and say, ‘Is that so?’ without any fuss. But the point of this story is that we can
move closer towards
such an accepting mindset, so that we are more at ease with the upheaval of change. If we develop flexibility of mind – rather than hold on to a rigid way of being and our old way of life – we will start to feel more ‘Is that so-ness’ with whatever happens.

Hakuin lived true to his teachings; he had cultivated such a peaceful, contented mind that no matter what unfolded, no matter the curveballs, everything was OK. That didn’t necessarily mean he was always happy, but there was an underlying contentment which permeated his life, underpinning the intention to take everything in his stride.

We, as human beings, are all on the exact same journey as that Zen master. Good things will happen, as will sad things, unexpected things and things we don’t want to happen or have no time for. Our choice is a straightforward one: either we get completely thrown off course and caught up in the ensuing chaos, or we meet each event with a genuine sense of awareness, a gentle acceptance … and this quality of ‘Is that so-ness’.