I Take Supplements for my Baby, Not Me

That sentence used to be the truest thing about me.

I never said it out loud. I didn’t need to. It lived in every choice I made for over a decade.

I was 27 when I started taking prenatals for the first time. We had just begun trying for our first baby and in the space of one positive pregnancy test, my entire relationship with my own body changed. Suddenly I cared about what I was eating. Suddenly I cared whether I was getting enough iron, enough folate, enough sleep. Suddenly I read the labels…

But only because I was about to make a baby.

It didn’t once occur to me that I had deserved that kind of care all along.

My Wellness Was About Him

Everything I did, I did for him.

The supplements. The food I ate. The walks. The hydration. The careful sleep hygiene. The hours spent reading about foetal development and what nutrients support which stage. Every choice I made, every glass of water I drank, every leafy green I forced down when I didn’t want it, was filtered through one question.

Is this good for the baby? Never. Is this good for me?

And then he was born. And the centre of gravity didn’t shift. It only deepened.

Breastfeeding made it worse

Because once you’re feeding a baby with your own body, every question about your nutrition becomes a question about theirs.

Am I producing enough milk? Is my milk good enough? Is it nutritious enough? Should I be eating more? Should I be eating differently? Will the fact that I had a piece of cake affect his sleep tonight? Will the fact that I forgot to drink water all day shrink my supply?

I was so consumed with anxiety about whether my milk was enough for my son, that I never once stopped to ask whether it was enough for me. I was eating toast in between loading the washing machine. I was sipping coffee that had been microwaved three times. I was nursing through the night and running on fumes by day - and I told myself this was just what motherhood was. This was the season. I’d come out the other side eventually.

Until I quite literally collapsed

I had been waving my own red flags away for months when my body finally refused to be ignored.

The collapse came suddenly. The investigations that followed didn’t.

One of the things they found was a dangerously low potassium level. Low enough to be the kind of thing that puts a healthy young woman in hospital. Low enough to be the answer to questions I’d been asking for a year.

The exhaustion that no amount of sleep touched. The dizzy spells. The heart palpitations I’d dismissed as anxiety. The feeling of being scraped out from the inside.

It wasn’t anxiety. It wasn’t me being dramatic. It wasn’t the season.

It was a depleted woman with a body that had finally run out of ways to ask quietly.

A note on potassium

Potassium is one of the few minerals where both too little and too much are seriously dangerous. Low potassium can cause cardiac irregularities and muscle weakness. So can high potassium. It’s one of the most carefully monitored levels in clinical medicine for good reason.

Please do not supplement potassium without medical supervision. If you suspect you are deficient, ask your GP for a blood test. Treatment, if needed, should always be guided by a clinician.

This pregnancy is my Elsa-moment

I am pregnant with my second baby now - another boy - and I’ve made a different choice this time, before the baby has even arrived. I’mcalling it my Elsa-moment. Not because anything has been let go of, but because I finally stopped waiting for someone else to tell me I was worth taking care of. I stopped waiting for a positive pregnancy test to grant me permission. I stopped waiting for a medical emergency to make my own wellbeing legitimate.

I just gave it to myself. I was the one I’d been waiting for all of life. 

I don’t need to be growing a baby to deserve nourishment. I don’t need to be breastfeeding a baby to deserve nourishment. I don’t need a diagnosis and I certainly don’t need a reason. I deserve to be nourished because I do. Because I am a woman. Because there are so many people who love me want me here. Because I want me here.

That is the whole reason. There does not need to be another one.

Where Healthy Mama Happy Baba fits in

I started taking the Healthy Mama Happy Baba supplement for pre-conception, pregnancy & postpartum over a year ago. I started taking it because I had finally understood something the woman who collapsed five years ago didn’t know yet. That a mother’s nutrition is not a treatment for a deficiency. It is a baseline. A non-negotiable part of being a woman who has carried and fed and held and loved at the cost of her own stores for years.

I make my smoothie (almost) every morning now and I’m not stopping when the baby arrives. I’m not going back to being the woman who only feeds herself properly when she is feeding someone else.

The version of me who didn’t know she counted

I think about her sometimes. The 27 year old at the kitchen counter taking her first prenatal. The 32 year old breastfeeding through the night with a biscuit in her hand. The 34 year old waking up in a hospital bed wondering how she got there.

She didn’t know she counted.

She thought she had to earn nourishment by growing or feeding someone else. She thought self-care was selfish. She thought motherhood meant disappearing.

I’m still grieving her, a little. The years she spent waiting for permission that was always hers to give, but I'm also so proud of her. Because she is the reason I know what I know now. She’s the reason I made my smoothie this morning. She’s the reason I will keep making it long after the newest member of our family is here.

I take Healthy Mama Happy Baba for him. But I take it for her, too. The version of me who didn’t know she counted. She does. She always did.

Get 40% off my pregnancy & breastfeeding supplement of choice with code: DANIELLE40 

With love,

Danielle 

❤️