Foundations of Wholeness: Reproductive Years

The reproductive years:  The years between puberty and midlife.  The years of having babies, or not having babies, or trying to have babies, or wanting to have babies but not being able to have babies, or adopting babies.  Babies or no babies, the reproductive years are an expansive time of life.  Expansion requires a healthy infrastructure to support it, and that’s where the Foundations of Wholeness help build and maintain the core.

A solid footing in the foundations supports expansion, but that footing works best when it is dynamic.  Maintaining our health during the reproductive years requires nimbleness, so we can pivot, change, and modify depending on our circumstances.  What works for movement when we’re 25 is likely different when we are 2 weeks postpartum.  What we eat when we are 30 may not serve us when we are pregnant.  Like deviating from a GPS route, we want to be able to recalculate.  

When I created the Foundations of Wholeness, I focused on simple lifestyle modifications, things within our control,  that would be generally applicable to lots of women.  Women in their 20s and 30s and 40s have such diverse experiences, I find that one-size-fits-all suggestions are less applicable.  However, I will continue to provide what I've seen to be general, healthy principles. One universal truth I’ve observed about the reproductive years is that we struggle to make and take time to take care of ourselves either because of the demands of career, or family, or both.  We are at our strongest and most productive and typically the demands on us peak.  

I worked three days a week when my kids were young because when I worked as a full-time midwife (four days in the clinic plus time on-call), I felt like I had two full-time jobs - work and home.  It didn’t take me long to realize I did not like myself very much when I worked two full-time jobs.  I wanted to tend to both places with care and attention, and I wanted to tend to myself.  I didn’t feel like I was doing a good job anywhere.  Sound familiar?  Some women are willing to wake up at 4 am to exercise.  I  was not - and still am not - one of them.  

So if you’re feeling the heat of the demands of the reproductive years, consider suring up your foundations.  To an extent, these are the variables you can control (except rest when there’s a baby in the house or you travel internationally for work!). 

Food

Recommendations vary depending on where a woman is in the childbearing cycle and/or your athletic pursuits.  What a pregnant woman needs is different from a woman doing triathlons and different from a woman who works largely at a desk.  I observe women working to harness their nutrition as adults for the first time in their lives. Largely, women are living in a home of their own making and have control over their kitchen and pantry for the first time in their lives.  They are often leaving what they learned about nutrition during their childhood behind.  

The recommendation to eat mostly vegetables stands.  Vegetables are crucial to our well-being because of the natural chemicals they have that support our health.  Vegetables are also high in fiber which helps keep our gut bacteria balanced. Focusing on eating healthy or unsaturated fats like those found in avocados, nuts, and seeds; whole grains like brown rice and quinoa, and lean protein like fish and chicken is advantageous as well.  We seem to be able to tolerate more carbohydrates during the reproductive years than in midlife.  As with all the phases of life, minimizing the consumption of saturated fats like fatty meat and butter, as well as sugar, is recommended. 

Movement

The reproductive years are a fantastic time to take on and meet physical challenges.  Hormones are at their peak and the capacity for building strength and endurance is maximized.  Resiliency is strong.  The reproductive years are a great time to move it, whether it be prenatal yoga, distance running, or swimming competitively.

Making time for exercise can be the biggest challenge given the competing demands of the reproductive years.  I recommend putting a stake in the ground with exercise and scheduling around it. 

Rest

Whether you are pregnant, postpartum, working full time, or training, rest is important.  I can’t emphasize enough the importance of making rest a priority for the first two years postpartum, particularly if you are a working mother.  It was two years before I realized every weekend was not structured around napping.  Being on-call for births, nursing babies, and the ensuant sleep deprivation seriously kicked my butt.  And whether you work outside the house or as a homemaker, there is barely a break in the pace.  

Women often find it difficult to make rest a priority, not dissimilar to exercise.  Sometimes I write ‘rest’ on a prescription pad to emphasize its importance and profoundly healing effect on our physiology.  Sometimes it's the patient who needs to integrate the importance of rest into her lifestyle, sometimes it's the people around her.  

Rarely is there a time of life during which we benefit from pushing, though sometimes pushing is what life requires from us.  Just be sure to compensate - either by choice or circumstance - when able. 

Nature

Spending time outdoors was one of my primary coping mechanisms during the peak of my reproductive years.  I could only play Legos for so long before I felt antsy.  I felt guilty spending a lot of time doing chores and expecting the kids to entertain themselves.  I wanted to interact with them in a way that felt good to both of us.  So, I carried babies in backpacks around the 250-acre nature preserve I could walk to from home, pushed joggers along dirt roads, hiked, pulled small children in sleds behind me on cross country skis, and taught those kids to alpine ski once they could stand because frankly, everyone was happier spending a day outside. Often that day was also spent digging in a garden or stacking wood.

Nature also became a place for my kids to test their limits.  I can remember standing on a ski slope with my son having a full-on hissy fit about not being able to get up (which he was fully capable of).  He was having it out with himself and the mountain.  I got to be his ally as opposed to his adversary.  What parent doesn’t want that?  

Women are keenly aware of their surroundings during the reproductive years  - senses are honed, bandwidth is wide, and the natural world both grounds us in strength in our bodies and mirrors strength back to us.   The natural world, and spending time in it, supports all the best aspects of health.

Acceptance

Accepting ourselves during the reproductive years can be challenging.  Learning to care for another being, adapting to a different physical body after birth, acclimating to family life are all tremendous transitions.  As can wanting to get pregnant and not being able to, or choosing to not have children at all.  Transition to adulthood is tough!  Relying on ourselves is a big shift. 

The reproductive years are a fantastic time to explore, develop, and hone the skills that foster acceptance and carry us through the long haul.  Breathwork, meditation, prayer, journaling, visualization, and the like can help our central nervous systems stay calm and nimble while we roll through some of the most potentially expansive years of our lives.