I’ve written about this over and over and over again.

In my opinion, our bodies are magic.

Our minds and our bodies are so incredibly interconnected. One and the same through and through.

Yesterday was a hard day. A day full of time changes and teething and sleeplessness but also of being overtired or maybe just plain exhausted. At 7:00 pm I was cooking in the kitchen and I felt like I couldn’t breathe. Like every breath was just as shallow as the last one. Chest breathing. All of a sudden I felt like I had a fever and like I was getting a urinary tract infection. My body’s sign that things are not really flowing in the same direction inside. I looked at the clock – 7:03 pm. I didn’t need to take anything out for another few moments so I sat down on the floor. Cross legged, apron tied around my waist, fan on over the stove to create a noise barrier for Agatha sleeping in the next room.

I stopped, I sat and I breathed but nothing felt like it was moving. I brought my hands to my chest and focused on four counts going in and four counts going out. Nothing. I turned, lay on the floor and gently placed my feet up the fridge door. I placed one hand on my belly and one on the cold tile floor. I could feel things slowing down. I could feel the blood leaving my feet. I was slowly slowing down.

More than three people really close to me have had crazy mind/body altering experiences lately. Experiences that have shaken them up and caused them to think about what’s really going on. Our bodies do this. All on their own. They know when we need to stop and if we don’t, they find some incredibly LOUD way to force us to slow down.

We can’t keep running on empty. Well, I guess we can, but I want to help you to know you don’t have to.

You probably know I’ve always been fascinated by our bodies, in particular how they create hormones that eventually lead to the creation of a human being. Did you know our eggs take around ninety days to become ready for ovulation? They have a life cycle and an agenda. That means three months (give or take) before you think you want to get pregnant is when you should start preparing to make the juiciest, best eggs you can. There are definitely certain things we can do or implement in our life to help increase the health and general awesomeness of our eggs (I am by no means a doctor, but I have spent a fair amount of time thinking and reading about our bodies and our ability to get pregnant). Eat clean whole foods, take supplements if needed, balance hormones, embrace additional therapies like acupuncture, decrease overall stress, increase breathing, try fertility massages, drink water, go to bed early, sleep when you’re tired. The list goes on.

There are so many things that I’ve recommended – and maybe even more that I’ve tried. And I was lucky enough to have the chance to be pregnant and give birth to a happy and healthy human. I truly believe it was magic. I didn’t have a cycle for 6 months prior to conception. On paper, it doesn’t make sense. So when someone close to me asked what I would do if I had never gotten pregnant I wanted to mention it. Because as much as I believe in everything I write about here, and everything I’ve tried myself, I also believe with all my soul in doing what you need to. To being true to you. To saying yes to all the ART’s, to IVF, to IUI, to adoption, to surrogates. I distinctly remember the day I felt like it wasn’t going to happen – I told my mum I was ready to make an appointment with the fertility specialist and figure out what our next steps are. It was then that I really remembered there are no real “right” answers on this journey. Because where we are in it, changes. That’s the magic of it all. The different therapies and medications, the different mantras and breathing exercises – they might be working for us for a while and then all of a sudden we take a look inside and recognize we’re in desperate need for something to change.

What I will say is that you do have control over a few things along the way. You can treat your body as the incredible vessel that it is. One that you nourish and bathe and move and clothe and love and respect on a minute to minute basis.

When our bodies shut down or start acting out – panic attacks, seizures, consecutive miscarriages, new allergies, never ending sickness, chronic fatigue – we tend to get angry and frustrated (or at least I do). We don’t know where to direct what we’re feeling. It’s all too much at one time. And unfortunately I don’t have any wildly different advice for you here. It’s so personal. Whatever you’re going through is yours to go through. What I advise is to not ignore it. Don’t not go to the practitioner or doctor, don’t squander it and try not to misinterpret it as something else.

It is very much a part of you.

Slow down. Listen. Check out of the GO GO GO and take a deep breath. It’s so easy to feel like we need to go to a yoga class or to get a massage to really truly slow down. I’ll say it’s amazing if you can do that, but you can just as easily sit exactly where you are. Maybe even check the time and give yourself the three minutes you have before you have to take that something out of the oven, pick that someone up or return that email. The time is there, we just have to give it to ourselves.