With Mayo Clinic certified nurse-midwife Mary Murry, R.N., C.N.M.

I love taking care of women. I have nothing against men; I just understand the complexities of women better. I love taking care of pregnant women and laboring women and women in for a yearly exam. If I could change one thing about women, it would be this idea that we can and should be able to do everything.

I see this most often in pregnancy. We women of the 21st century work. We work in our homes, we work outside our homes. Our days are full. With all this rushing and working and controlling our house of cards, we forget to listen to our bodies. This is important during our entire lives but especially during pregnancy.

Women in the first trimester are usually tired. Their body is telling them to rest. Do we do that? Not often. In the third trimester, our legs hurt, our back hurts, we get pulling and pinching and jabbing pains. Do we sit down and rest for 30 minutes? Not often. Unless our bodies reach up and grab us by the neck and scream “Listen to me!” we often ignore the signals and keep up our pace.

My feelings about this are obvious. Don’t make your body yell at you. Listen to its quiet voice. Rest when it says to rest. Eat when it says to eat. Pay attention to your cravings. Many women don’t think they have the time to take 30 minutes to lie on the couch, but you do. If you have small children, childproof a room, have toys available and lay down. Explain that mommy needs a rest time.

If you have children who nap, use that time for more than catching up on other work. Rest. If you work outside the home, there may not be a couch available for you (or your employer may frown on you using their couch), but you can use your breaks to rest. Don’t do errands on your breaks. Do things instead that relax and refresh you. I know I could always find a reason why I couldn’t rest until I looked at it as an essential part of my self-care.

When I was pregnant with my third child, everyone knew that mommy was in the bed for 30 minutes after she got home. Both girls usually climbed into the bed with me. The 2 1/2 year old would chatter and the 8 year old would go over her day and what homework she had for the evening. It was a time of physical rest for me and a time to reconnect with the girls after a busy day. (My husband learned very quickly not to ask what was for dinner.)

Be kind to yourself. Be kind to your body. In the long run, you and your baby will be the better for it.

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