I’m about to become a parent for the first time and I have no idea what I’m doing.

I’m 34 weeks pregnant, and I’m about to gain a label I never anticipated on having — a mother.

I wanted to start this whole “follow my pregnancy” journey from early in my first trimester, but life happened and here we are, almost 8 months into being pregnant. When I first found out I was pregnant, I wanted to read about other women’s experiences online but I didn’t really find what I was looking for. Somehow, I actually ended up crawling through a Reddit forum about people who regretted having children (yes, this exists). At this point, I thought, screw it — I’m going to write my own.

Funny stuff happened throughout my pregnancy, though, and it prevented me from writing. The best way to describe it was that I felt like the brain that was once located between my two ears has now shrivelled up to the size of a pea, and it was encapsulated by a bunch of air. I have two online businesses that I have majorly neglected as far as my online presence is concerned, and I felt like a shell of myself at my day job. This has lasted my entire pregnancy.

Now, I don’t want this to sound negative — or like I’m depressed or something. I’m really not! In fact, I’m probably the most content and chilled out I’ve been in years. I’m just amazed at how things can shift so quickly when your body has transitioned to another focus and in this case, it’s making another human. It’s almost like my brain said “ok, we have more important stuff to take care of here so coming up with an inspirational quote for Instagram will have to wait”.

I guess this was my first bit of insight into allowing myself to release control — something I’m sure will be a common theme as I roll into motherhood.

As my pregnancy has progressed, I have had to adapt and understand this concept more and more. The nausea comes and goes as it pleases (and no, it’s not just in the morning!), the aches and pains will be different every day, and the smell that disturbed me yesterday will be long forgotten tomorrow.

Which leads me back to where I started. I have no idea what I’m doing. I actually thought I’d never have kids so I never really put much effort into creating a plan around building a family. I now realise, this is because I never really had a proper family unit in my childhood and in addition, I picked all the wrong partners later on in life. That’s another story for another day but to keep it short, I was lucky enough to find an incredibly loving partner, on the other side of the world. Even better, he has a family that loves me dearly, and whom I love all the same.

Feeling supported and loved by your family and community can really make you re-think about whether having children is the right thing for you, or not. It can change everything you thought you already knew about what your future is going to look like.

I would be lying if I said I wasn’t scared, and if I didn’t have several moments a day where I doubt myself and my parenting abilities. However, pregnancy has taught me that instead of trying to control all my symptoms, I have to let them come and go as they please.

One day I woke up with a pain in my left foot so I wore different shoes. Another day I had terrible back pain so I strapped an ice pack to myself with an exercise band. Some days I get such bad reflux I have to suck on a lollipop all day — I don’t know where that idea came from but it was intuitive and it works. I have never had a bath in the morning in my life, but it’s something I discovered that really soothes my nausea and the aches and pains.

Instead of pushing through with my normal routines and idiosyncrasies, I realised that it’s imperative to let go of some control. I have realised that I have to be flexible with my habits if I’m going to get through this pregnancy without going mad.

In a strange way, this is so comforting leading into motherhood. I am aware that I have no clue what’s ahead of me, just like every other woman who has a baby for the first time.

What I do know, is that I have to ability to relinquish control and allow my intuition to do some of the work, my loved ones to help me out, and maybe I’ll have a bit of logic slip in between those things every now and then. The combination sounds as shaky as a one-legged stool when written out, but I have a feeling it’s stronger than a whole Google’s-worth of information could ever provide.