Having a baby has always been something I have wanted, but the timing has never been right. Running my own fitness business in the hustle and bustle of New York City has consumed my time and energy for the past five years, and there were times that I thought the timing would never be right.
When COVID hit in March 2020, my business (along with millions of others) came to a screeching halt. Naturally, I hit the panic button; several negative thoughts entered my mind like, ‘What does this mean for my business, which thrives on personal interaction?’, ‘How will I continue to make enough income to live and eat in NYC?’, ‘How will we ever start a family in this climate?!’…
I allowed fear to take over as everything I’d worked toward vanished in the blink of an eye. Lucky for me, fear is not one of my defining characteristics. It wasn’t long before I knew I needed to pivot my business to an online platform. Almost immediately, I got to work on filming content and building a library of workouts for what would become my online on-demand fitness platform, which is alive and well today.
As it turns out, this pivot was a blessing in disguise. For the first time in my life, I was working from home and the flexibility allowed me, and my wife, to reevaluate how we want to take on the next steps of our lives. It allowed me to sit back and reconsider my motherhood journey, and all signs pointed to: If not now, then when?
In the summer of 2020, my wife Martha and I decided it was time to start a family. By early November, we got the news that I was pregnant!
As I write this, I am 25 weeks pregnant with a healthy baby. Being pregnant during the pandemic has had its ups and downs. Some positives are that everyone is hunkered down, so my natural feelings of FOMO (fear of missing out) have been at bay. Another positive is that the pandemic has forced to me change the way I work and has allowed me to slow down from the unsustainable pace that I was going at pre-pandemic.
On a not-so-positive note, Martha cannot come to any doctors appointments with me, as hospitals and birthing centres are trying to minimize their exposure to the virus. It has also been a terrifying to learn that contracting COVID-19 during pregnancy can be extremely dangerous to you and your baby.
Lastly, my family in Canada is unable to cross the border and cannot visit at the moment. We remain positive that this restriction will lift the closer we get to the due date, but for now, I only get to share this experience with them via Zoom.
Despite all of the unpredictability that the past year has brought us, the shining light for Martha and I is that we get the chance to bring a child into the world. It truly is a blessing to have had the opportunity to take a step back and reevaluate the trajectory of my life.
I am so excited to become a first-time mom. And, on top of that, I am pretty proud to say that we did this despite all of the fear and uncertainty of a global pandemic. We were able to step back and recognize that this was the right time for us. We are both ready, and so excited for the journey that awaits us in 15 weeks.
You can follow along on Gill’s pregnancy journey here!
