Journaling for Presence: Listening to Yourself When You're Growing a Human

Most pregnant people don't journal.

Let's just start there.

You've heard about it—the glowing pregnant person with her leather-bound journal, recording her feelings, processing her emotions, building connection with her baby through beautiful handwritten reflections. It sounds lovely. It also sounds like one more thing you're supposed to be doing perfectly while you're already drowning. One more way to prove you're the kind of parent who has her life together. One more opportunity to fail when you can't keep it up, or your handwriting looks like it belongs to an angry toddler, or the blank page makes you want to scream instead of feel grateful.

Here's the thing nobody tells you: journaling during pregnancy isn't about creating a lovely record for your baby to read someday. It's not about having profound thoughts or meaningful revelations. It's about stopping long enough to listen to yourself when nobody else is, and the world is demanding something from you every second. It's about checking in with what you actually think and feel underneath the noise.

You don't have to be a writer. You don't have to have anything figured out. You don't even have to think it's a good idea. But if you're willing to spend 10 minutes putting words on paper, your body and your intuition might tell you things your constantly-working brain hasn't had time to process yet.

Why This Actually Matters

Your body is sending signals all the time. The exhaustion, the fear, the random moments of joy, the grief about what's ending, the confusion about what comes next—all of it is information. But information doesn't mean much if you don't stop long enough to actually hear it.

Pregnancy is one of the few times in your life when listening to yourself is actually preparation for something concrete. Not in a woo way, not in a "manifesting your birth" way, but in a practical, nervous-system-learning way. Labor requires you to be present to what's actually happening in your body instead of what you think should be happening. It requires you to trust your intuition when things feel off. It requires you to know yourself well enough to ask for what you need and say no to what doesn't serve you. Journaling is just practice for those skills.

Your baby doesn't need you to have it all figured out before they arrive. They need you to know how to listen to yourself. Because once they're here, you're going to be making thousands of small decisions based on your intuition—does this cry mean hunger or discomfort? Is my gut feeling that something's wrong actually important information? What do I actually want, separate from what I think a good parent should want? If you've been practicing listening to yourself during pregnancy, those decisions might feel slightly less impossible.

There's also something powerful about writing things down that you haven't said out loud. The fear you can't admit to your partner. The grief about your body changing. The excitement that feels too much to contain. The anger at people who don't understand what you're going through. The weird thoughts you're having about labor or parenthood or your own childhood. When you write it, it becomes real. It becomes something you can look at and work with instead of something that just circulates in your brain keeping you awake at night.

And here's the thing that actually matters: you're building relationship with your own knowing before the outside world gets its hands on it. Before your partner has opinions, before your mother has suggestions, before the internet has answers, before you doubt yourself into paralysis—there's just you and what you know. Journaling is where you get to practice trusting that. That's what midwifery care honors, actually. Not telling you what to do, but helping you access what you already know about your body and your baby and what feels right to you.

Setting Up Space (Without Making It Another Thing to Do)

Let's be clear: you do not need a special room. You do not need a beautiful journal. You do not need the perfect pen or the right lighting or an Instagram-worthy setup. You need somewhere you can be alone with a piece of paper for 10 minutes without someone asking you what's for dinner.

That might be your bed. It might be the passenger seat of your car during lunch break. It might be the bathroom with the door locked, because that's literally the only place you can be undisturbed. It might be the kitchen table at 5am before anyone else wakes up, or at 9pm after everyone goes to bed. It might be sitting outside on the porch if you have one, or standing in your closet if that's the only quiet space you can find. There's no wrong place. Wherever you can be interruption-free for a few minutes is the right place.

What actually helps: Pick somewhere you can realistically access regularly. If journaling is supposed to happen in some special meditation corner you've created and that corner doesn't exist in your life, you won't do it. But if you journal at the kitchen table where you already sit, or in your car where you already spend time, or on your bed where you're already lying down exhausted—that's sustainable. That's real.

The physical space matters less than the interruption factor. If you can find 10-15 minutes alone, great. Use it. But if your life doesn't allow for uninterrupted time, fragments still count. Write in the bathroom for five minutes. Scribble on the back of a receipt while waiting at your doctor's appointment. Voice memo yourself driving home and transcribe it later. Two sentences on a napkin still counts as checking in with yourself.

For tools: A cheap notebook works. A phone notes app works. Loose paper works. A napkin works. Honestly, the nicer the journal, the more pressure you'll feel to make it meaningful and beautiful. Save yourself the guilt and just use whatever's easiest. This isn't about creating something precious. It's about getting thoughts out of your head so you can actually examine them.

The space is secondary to the act itself. Honor what's actually accessible to you, not what you think you should be doing.

The Prompts

Here are six prompts organized by theme. You don't have to answer all of them. You don't have to answer them in order. Pick whatever one is calling to you on any given day, or read them all and notice which one makes you feel resistant or emotional—that's usually the one that needs your attention.

What Are You Releasing?

Your body is changing. Your identity is shifting. The version of yourself that existed before pregnancy is moving into something new. Sometimes that feels exciting. Sometimes it feels like a loss. Both are true.

Write about what you're letting go of—not what you think you should let go of, but what you actually feel ending. Maybe it's your freedom. Maybe it's the version of yourself that was defined by work. Maybe it's a fantasy of how you thought your life would look. Maybe it's the relationship you had with your own body. Write about what you're grieving, even if you're also excited about what's coming. You can hold both at the same time.

What Does Your Body Know?

Your body has been doing things without your permission since conception. Building a placenta. Shifting your center of gravity. Moving organs around. Changing your hormones. Preparing for labor. Your thinking brain is playing catch-up to what your body already knows.

What is your body telling you that you haven't admitted out loud yet? Is something about your birth plan not sitting right? Do you have a feeling that something needs to change? Is your body asking for something that's not on any list of "what pregnant people should do"? Write about what your gut knows, separate from what your brain thinks you should think.

What Do You Actually Want?

Not what you should want. Not what a good mother would want. Not what your partner thinks you should want or what the internet says you should want. What do you actually want?

For your birth? For your body? For your time after the baby comes? For your relationship? For yourself as a parent? Write about what you genuinely want, even if it contradicts something else you also want, even if it seems selfish, even if you don't know how to make it happen. There's no judgment here. You're just checking in with what you actually desire, separate from everything else.

How Do You Want to Be Held?

Labor is coming. Whether it's easy or hard, quick or slow, you're going to need something from the people around you. What is it?

Do you need silence? Do you need someone to believe you can do this when you don't believe it yourself? Do you need physical touch or do you need space? Do you need someone to be present without trying to fix it? Do you need to be told you're doing great, or do you need honesty if something isn't working? Write about how you want to be held during labor—literally and figuratively. Write about what support actually looks like to you.

What Are You Scared Of?

Name it. Not the sanitized version of your fear, but the real thing. Labor pain. Dying. Your baby being hurt. Failing as a parent. Never feeling like yourself again. Losing your independence. Something being wrong and nobody catching it. The medical system. Trusting your body. Not trusting your body. All of it.

Naming fear doesn't make it come true. It actually makes it smaller, because it becomes something you can look at instead of something that just haunts you. Write about what you're actually terrified of, and then write about what you need to feel safer around that fear.

Who Is Your Baby?

You haven't met them yet, but you already know something about them. Maybe you have dreams about what they'll be like. Maybe you feel their personality in the way they move. Maybe you're terrified you'll have nothing in common. Maybe you're excited about who they'll become.

Write about the person you think is coming. Not their gender or their features, but their essence. How do you imagine them? What qualities do you sense? What kind of human being do you think they are? What are you hoping to discover about them? Write to them, if that feels right. Tell them what you want them to know about you before they meet you.

The Close

Journaling doesn't have to be beautiful. It doesn't have to make sense. It doesn't have to be consistent or productive or lead to any particular revelation. You can write one sentence and put the journal away for a week. You can write when you're angry instead of when you're calm. You can write questions that never get answered. You can write the same fear over and over until something shifts.

What matters is that you're checking in with yourself. You're creating space for your own knowing to surface. You're building relationship with your intuition before labor, before parenthood, before the outside world gets a vote on what you should be feeling or wanting or doing.

If you find that journaling makes you feel worse instead of better—more anxious, more overwhelmed, more lost—then it's not the tool for you right now. Not every practice works for every person, and that's okay. Trust that assessment and move on.

But if you find that those 10 minutes of putting words on paper actually quiets something in you, or clarifies something that's been fuzzy, or helps you feel less alone with what you're thinking—keep going. You're building skills that will serve you through labor, through early parenthood, and through all the transformations coming your way.

You already know more than you think you do. Journaling is just the practice of listening to what you already know.

If you're looking for birth care that honors this kind of listening and presence, reach out to Nets, here, at Fruit of the Womb. Whether you're seeking midwifery care, doula support, or craniosacral therapy, Nets's approach is rooted in trusting what you know about your body and your baby. She meets pregnant people exactly where they are—not where they think they should be—and helps you build the confidence in your own knowing that will carry you through birth and beyond.

Schedule a free consultation at [Fruit of the Womb contact page] or reach out directly at 240-997-5319 or netsitsah@hotmail.com. Serving Baltimore City, Baltimore County, Carroll County, and Howard County, Maryland; York County, Pennsylvania.

Frequently Asked Questions

What if journaling makes me more anxious instead of calmer?

This happens to a lot of people, and it's worth paying attention to. For some of us, journaling brings up everything we've been avoiding—the fears, the doubts, the things that don't fit the narrative we've been telling ourselves. When you stop moving and start writing, it all rushes in at once. If that's what's happening, journaling might not be your tool right now. You don't have to force it. Some people need to keep moving to survive pregnancy, and that's legitimate. But if you're interested in exploring this, it can help to start with something smaller—not open-ended journaling, but one specific prompt that you sit with for five minutes. And if the anxiety is overwhelming, that's worth talking to someone about. Your care provider, a therapist, your partner—someone who can help you process what's coming up. Journaling isn't therapy, and sometimes what emerges needs more support than writing alone can provide.

How often should I actually journal?

However often works for you. Not every day. Not three times a week. Not in any particular pattern. The moment journaling becomes something you're supposed to do perfectly and consistently, it stops being helpful and becomes another source of guilt. Some pregnant people journal every day. Some write once a week. Some write once a month. Some go months without journaling and then write three entries in a weekend. All of that is fine. Treat it like checking in with yourself when you have something to say or something you need to figure out, not like a habit you have to build. If you miss a week, you're not failing. If you journal five days in a row and then don't write for a month, that's perfect. There's no wrong frequency. The only way to fail at this is to make it another impossible standard.

What if my handwriting is messy and I can't organize my thoughts?

Good. Messy is honest. Journaling isn't supposed to be neat or organized. It's supposed to be real. If you're struggling to get your thoughts onto the page because they're scattered or contradictory or incoherent, write exactly that. "I can't organize this. It's all jumbled." Let it be jumbled. That's the point. Your thoughts during pregnancy are probably contradictory—excited and terrified, wanting the baby and wanting your old life back, trusting your body and completely doubting it. Writing that mess out is exactly what needs to happen. Nobody else has to read this. You don't have to make it pretty. You just have to be honest.

Do I have to keep this private or can I share it?

That's entirely up to you. Some people journal specifically as a way to process things privately before sharing them. Some people want to share their journals with their partners because it helps with communication. Some people would be mortified if anyone ever saw what they'd written. All of that is valid. The important thing is that when you're writing, you're writing for yourself first. You can decide later what you want to share and with whom. Don't write thinking about an audience, because that will make you censor yourself. Get it all out. Then you can decide what to do with it. But if you're worried someone will find your journal and judge you, write somewhere private or use a code or destroy the pages after you've written them. You deserve to have a space where you're completely unfiltered, without having to worry about consequences. Create that space, however you need to.

What if I journal something that scares me—when should I talk to someone about it?

If what you've written is something that makes you genuinely afraid you might hurt yourself or your baby, or if you're having thoughts that feel dangerous or out of control, that's worth talking to someone about. Your midwife, your doctor, a therapist, a crisis line—someone who can help you assess whether this is normal pregnancy anxiety or something that needs more support. You don't have to be alone with the scary stuff. That's what your care team is for. But small fears, doubts, dark thoughts about your body or your identity—that's normal pregnancy territory. You don't have to tell anyone about that unless you want to. The journaling is just you making sense of it. But if it ever feels like more than you can hold, that's the moment to reach out. There's no shame in needing support. That's what it's there for.