Becoming a boy mom made me more feminine

Cats out of the bag!!! After five weeks of holding it in, we’re having a boy! Forget cutting a cake, ChatGPT read our scan results at 11 p.m. and told us we were having a boy. Oh yeah, baby—peak modern civilization.

Ironically, carrying a little boy has brought me closer to womanhood than anything else ever has.

Maybe it was my decision to have a hot-girl pregnancy; maybe pregnancy forced me to slow down enough to become the woman I always dreamt I would be. But here I am, barefoot and pregnant, and feeling more feminine than ever.

The first bit of my pregnancy was challenging to every ounce of my identity. Watching my body change from morning to night and wrestling with the fact that my belly was now bigger than my ass, I got to a point where I needed to make a choice.

Become the mother and woman I wanted to be, or let this chapter get me down.

That very decision, that I published to the world (all 27 of my followers anyway), changed the course of my pregnancy… and, in an abstract kind of way, my life too.

It all started with the choice not to let pregnancy defeat me. That this chapter was asking that a new me be born as much as the little one inside me.

With the morning sickness and progressing spiral, I had to slow wayyyyyy down. Almost to nothing. If I woke up, brushed my teeth, and took a 💩 that day… it was a victory.

But eventually, second trimester entered the chat, and the symptoms subsided. (For those reading from the trenches, it does get better.) With the new season and new energy returning, I seized my forced “sabbatical.”

I knew that when I got pregnant, I’d slowly ease on the brakes of my publishing career to tend to my marriage and baby. But what I never anticipated was just how much I would love “just” being a wife and mom.

We’re just over halfway through the pregnancy now, and I have found my groove. Yes, as you’ll read in every post I’ve written lately, I still live in pajamas three days out of the week. But!! I have become a sort of knock-off Nara, baking in both the kitchen and my makeup vanity.

With all this free time, I’ve taken “trad wife” to a new level. I’ve somehow gotten better at cooking—accomplishing flavors and recipes in the last month that I haven’t attempted in the last decade. I’ve taken “dressing the bump” to a whole new influencer level. And while I haven’t come around to daily blowouts and perfectly curled hair, gold hoops, eyeliner, and claw clips have done so much of the same.

I never saw this coming. Not even an old wives’ tale could have predicted how “in my essence” I’d become, pregnant with a baby boy.

But here we are, growing into this MILF…ollow on Substack.

It’s not just in the kitchen or closet, either. My marriage transformed in ways I couldn’t see coming. It’s like by growing this little mommy’s boy… I’ve become more of his daddy’s girl. Though I still rebel against being seen as a fragile little lady, putting down the chronic independent-woman status has done wonders for our relationship.

I’ve read about this in books for years, but now I’m somehow living it. It’s different, of course. You should have seen how crazy I was acting when my body first changed. But once upon an unpublished draft on feeling sexier during pregnancy, I soon learned that our men don’t see us the way we see our own reflections. There is something primally feminine and, in other words, sexy about carrying their child. So dark nipples or not, we are irresistible.

That was a big shift for me—realizing that sensuality changes in motherhood, it doesn’t disappear. Now that I’m rocking the bump more freely… and, by evening time, more shamelessly (iykyk), I no longer shy away from my femininity. Sure, it’s taken an expensive order of new lingerie to remind myself I’m still hot.. But confidence is key, ladies, and it comes covered in coconut oil.

With that said, I still wonder if I’ll recognize myself when the bump is gone. Will this version of me remain when the sleepless nights take over? Some days, I fear losing myself as quickly as I found her. But then I realize that might just be the lesson motherhood keeps trying to teach me: womanhood is in constant bloom… It’s not a fixed mindset.

And as it turns out, that same lesson spilled into my job too. After a drafted debate in one of my latest articles, I made peace with my “up in the air” career. Sure, I’m not taking on projects and publishing clients at the moment… and yes, I worry if I’ll be a mid-life divorcée who needs to return to the workforce twenty years from now. But I’ve also found that the lessons I’ve learned in this early season of motherhood have amplified my writing in a way my “high-powered publishing career” never did.

So, for now, I’ll give everything I’ve got to being a good wife and mother. Perhaps I’ll share a few of the recipes I master in motherhood. Maybe even turn it into a cookbook someday (audacious claim, innit).

And I will own this season of fashion even though it doesn’t come with a steady waistband (Read my latest post here).

As for who I’m becoming on this journey to and through motherhood, I guess you’ll just have to subscribe to find out how that goes!

Hoping for the best and still writing x

Yours truly,

Sarah Elle