I never expected that pregnancy would be the turning point in my life. Like many young women, at the time i found out i was expecting, I was simply just going through motions:working to get by,socialising to fill silence and postponing ambitions because I did not see the urgency. Life was happening, but I was not truly living it. I had no anchor, no vision and certainly no long term plan.

When the test came, two lines,positive. My initial reaction was not joy,it was fear. I was not ready, not financially, not emotionally not even spiritually. I recall sitting in silence womdering how I had arrived at that moment and what would become of me then. I did not think I had it in me to become a mother, I was not even sure I had it in me to become someone.But, sometimes what feels like the end is really the beginning.

As my pregnancy progressesd, something in me began to shift slowly yet steadily.I felt a fire begin to burn within me. I started thinking beyond just nine months.I imagine five,ten and even twenty years ahead. For the first time in a long while i had someone to fight for. Someone who needed me to show up wholeheartedly everyday. The baby became my why.

The shift was not dramatic, it was not an overnight transformation, but it was real. I started journaling, revisting dreams i had long buried and even listing my goals. I reconnected with a mentor. I began to prepare for a future I once imagined. Pregnancy awakened my ambition it did not derail it.

Society often paints motherhood as a time to step back, slow dowm and pause your your personal dream, and yes pregnacy brings changes and motherhood requires sacrifices. For me it brought clarity, I did not want to live on autopilot anymore I wanted my chilr to look at me one day and say “Mum tried”.

According to Psychologist Dr. Leah Musimbi,a practitioner at the Nairobi West Hospital,this awakening is not uncommon.

“Pregnancy can trigger a powerful identity shift,” she says, “when women begin to see themselves as caregivers, they also often start to re-imagine their role in the world and their purpose deepens.

That was true for me, I began building, not just for myself but for the small unseen eyes that would be soon watching me.

I want my child to grow up knowing that they were never a burden. They were my beginning, the reason I found the courage to believe in myself. The reason i stopped sleeping on my potential. The reason i now wake up not just to survive the day but to shape the future. Before I was pregnant I was unsure of many thing, but when I did I was certain of one thing: I was meant for more and I had someone to prove it to.

jk