Pregnancy

Pregnancy represents a major transition in a woman's life. The nine months of gestation amount to only the first stage of a lifetime commitment.

Life Cycles and Your Chart

In your own birth chart, nearly one half of the circle represents the astrological influences on you from your conception to your birth. The other half of the circle covers the rest of your life.

One way to read a birth chart is to start with the Eighth House, where conception begins. During the nine months of pregnancy, the cycle travels from the beginning of the Eighth House to the ascendant, which represents the moment of birth, the baby's first breath. Using this method, the First House represents babyhood, the Second House represents childhood, the Third House is the teen years, and so on.

A Source of Power

Procreation, the continuation of the species, is the evolutionary and religious force behind sex -- the energy that consumes so much of our imagination and attention. A woman's power to conceive has been seen both as a threat and as a subject of wonder, depending on her culture and time in history.

It is said that a woman's ability to create a child is so powerful that men have had to mount an immense power of destruction -- war, agression, domination of whole countries and continents -- just to prove that they are equally powerful.

It has also been said that if women were running the governments, war would quickly be abolished, since women have a primary concern to protect and tend the family, relationships, community -- the networks that keep humans functioning together. Our model for this capacity, Pallas Athene, the Peaceful Warrior, settles disputes peacefully. Goddess of Wisdom, she uses her intelligence instead of physical force to deal with conflicts.

Under Our Control

In modern times, the years from age 20 to age 40 are our prime child-bearing years. The advent of the birth control pill changed life dramatically for women in this phase of our lives, allowing us more reliable control over when we become pregnant.

Some of us use the energy that others spend on child rearing in alternate ways, choosing not to have children at all in order to have more time and energy to devote to our arts, our career or our desires for adventure. Some are movers and shakers in our communities, initiating projects that change the lives of others.

Some women plan their pregnancies for later in life, making time for careers, travel or creative ventures before accepting the responsibility for a child. Many women successfully give birth in their 40s and most women are fertile until around age 50.

Madonna, one of the most famous pregnant women of our time, had daughter, Lourdes, a Libra, at the age of 38.

For women who have wished to have a child, but physically could not, opportunities to adopt or foster children offer us other roads to motherhood. Medical fertility treatments give some infertile couples the option to conceive.

More on Women's Cycles:

Women's Cycles
Birth Control
Fertility
Menopause

Recommended Links on Pregnancy:

iVillage Parent Soup Channel
Parent Soup Pregnancy Calendar