pregnancy tarot cards

You’re knocked up. Congrats! let’s explore what insights tarot can provide for you and that growing bump.

Photo by Isabela Martins on Unsplash

You’ve been to your midwife or OBGYN, you’ve signed up for that birthing class and you might even have gotten yourself a birth doula. But now you’re looking to your deck for some insights. I get it, I did exactly the same when I was pregnant. Let’s dive in and take a look at some pregnancy tarot cards that might resonate for you.

The ultimate in pregnancy tarot cards

The EMPRESS is the ultimate pregnancy tarot card. Representing fertility, nurturing, and abundance; a time of growth and expansion, she says LET’S BLOSSOM. If you are struggling with infertility, she can also suggest the need to slow down your roll so you can connect with nature, your cycle and your body. Many of my clients get this card, not simply because they are pregnant but because they are human. Living in a culture where slowing down and taking care of ourselves is considered self-indulgent or weak, many of us have bodies that are starved of attention. Pregnancy can thus become a time when we are forced to address health and wellness issues that we have previously ignored.

Pregnancy, The High Priestess and Intuition

Speaking of which, the HIGH PRIESTESS isn’t necessarily considered one of the obvious pregnancy tarot cards. But as the decks main representative of intuition and inner wisdom, she’s intimately connected to the whole affair. During pregnancy, we often have a heightened sense of intuition and can benefit (even more than normal) from listening to our inner voice. Even if you’re not that woo-woo woman who is hearing the voice of your unborn child, The High Priestess encourages expectant mothers to trust their instincts and listen to their body. A new kind of wisdom is being born along with your child.

If you are fuming at me right now, let me pause and speak to your frustrations. Pregnancy can actually be a time when some of us feel deeply disconnected from our bodies and intuition. If you read so many pregnancy books that your head is full of contradictory facts, have struggled with infertility or feel pressured by a society that has SO MANY OPINIONS that your own instincts are buried underneath a mountain of voices, you are not alone. So many of my birth doula clients came to me because they needed someone to guide them back to their own wisdom or at least to support them in making a single goddamn decision for themselves. Pregnancy should be empowering and yet so often it feels the opposite. Know that I see you and the HIGH PRIESTESS is one of the pregnancy tarot cards that is here to help you.

If you’d like some help reconnecting, book a PREGNANCY AND BIRTH tarot reading today. Unlike traditional tarot, my readings aren’t designed to tell you what’s going to happen or what you should do (that’s not possible and is disempowering). Instead, they offer a safe space for you to feel your feels, reconnect to your own needs, desires and wisdom and to discover what the important next steps might be. After all, as you step into motherhood what you need is a connection to your own gut, not a tarot reader who you have to run to every time you feel lost.

Pregnancy tarot cards & transmuting fear into love

The STRENGTH card represents courage, determination, and inner strength, something you’ll be wanting to draw on as a birthing person as well as a momma. This card can be particularly helpful for women experiencing difficult pregnancies or facing challenges during birth. It’s there to remind you that you have the inner strength to face any obstacle and to come out stronger on the other side. Even if you have a so-called “easy” pregnancy, this is one of the pregnancy tarot cards that calls us to look our fears squarely in the face. Almost everyone has fears about pregnancy, birth and motherhood and rather than falling into denial or projecting your fears onto others (strategies that might work for you short term but have a seriously negative effect long term), Strength asks you to FEEL THOSE FEARS allowing the wisdom of your body to transmute and release them. It might feel counter-intuitive, but when we face our fears head-on by accepting/feeling/releasing them, we tame those inner demons, emerging more courageous and softer at the same time. This isn’t force, it is true power - the power of love.

Pregnancy tarot cards and the Sun

At its most obvious, the SUN represents joy, optimism, and vitality. This card can indicate a happy and healthy pregnancy, filled with joy and positive energy. It can also suggest a bright future for the mother and child. On a more subtle note, it can suggest a dark time that will lead to a brighter dawn. I started pulling the Sun for almost the first time in my life when I was pregnant with my son. After a long history of depression, a miscarriage and a lot of fears about becoming a mother, pregnancy was a gateway for me into a new way of relating to the world. I’d pulled some pregnancy tarot cards during my first pregnancy (the one that ended in a loss at 11 weeks) and the Sun had been noticeably absent. Still, that first pregnancy was part of a lengthy process of discovering my own needs, desires and giving space for my fears, grief and ambivalence to emerge. It was a key part of my ability to find joy in motherhood and therefore a blessing as well as an incredibly hard thing to go through. If you want to read more, I blogged extensively about that pregnancy and miscarriage and you can find all of those blogs HERE.

Pregnancy as the end of an era

Perhaps not the most obvious of pregnancy tarot cards but the WORLD card can represent completion and the beginning of a new phase of life for both the mother and your child. Pregnancy is a time when we are being asked to wrap up unfinished projects, deal with and let go of past emotional baggage, and (if this is our first child) to begin to ready ourselves for the transition from maiden to mother. A new chapter is coming, so let that shit go. I was deeply ambivalent about becoming a mother for a long time. Throughout my thirties I felt like motherhood would be nice in a perfect world but impossible in the world I lived in. I lived a life that I couldn’t see a kid fitting into and I thought I might just end up resenting my child. Even after my miscarriage I wasn’t looking to get pregnant and when at the age of forty-two I had whoopsie pregnancy, I spent at least a handful of days seriously considering ending it. Having finally found my groove in terms of my career, living situation and major relationship, my overriding thought at that moment was “this child will ruin my life”. It took a seriously amazing therapy session to turn my thoughts around 180 degrees to embracing the truth that my child might be the best thing that ever happened to me, something that ultimately turned out to be true. The World card was one of the pregnancy tarot cards that guided me to do the work of preparing myself for the massive shift that was about to happen in a way that honoured the life I was leaving behind and the path I was about to step onto. This was some of the most important work I’ve ever done and one of the the reasons I’m able to embrace motherhood so fully today

There are so many other cards that speak to pregnancy, tracking the three trimesters and even the different flavor of each month. If you would like to explore your pregnancy with me, look below to book a reading.

PLEASE NOTE: tarot cards should not be used as a substitute for medical advice. If you are pregnant, it is essential to consult with your doctor or midwife regarding any concerns or questions you may have.