When pregnancy entered my life, my fixation on optimization grew stranger and more wonderfully expansive.
My six-pack began to disappear in the fourth month of my pregnancy, with the final pack officially vanishing in week 15.
As the weeks progressed, the loss of defined abdominal muscles was only one of many challenging compromises my biohacking obsession had to accept once I became pregnant. Since adolescence I have carried a genetic gift for visible abs. While it would be tempting to credit hard work, the truth is that six-packs mainly reflect how fat is distributed and how lean one is overall. You can’t dictate where fat stores itself on your body, not even subcutaneous fat. Yet refining how my body performed remained a joyful pastime that I leaned into during the lockdown, when I found a niche in biohacking.
Side note: I avoid the phrase “we’re pregnant” because Nick Gillespie, Reason editor at large and my husband, did not share in the bulk of the pregnancy experience.
Pregnancy meant that my commitment to biohacking would intensify, even as the tools available to support me grew less aligned with my situation. I had effectively become someone else’s sensory deprivation tank. The biohacker had turned into the biohack-ee. Biohacking is the straightforward application of science and technology to alter your body in the ways you desire. A thriving market has emerged, giving rise to a new cohort of self-experimenters who can be absolutely insufferable at gatherings. No matter what issue you want to address or outcome you seek, there’s usually a supplement or a high-tech app that promises to help.
But these tools are intended for a certain kind of body. Specifically, a body that isn’t carrying another living being inside it.
In some respects, my prior biohacking habits had prepared me for pregnancy. I am an ultramarathon runner, so when my feet swelled I opted for running shoes with stretchable laces and a roomy toe box. I kept a stockpile of electrolytes on hand. I’d heard there might even be a small athletic edge to pregnancy: your blood volume increases during gestation. In fact, blood volume can rise by as much as 50 percent. This is essentially blood doping, though it’s performed by someone who is not carrying a baby. I hoped—perhaps more fervently than was wise—that this might translate into a faster time in my first race after giving birth. (Spoiler: it didn’t.)
I relished taking prenatal vitamins. My countertop space was already crowded with bottles of creatine, peptides, L-theanine, iron, and more. I even built a custom ChatGPT project to cross-check supplements and medications for potential interactions. I also asked ChatGPT to help align my nutrition with pregnancy cravings. (Pickles, it turns out, are a surprisingly good source of electrolytes.)
At three months and again at six months, I undertook body composition tests. I was astonished to see that I had gained muscle mass. Then I realized that some of that muscle might not be exclusively mine. (If I could conjure muscle attached to another person, would it still feel like mine?) Either way, I definitely felt more “pumped” than ever.
Biohacking through pregnancy wasn’t all lighthearted pills and experiments, though. Starting in the third trimester, I began to experience a phenomenon that sounds almost celebratory but is quite painful: lightning crotch. It’s the medical term for the sharp, shooting pain that occurs when the baby’s head settles against a nerve in the groin. (It would also make a memorable drag name.)
Some prenatal appointments felt more like a prank from a frat house than a medical checkup. For instance, routine ultrasounds require having a full bladder. The blood glucose test, used to screen for gestational diabetes, is a spectacle where you gulp down a bottle containing 50 or 100 grams of sugar within five minutes. The packaging even proclaims the drink is “for prescription use only” and “best served chilled,” with the flavor listed as “orange.” You aren’t supposed to walk after the test, and then they measure how your blood sugar spikes with a subsequent draw.
When my sugar test yielded concerning results, I was fitted with a continuous glucose monitor. I was thrilled. Many biohackers rely on these devices to learn how energy and mood fluctuate with blood sugar throughout the day. I discovered that I am, medically, not a morning person. I also learned that I did not have gestational diabetes.
Perhaps I overdid the hacking during pregnancy. My baby was diagnosed as large for gestational age. Early induction became a possibility. Was it the creatine, or merely genetics? We may never know for sure.
Although I chose not to log my pregnancy on my Oura Ring for privacy reasons, I wore it into the delivery room. Shortly after giving birth, I checked my phone. The ring’s app, which usually glows with a cheerful cloud, flashed a menacing red storm. A warning read: “Symptom Radar: Major Signs. Your biometrics indicate substantial stress on your body.” In another corner: You are 277 days late for your period. There was also a “nap” indicator, probably the moment the epidural took effect.
Mothers warned me that after birth, when I was still groggy from medications, nurses would flood me with information. I resolved not to forget anything, so I used a Plaud AI note pin to document the entire process. The record turned out invaluable. Yet my transcription tool is usually reserved for conferences and work meetings, and the auto-generated summary of my child’s birth even labeled a moment as a “Mental Fortitude in Adversity” highlight.
When I returned home from the hospital, I stepped on the scale. I felt lighter, almost reborn. In fact, my smart scale seemed to doubt my identity, first asking if I was okay and then logging me out.
Pregnancy remains criminally under-researched, largely because randomized controlled trials are not ethically feasible in this context. And biohacking is typically a solitary pursuit. The consequence is that billions of pregnant people bear the burden of the precautionary principle: avoid everything, learn nothing, and call that safety. Yet I have been able to contribute to scientific knowledge by joining a study sponsored by the National Institutes of Health that measures how my behavior influences my child’s brain development. It constitutes the largest long-term investigation of early brain development in the United States. It involves endless surveys, functional MRI sessions, and even collecting my fingernail clippings, but it feels meaningful to participate in a historic scientific effort. Plus they provide free diapers.
I am now six months postpartum. A fresh set of tools sits at my disposal. The SNOO bassinet autonomously rocks my baby to sleep whenever it detects movement or noise. The Huckleberry app monitors my baby’s sleep and uses AI to forecast nap windows. I’m juggling two different bios now.
Recently I received a ping from Pulse, ChatGPT’s personalized newsfeed. It shared an essay it thought I should read: “When pregnancy optimization goes too far.” It suggested that my overreliance on the tool might reveal an attempt to micromanage the motherhood journey rather than truly experience it. In other words, technology was telling me to back off on technology.
I had spent a year talking to my technology, and at last it began to speak back. Its message was straightforward: ease up.
Earlier generations did not enjoy the same abundance of tools to ease the burdens and hazards of this profoundly transformative, defining human experience. Yet there is also magic in the unknown. Contemporary science sometimes corroborates ancestral knowledge. For years, midwives have hinted that heartburn during pregnancy signals a baby with more hair. Science has since documented this correlation, although the mechanism remains unclear. Formula can be a wonderful and often necessary supplement or replacement for breast milk, but only breast milk can dynamically respond in real time to a baby’s needs—melatonin for nighttime, cortisol for daytime, and antibodies tailored to the surrounding environment. The female body is, in every sense, a force of nature.
Thus far I have recovered two elements of my former six-pack. Yet I am not pursuing a full restoration with the same intensity as before. I am far more at peace with the costs and rewards of giving birth because I understand what they represent. In some respects, reproduction stands as the ultimate biohack. Women can influence their own bodies and also determine whether a new life comes into being. And so far, this remains legally permissible. I now recommend parenthood to every person I meet at parties just as I once urged creatine. My son has brought more serotonin into my brain than any antidepressant ever could. In a sense, I have bioengineered my soul, and the outcome feels optimized.
