Monday, May 16, 2016

Pregnancy Update: Week 37!

I sit here at my desk on a Monday afternoon in the second story office of my townhouse bouncing on a yoga/birthing ball at 37 weeks 3 days pregnant and it occurs to me that these next few hours, days, weeks (who knows!?) are to be some of the most cherished, ephemeral, perfect, wonderful days of my life.  I sit on the precipice, this fleeting moment in time is the cursor between two worlds, all that was before and all that it will soon become.  Today is the first day of my leave from work, which will continue over the next 12 weeks, and though it’s medically mandated (due to prior experience of pre-term labor) I’ve asked myself several times:  Am I selfish for taking this time before birth to prepare mentally and physically?  Is it really necessary?  Should I be powering through?  I’m well aware that it’s a luxury many don’t have.  But then I remember that my doubts are shaped by living in one of the only countries in the world without mandated maternity leave (with the exception of three states), in a culture that expects women and families to do all and be all without ever skipping a beat or taking their health into consideration.  After doing a little digging around on the internet, I found that women who take 1-3 weeks of rest before delivery are 4 times less likely to have a c-section or other complications, and that helped put my mind at ease.  But more than that, the overwhelming sense of peace I feel surrounding the upcoming days or weeks of preparation, that feeling is what truly informs me that my decision is the right one.  Especially in juxtaposition to the complete and utter stress I’ve been feeling about doing it all-heavily pregnant and working an incredibly stressful job with erratic hours and a long commute (and training a new employee by myself), all while keeping up with housework, meals, and parenting while Chad has been consistently working 50-60 hour weeks for the past several months.  This ability to slow down, contemplate, process, prepare, putter around the house, nest, NAP, fold baby clothes, is so, so, so vital.  And I know in my bones that I’m taking part in a great time-honored piece of the human experience: preparing and waiting for new life to arrive.

In other news and notes, I was able to delve into the preparation for labor, delivery, and birth by a weekend with my family AND a weekend long birth preparation class at Balanced Yoga called Mamaste.  Friday evening, they had a family night and free showing of the movie Babies (which I highly recommend!).   Everett, Chad, and I went, sat on a blanket on the floor, and ate dinner while watching the movie, surrounded by other expectant parents as well as lots of toddlers.  It was a beautiful warm spring evening, with a warm breeze flowing in the windows of the large yoga studio, filled with young and expectant life.  The next day Chad drove Everett to my mom’s house, where he had his very first overnight away from us!!  I relaxed around the house in the morning, and then went to the yoga studio for 3 hours of prenatal class, followed by an hour of prenatal yoga instruction.  I was completely fine all day, but as I lay there at the end of class in shavasana, I thought of my little boy wondering where Mommy and Daddy were at bedtime, feeling lost and alone, and silent tears started to roll down my cheeks.  Hopefully if the yoga instructor saw, she thought that she had just provided me with a really moving yoga practice J  Anyways, it turns out that Everett had an awesome day, slept no worse than he might at home, and missed his parents the appropriate amount – in short, we all survived!  After Saturday’s yoga class, Chad and I went out for a super fancy date night at Angry Bear Kitchen.  We had super fancy cocktails (alcoholic and non-), three appetizers (gratuitous!), delicious entrees, and dessert (or port, if you’re a Chad).  We joked in the beginning about how we felt a little awkward, as though we were on a first date, all over again.  “How does this whole dating thing work?  We can barely remember!”  Somehow we stumbled on and had a truly lovely two-hour dinner full of great food and conversation.

Sunday continued on the weekend of awesome.  Chad went to pick up Everett from Grandma’s house and drove him to Nonna’s house, where the weekend of grandmother fun for Everett would continue while we went to our second day of labor preparation at Balanced Yoga.  The doulas teaching the birth preparation class went over the stages of labor and we practiced some coping techniques.  I wouldn’t say that I necessarily learned a lot…I have had a kid before, have read pretty extensively about labor and birth, and am part of a few mom’s groups where we talk about such things, but it was great to be in a class with several other families who were in the same page in life, sharing and talking about our impending labors and births.  It was especially great to be able to share that time with Chad, so that we could get into the groove together, and I really appreciated the opportunity to practice coping techniques together.  The best part of the weekend seminar was the partners prenatal yoga taught by Abby Dorn.  I have been going to prenatal and baby yoga classes taught by Abby for a long time, and have always enjoyed her instruction, but this class was especially great.  Most of the poses in the class were collaborative poses that employed team work and communication between Chad and me.  It was an amazing experience during which we felt at different turns intimate, silly, collaborative, and unsure.  We felt many of the emotions we might feel during our labor experience, and were able to hone our collaboration and communication while at the same time focusing on restoration and rejuvenation. 

Finally, around 7:00 PM that evening we got to eat pizza (obvious follow up to yoga) and see our little boy!  I was so happy to see Everett again!  Of course, he had had a BIG BIG weekend and was an exhausted crank monster, so we only saw him for about an hour before shipping him off to dream land, but it was enough just to hear him intermittently sighing from the bedroom while Chad and I hung out in the media room, the next room over.  We ALL slept peacefully and soundly through the night (with the exceptions of my several lumbering trips to the bathroom), which we all sorely needed!!


And that’s the end of the beginning of Week 37 J

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