Well, it's a grey Sunday morning, and the Christmas spirit is winding down. So far I have avoided the post-Christmas depression as I've been occupying my mind with my new Ayurveda book and cute clothes. However, I know when my sister Kim gets on her flight back to Florida tomorrow, it will really be over, and then what will I do with myself? Well, I do have this baby still growing in my belly, and at this point it's fun to begin visualizing my birth and other decisions regarding his ultimate well-being. Only three more months!
I woke up to a quiet downstairs apartment around 10:30 and listened in to the noisy upstairs. I'm not allowed up there until this afternoon because today is my baby shower! Mom, Peter, and Kim are hard at work up there preparing for the festivities, All That Is bless 'em! Allison's just peeled herself out of bed and the bathroom to join them shortly. Mike's still sleeping (silly wabbit stays up much too late!), so I took to my crisp new cerulean blue yoga mat and did a few exercises I hadn't done in far too many days. The cat-cow yoga stretch is one of the best for a preggo, and indeed it does feel amazing. I feel it stretch and make room in my belly for the baby as well as strengthen my back and elongate my neck. Yummy tummy. I hear it's great during labor.
I moved on to my old Pilates leg routine, the usual thing: leg raises, bicycles, circles, as well as a little move I made up myself that reeeeally squeezes that saddlebag area. Want me to explain it to you? Great! So you're lying on your side, one hip raised and stacked over the other as with your other leg exercises, and you just pivot that hip up and down. Turn the knee up, knee to the side, squeeze the knee up, gently squeeze to the side, squeeze up, to the side. If my body were an artist's rendition of itself, that hard-to-work outer flank would be sweating, and there'd be some scientific-looking circles sketched around the leg, back and forth. I've experimented with the breathing a little bit with this move, and I usually just breathe normally because the movement is rather quick. Though feel free to play with it, slow it down, and correspond the breath to the movement if you like.
I continued my routine with a series of slow, relaxing breaths (did you read my last post?) and quickly became inspired to research the Lamaze breathing technique. I'd had this perception that Lamaze went hand-in-hand with a medicalized, hospital birth, a breath that wasn't particularly conscious but more so a hopeless attempt to simply ease the pain of labor. I've come to learn that that is not--or was not--the original design behind it. Dr. Ferdinand Lamaze outlined the labor breath specifically for the assistance in natural births, to avoid the need for pain medication. I never really connected with the "hee hee hoo" when I saw it being futilely performed in movies where sweating, writhing, laboring women only attempt it for mere seconds at the comic behest of their anxious (and completely terrified) male partners. The atmosphere is always chaotic, and the mother never gets a snowball's chance in Hell of relaxing and delivering her baby naturally. Well, I need to learn that the media does not ever show an accurate depiction of the pregnancy or birth process, and as a real pregnant woman, I must consciously set aside those misconceptions and take everything from the ground up (a routine hospital birth being the first I shunned!). The rapid "hee hee hoo" is really a conscious method of delivering more oxygen to the blood than your everyday involuntary breath, which reminds me of the Breath of Fire from the Kundalini Yoga practice. When partnered with three other types of relaxing breaths to be employed between contractions, the "hee hee hoo" is apparently quite effective in managing contraction pain. It is not to be mistaken as an attempt to eliminate the pain of childbirth, but rather a method of effectively withstanding the natural pain, which is an all-encompassing rite of passage, and focusing on the most important part of labor, which is relaxation. When you relax, the baby relaxes, and your body delivers him much more easily.
So I don't know if I'm going to seek out a Lamaze class or if I'll simply listen to my body as it happens. I'm not new to breathing exercises, and I understand the power of the breath, so either way I know I'll be just fine. I trust my body will tell me if it could use a "hee hee hoo" or something else.
Oh gawwwd, then my mind wandered on over to circumcision. This is a topic neither Mike nor I had definitely said one way or another we had decided on. In my gut I knew it was not necessary and indeed quite traumatic for the infant. The foreskin does have a biological purpose, including protecting the sensitive head and keeping out infection. But I was also considering the idea that it is such a socially expected aesthetic procedure, and also I'd want him to look like his father (he's cut). But the aesthetic aspect of it was the only reason I could come up with in support of this (disgusting!) custom. I watched two videos of live circumcisions on infants, and I am totally horrified. It's not like on TV (once again, that misleading media) where the doctor (or rabbi) stands over him, snips real quick, and it's done. No, it's over five minutes of terror and screaming with no mollification from either parent. It involves clamps and scissors and scalpels, and at the end the little head of the penis is bloody and exposed in an unnatural way, like a layer of skin has literally been ripped off, and that just ain't right! There are multiple risks to the operation, including infection. Ummmm, no thanks. I hope our son thanks us too when we show him what could have been!
So that's my day so far. Now everybody is upstairs getting ready for the shower, so I'd better get ready and take a shower. I stink!
Much love, y'all
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