Prenatal yoga is da bomb. Holy crows feet! My legs are great quivering cylinders of jell-o-like substance, and my arms don't want to do naught but lie across the table (or wrap about a shawl, but this is no Elliot moment) -- but my back, belly, sides, even my feet feel better than they have in months. Mmmmm... the joy that is sitting comfortably!
I realize that sounds horrendous, but it really isn't. And when we were doing our last pranas and the teacher said "think of something you are grateful for as you inhale" I couldn't help but blurt into the hushed room:
"I can't, if I do that I'll start crying."
The chorus of 'me too's I got in response were gratifying. Being in a roomful of women in various stages of lumpiness was just as empowering, despite the discomfort I expected to have amidst a gaggle of yuppified Bloor West Village breeders. There were only *two* women driving oversized SUVs and wearing eight shades of expensive pink and more makeup than a pregnant woman should need to wear -- and the rest were all darling. The lady carrying twins was doubly a-glow (you'd think she would) and the girl whose due date is the week before mine was just as lumpy as I so despite all the nonsense in the books about not showing by the end of the fourth month if it's your first (well, firstish) I'm just fine.
In fact, everything I learned today by being surrounded by precisely the sort of people I always avoid (spoiled and overindulgent women, of which I am swiftly becoming a member in my own way) is -- I'm doing fine. In fact, I'm doing great. Lumpy/rella is doing great in mah belly and despite my emotional outbursts my state of mind is right on track.
Which of course, Dave has been telling me daily, and daily I hear him and am grateful for his enthusiasm and support.
Hearing it from a group of women with the same insecurities, and even hearing that they'd had them, did an excellent job of reinforcing that.
Woo.
Yeah.
And in other news, the great Rocketmom regaled me with further assurances over lunch today, plied me with maternity clothes, books and more yoga gear, gracefully rescued her son from his fistfulls of wasabi, and made me practice stroller takedown -- all in under two hours. I still have a note she wrote us once, about eight months ago, claiming she hoped to one day "make it up to us" that we'd let her labour in our living room -- but that she didn't think she could. I'm more worried that she's going to manage it way before my due date and that I'll have to beg someone else to listen to me whinge!
Like I said. Between Dave, Rocketmom, a few stunning friends who ought to know who they are by now or suffer surprise babysitting requests (kidding), and an accountant that can talk the gov't out of demanding $1200 in under ten minutes AND talk SF in the same breath --
how could I NOT be overwhelmed with gratitude?
Well, except when I'm tired, hungry and cranky.
Speaking of which, it's lasagna and naptime.
As for all the folks who made outlandish claims about my intelligence dropping to 'just way above average' -- you burst my universe with each note. Thank you. So much.