Month Eight: Famous Last Words

As you might guess from what I've been writing about lately (food, dinner, recipes, eating...), I've been feeling a lot more like myself lately. Still pregnant, but not particularly hampered by it. Maybe my best month of this whole thing so far. It's really only in the last week that I've started feeling like that very pregnant woman you see in movies and on TV: huffing and puffing, walking funny, finding any opportunity to put my swollen feet up, and going to the bathroom every half hour. But, still, I feel good as long as I don't try to do much.

This feeling-good, not-doing-much does not lend itself to Exciting Writing Topics, though, so I've limited myself to the always-reliable subject of food. However, I want to have a record of the happy-pregnant part of this process, and not just the dreary-pregnant part, so I'm going to try to up my writing frequency, which will probably result in a related increase in the why-would-anyone-care factor. You have been warned.

One recent accomplishment is worth noting, though. Not knowing anything 'bout birthin' no babies, we took a class. The aim of the class was to teach anxious yuppies how to relax enough so that their bodies could take over and do what they were made to do (see "birthin" above). The curriculum sounded great: a lot of emphasis on letting go of anxiety, relaxing muscles and positive thinking. And gravity. Gravity is your friend in labor, apparently. All of those sound like good tools for a natural labor and birth, right? Right! Except when the teacher is shriller than your high school gym teacher, more anxious than any of the aforementioned yuppies, and keeps barking, "RELAX!" and "NO NEGATIVE THOUGHTS!" and "IT WILL BE PERFECT IF YOU JUST RELAX!" There was some serious message/messenger disharmony going on.

But in the end, it worked out just fine. We survived her drill-sergeant-style guided meditations, we practiced our calming breathing techniques, and we relaxed after every class by laughing at her teaching style. Our last class was a couple weeks ago, and it was a relief to be done. Now we just have labor and birth ahead of us. Piece of cake, I'm thinking.