Since I rarely ever don’t ever post outside of my weekly pregnancy updates, I just want to start off by saying how entertaining these two can be, especially when it comes to artwork and the little one wanting to keep up with the big one.
My sister took Olivia out for an afternoon “girls day” as Olivia calls it, and bought her these masks she can decorate. She had so much fun making the two of out three so far, and when she finished she asked if I could take her photo. Emelia quickly ran over from where she was coloring and asked, “Mama, will you take a pitcher of my pitcher?”
Bodywork
I did a Dynamic Body Balancing (DBB) session with my doula this week. I’ve vaguely heard of bodywork before, which is closely related to cranial sacral therapy. The idea is where a chiropractor works on your joints, DBB is working with the fascia in your body. Fascia is the thin band of connective tissue that holds everything in your body in place – bones, nerves, muscle fibers, and blood vessels. When we’ve experienced trauma or stress, these things get stored in the fascia, making them become tight. My doula described it to me when referring to all the pain I’ve had this pregnancy. So much of my physical pain is located on my right side. Both my hips are jacked up, but the right has always been worse. The sciatica I’ll get periodically is always on my right. All three of my babies hang out on the right side of my uterus – both Olivia and Emelia were breech for a long time with their heads on my right side. This baby always kicks my right side.
And even as I was getting the bodywork done one day this week, it occurred to me that even with the arthritis in my knees, while the left knee is structurally worse, it’s always been the right knee that’s more painful.
Jo told me that morning before our session, me on a couch in her studio drinking tea, that my job was to trust her and trust my body to do what it needs to do. “It’s going to feel like I’m moving you, but it’s actually the two of us, like, moving together,” she explained, “You know when you wake up and stretch and you kind of contort your body all over the place, and you’re like, I don’t know why my body wants to stretch this way, but it feels good to?” she asked me. That’s kind of what it feels like. And it can be an emotional process, she added. Our bodies store trauma. Big traumas, little traumas, it doesn’t matter. Our bodies can remember things we’ve forgotten, sexual abuse, that time in grade school when everyone made fun of us and it made us feel bad. All of that stuff gets stored like junk, and DBB is about – here she gives a wave of her hand and laughs – “letting that shit go.”
Letting that shit go is right. I told her, this was definitely something I really couldn’t understand until I did it myself.
She had me take my shoes and socks off and lie on the table in front of her. I closed my eyes and she told me to focus on my breathing and the music in the background. “Relax, and trust your body,” she said. She picked up my left leg and started moving it around, gently pulling on it, wiggling my ankle joint, moving my leg in a circle, then bending it toward my right knee, before moving it up in a stretch and away again.
I breathed in and out, and relaxed and repeated to myself, to trust.
And it was very strange. When she got done with the first leg, I told her that I understood now what she was talking about when she said she wasn’t just moving my leg. “It’s like a dance,” I tried to explain to her, “I had no idea where you were going to move my leg next, but for some reason, my body did, and it’s like we were just moving together, and I always knew where my leg would go next.”
She moved onto my right leg. I felt the first of…something… which I still can’t fully describe when she touched the big toe on my right foot. I just felt something different.
She moved around my leg in the same way as my left, as I continued to breathe and relax. And then suddenly I was crying, tears sliding down my cheeks. Because it wasn’t a flashback, necessarily. It wasn’t a “bad” thing. But when she moved my leg in the same position as being in stirrups, I felt it.
“Oh my god,” I said, wiping my eyes, “I honestly didn’t think I was going to feel emotion doing this.” I gave a laugh. “Being in stirrups. All those years of fertility treatments and the monitoring and the ultrasounds and the inseminations and the IVFs.” I wiped my eyes again. “Holy shit, my body’s been holding that inside.” Jo smiled, while still moving my leg around, “Yeah it’s pretty wild. And now we let that shit go.”
“Let that shit go,” I agreed.
And even now, I’m sitting here with tears in my eyes remembering it. I know it’s almost impossible to describe what happened that day because I don’t even understand it myself. And the rest of the time, I never felt anything like that again.
She did put her hands on my abdomen, on my uterus. Pokemon thought that was great fun and gave her some hearty kicks during the process. But she said the left side of my uterus was really tight which could mean Pokemon liked being on the more relaxed right side. She got the other side to loosen up before we did some work with me standing and then sitting before our session was over.
I was directed to take some time for myself that night, ideally taking an Epsom salt bath. My bad for not waiting until the kids were in bed first because they were allllll over that. And I didn’t hate it.
In fact, it reminded me of when Olivia would sit by the tub when I was pregnant with Emelia and gently pour water over my belly. It’s not the most relaxing thing I’ve ever done, but looking back, it’s a memory of my girl that I look back on and smile.
These two though, dang. They’re a force to be reckoned with. Squabbling over who gets to pour water on Mama. Squabbling over who gets to read to Mama.
“Mom, why do you have hair there?” “Mom, why are your nipples so colorful?” “Why do you have red marks on your belly?”
Sigh. It’s okay. We’re making memories, right?
OB appointment
My weekly OB visit went well. I’m a pound less than my prepregnancy weight and my blood pressure was 115/78 (My appointment was only a few hours after my DBB session). All my glucose numbers over the last week have been in range so that was good and the PA was happy with that. All in all, it was an uneventful appointment.
Karate
Olivia tested for her double yellow striped belt today (Her current one in the photos below is the single striped one). I just love watching her test, especially because the two tests she’s taken have been her by herself, with the rest of the class watching. She did so well.
And now that she has a white belt and a white single stripe belt she’s no longer using she’s all like, “Mom, now I need a rack to hold all the belts I’ve gotten.” This kid. She kills me.
She also received some circuit board stuffs (I don’t even know what you call these things) from her much older cousin who used to use these as a kid. Lately, she’s been expressing interest in robots and building things and so Chris borrowed this circuit set from his sister and they spent this afternoon making lights and sounds turn on from the board and Olivia thinks it’s great fun.
Pokemon continues to kick around like crazy. I’m assuming he’s still head down and I can feel lots of knees and elbows and baby butts at all hours of the day. My stomach constantly feels like its doing the wave as he rolls his knees across my belly. It’s hard to think that he’s this fully-formed baby because I always picture him as being a lot smaller than he is.
My heartburn has been picking up this week, and so has the indigestion. It makes it hard to be able to do my prenatal exercises on my hands and knees because I usually wind up with killer heartburn after. And I did have one night where I put my feet up on my wedge because I had some slight swelling in my ankles and feet. Still, this is the first time I’ve noticed swelling which is pretty good because I had it earlier with my other pregnancies.
