the ups and downs

After a lovely evening practicing hypnosis techniques with my honey, I can hardly remember the hysteria of earlier in the day.

I know that I got all wound up on the way to Pilates this morning. As I was driving over the hill, my brain started picking at whatever it could to get me worrying. I realized that I do this every Wednesday morning on the way to Pilates, or enough of those Wednesdays that I could recognize it as a pattern, to get nice and tense and RESISTANT before I get there. I don’t know quite how to explain this, but it’s like my body wants to stay stuck, and knows that I am about to go somewhere to open up.

Nobody wants to stay stuck, nobody wants pain, stress, tension. But in a weird way, we do. I do, anyway. I feel the fight inside of me so starkly.

This would be a very good habit to give up before (or during) labor.

Miraculously, I did “let go” (such a cliche!) and cry, of course, during the session — as we stretched and moved my aching stiff body. I felt SO MUCH better afterwards. All praise to exercise — and to Pilates instructors who also do a little release-type body work as part of the training.

The next challenge of the day: WAXING. I mentioned previously that my aesthetician suggested a just-in-case c-section wax, two weeks before my due date.

I suspect that this procedure hurt more than having just-shaved hairs grow back in a fresh scar, but score one anyway for crossing that item off my to-do list.

I got home and found that she’d missed a spot, so I had to go back for more punishment. Just a little bit more.

Somehow that little bit triggered a cascade of tears. Not immediately, but when I got back to the house. Why? Maybe hormones, maybe the body just can’t take that much ripping. The content? I’ve decided that I cannot stand one more blue animal.

Seems silly now, but at the time (around 5:30 p.m.), the fact that my mother gave me yet two more blue animal items (a bear “rug” and a furry bunny suit sleeper), was devastating. Just. Can’t. Take. Blue. Animals. Anymore.

Scott came home, listened to my travails and witnessed my tears without reproach, and then got dinner going while I got my balance back. The food helped. As did the sympathy.

After dinner, we sat in front of the TV with various implements and peeled, cored and chopped about 2/3rds of our store of Granny Smiths, which I then mixed with melted butter, honey, and lemon juice and roasted in the oven to make applesauce.

And then I read this site, which said wonderful things about hypnobirthing. And I was inspired. And then I got sad. Because I’ve (habitually) maintained a cynical distance from this very hypnosis practice I’m practicing. Because even my doula snorted a bit at the idea that one could birth without pain. But here was someone who’d done it. Or so it seemed to my brain (which again, loves to worry over things, compare, indulge in jealousy, and have me suffer). How could I have spent so much time and energy being negative, fear-filled, these last several months? How could I not have done more affirmations, why couldn’t I have indulged less in the suffering?

I confessed to Scott that I’d gone south again — on this topic. He went and got our hypnosis notebook and ran us through our scripts and practices. I relaxed. I felt better.

And now we’re eating yummy warm applesauce.