This Tuesday will be the final meeting of my/our childbirth preparation class. I’m going to miss it. In four short weeks, I’ve grown attached to our little cadre of pregnant couples, earnestly doing our Zen breathing together, practicing our hypnobirthing techniques, and drinking our pregnancy tea.
I suspect Scott feels pretty dorky leading me through the various hypnosis scripts (“I am going to pick up your arm, let me take the full weight of your arm. When I drop your arm, you are going to feel twice as relaxed. Drops arm. Twice as relaxed.”)
There’s a beach we visit, and a cloud. There’s acupressure points and skin brushing and post-hypnotic suggestions.
The thing is, dorky or not, it works. At least it works on me. Who knew I would be so susceptible? Not that I want Scott abusing this new power he has to help me relax…
There’s also the flip side, that if he does two things at once, say, brushing my arm, and touching a finger to my “third eye,” I get all cranky and irritable. Too much stimulation. And I snap at him.
He is going to need to grow a really thick skin in the next six weeks because I imagine that there may be a lot of such snapping (call me turtle) during labor.
In other signs of wind-down, my prenatal exercise classes, both swim and yoga, have gotten very small. Yes, many of the ladies who were ahead of me on the road are now carrying air-breathers rather than fluid-suckers, but I suspect it’s also that strange fall-into-winter holidaze that has people staying home, shopping for gifts, or going to parties, rather than showing up for downward dog and dog-paddle.
In these final six weeks, it appears I am also winding up, which you can read about at Project P.