Minkgirl Muses

It started yesterday at Mom/Baby yoga class. This class occurs in a true yoga center – the kind where people who are in great shape strut around with perfect posture while wearing high-tech exercise gear (rather than slouching around in old sweatpants.) About twenty woman and twenty babies pack a room and attempt to open their chests, stretch their limbs, and deepen their breathing amid shrieks and babbles and cries and in between bouts of breast-feeding and nappy-changing. On a good day, this room feels like the best place to be, an absolute fountain of teeming, squalling life. On a bad day, it feels like one of the deeper layers of Dante’s Inferno, an endless river of unanswerable need competing with sore muscles and aching bones.

One of the alarming discoveries I made in class yesterday is that my body feels broken, deeply broken, in about 100 different places. As I tried to manage the poses, most of which were fairly gentle, I started receiving all kinds of frantic neural messages from parts of my body that have been largely abandoned and ignored these last 11 months – my toes, the soles of my feet, my calves, the backs of my arms, the sides of my neck. It seems like every part of me is stiff, sore, and out of alignment. This is not surprising given that I created, nurtured, and carried a rather heavy life inside of me for a long time. It’s just that I hadn’t realized it was this bad.

I think I have now entered the dreaded Third Post-Partum Phase. During Phase 1 (roughly the first month after birth), you are completely focused on healing and accomplishing basic tasks - eating, sleeping, peeing, showering - with as little pain as possible. You are, of course, also pleasantly obsessed with the miracle of your baby – the fact that s/he exists and that you made her or him from scratch. Then during Phase 2, you start to feel pretty good. You've stopped bleeding. You’ve kind of figured out how the baby works and maybe even developed a little routine. You've lost a bunch of the pregnancy weight. You start to appreciate the absence of your big belly and your ability to bend over. You start thinking "Hey! I'm getting my groove back!" This phase can last quite awhile. With Gman, I think I was in good spirits and feeling like a Mama Super Star until he was about 6 months old.

But eventually, Phase 3 kicks in, usually when you finally try to resume all your regular life activities (including exercise), and you become aware of just how drained you are from nurturing and carrying your little one, inside for all those months, and now outside as they get bigger and more voracious for everything you have to offer everyday. The Chinese say it takes a woman 5 years to fully restore her chi after having a baby, and I believe them. Every muscle in my body hurts. My pelvis is out of allignment. My upper back is on fire from holding the baby and carting around the milk jugs I call breasts. My immune system is out of whack. I'm getting nosebleeds. I have very painful plantar's fascitis in my feet. And I have hemmorhoids, which aren't going away (lovely.) So there's some more healing to be done, and it's going to take awhile.

And then there’s my mood. My baby honeymoon is over a lot quicker this time, and it’s back to reality – and the realization that the kids are here to stay! Both of them! I’m crabby. I’m cranky. I’m feeling impatient. Not a great platform from which to lovingly mother a boisterous and impish 3-year old. Gman woke up at 5:45am this morning, and because we could not deal, we popped him in front of the tube for a couple of hours. Not an auspicious start for any morning. By the time I got up he was a) Bored, b) Hungry, c) Ready for Attention (either positive or negative). And I just wanted him to sit down, shut up, eat his breakfast, and get dressed and washed without a hassle. We were not on the same wave-length. And so I started in with The Nag – the “you need to…” and “if you can’t, then I’m gonna…” and “Normal children do what their parents ask of them,” blah, blah, blah. The poor kid.

When I finally shuttled Gman and his dad out the door, grabbed my much-needed coffee and sat down to my email, I was greeted with a lovely message from my mama-in-law. She’s a good mama – one of the best. And she’s been meditating for 30 years – now that’s gotta help. So, we’ll call her Mama Zen. Here’s what she told me:

"It sounds pretty dreary and difficult over there, and I've been trying
to come up with words of wisdom to offer. There's always the usual:

It's all perfect.

Everything's an opportunity.

The best: keep counting your blessings/gratitude.

All are true but sometimes words are just words.

My best words for now are "hang in there".

Did I tell you this? I was at a deli last August. It was Sunday morning and there was a long line of people waiting to order their bagels and coffee, etc. On the line was a mother with a boychild of about 8 or 9. When it was finally her turn, she ordered a hot dog for her son. It was morning and the hot dogs weren't ready yet. She got off the line to re-negotiate her son's order. He was quite difficult but she finally got back on the line and ordered a roll with butter when it was her turn. I was still on the line. A few minutes later, she returned to the counter. Apparently, her son got a seeded roll, not a plain roll - and that was not acceptable. She was beside herself. I touched her arm and said to her: "Don't worry. They grow up. My sons took me on a trip to Sedona for my 60th birthday". Before I left, she came over to me and said "thank you"."

Blessing Counting. Perhaps the most critical tool people (and especially parents) can use to get through an ordinary day without major mishap. The concept captured my attention last summer, during a conversation with Mama Zen about why she hadn’t knit something for Gman when he was a baby like she’d planned to. We recalled that she had broken her wrist that summer (hence no knitting), and as she recounted the details of the experience, she kept coming up with all the good things that had happened: "thank G-d it was my left and not my right", "I had very good doctors," etc. And I asked her how she could think of such a difficult thing in such a positive way, and she said "Well, you know I'm a blessing counter, from way-back." Just like that. And I thought, "How do I become one of those?!" I've been working on it ever since. I think it’s going to take a long-time to become a habit, so when I can, I try to make a daily practice of it. I do it while bringing Gabriel home from school (a long and laborious trip that I often find boring). “I’m grateful that it’s not raining.” “I’m grateful that I remembered to bring a snack.” “I’m grateful that we live in a neighborhood with such beautiful trees.” “I’m grateful that I have warm clothes for my kids to wear.” Etc. Etc. Etc. Etc. Etc. Etc. Etc.

Small and obvious steps to shift oneself out of the cramped and thorny Nag zone and into the lush and open plain of Gratitude. Thanks Mama Zen. For reminding me to breathe, and count my blessings, and “hang in there.”

Be well.

Photo by jogiboarder