Givin' It Up...

28 weeks

"There is no worse sickness for the soul, o you who are proud, than this pretense of perfection."

                 - Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī

 
I like to think I'm  pretty easy going. Life's thrown me a few curve balls and I've managed to stay flexible in the figurative sense by not clinging to things that were never meant for me, and in the physical sense by accepting my body and all it's beautiful limitations.

My ongoing battle- and it's a tough one- has been to try to not define myself (and self-worth) by what I have accomplished. I am not what I do... but who I am as I do it. This involves cultivating a huge amount of self-acceptance, acknowledging that I'm not perfect and loving the shit out of myself anyway.

Having said all that, I realized recently that I'm a bit of a tight ass. I like things just so. I'm a slave to routine. I drink a mug of lemon water every morning without fail, and if I don't practice yoga at least four times a week and partake in some form of writing every day I literally lose my mind. I can't write, relax or socialize unless the room I'm sitting in is clutter free and smells nice. I can't stand it when people are late, nor can I stand it when people don't respond to messages or phone calls in a timely fashion. I check my email about twenty million times a day.

Also as you may remember in my initial blog post, one of the few persistent irritations in my pregnancy so far has been a constant and sometimes debilitating pain in my ass that radiates through my hip and down my left thigh and iliotibial band. I visited my massage therapist twice in 5 days, and both times she commented that my glute and hip muscles were gripping to my pelvis and femur for dear life. Her words exactly:

It's like they don't want to let go.

Hmm. Interesting.

A few weeks ago one of my favourite Vancouver yoginis Shivani Wells gave a very poignant and timely yoga class on the lesson of svāhā, or "surrender". Literally translated from the Rigveda (an ancient Indian collection of Vedic Sanskrit hymns) svaha means "oblation", an offering, or tossing of doubt into the flames to truly let go of whatever ails us.

Shivani let go of a lot recently. She suffered a brain injury while teaching a meditation class. She spoke very candidly about the decisions she's made, giving up teaching for long periods of time and dropping out of school to give her body a chance to heal. These are brave and difficult choices and I was overwhelmed with gratitude that she chose to share her struggles with us so openly. 

As I breathed my way through Shivani's class that day, I couldn't help but notice the the pain in my behind. I'd been taking it easy, modifying my regular yoga practice more than I knew was necessary. And yet there my butt was, literally screaming for attention every day. In the safe space of my worn out old yoga mat, inspired by Shivani's bravery, I finally started listening. My ass had something to say.

I need to let go. I thought I was embracing my pregnancy, but I'm not. Not completely. 

For example... what if at some point in my pre or post pregnancy I needed to give up yoga? Would I be willing to surrender, or would I grip even more tightly to the person I wanted to be, fighting to practice asana gracefully through labour and beyond. Would I hate myself if all I did was sit in bed for three months and stuff my face with Betty Crocker Super Moist Yellow sponge cake and canned chocolate icing? I probably would. So what does that say about my philosophy of self-acceptance?

Not so bendy flexy now are you Christina.   

And it's not just about yoga. I decided to take a year off school, forget about my M.F.A and focus on being a new Mom. I made the decision knowing I could still work on other projects and turn my attention towards my degree next year. But what if I couldn't? I've picked up a project already, collaborating on a new film festival screenplay, which if successful would have us attending workshops a few weeks before the baby is due. We'd start filming in January. I figured I could do this no problemo, but what if it doesn't work out? I have no idea what my labour and post pregnancy will bring. I could be an exhausted mess, struggling to get through the day with my eyes open never mind creating a worthwhile cinematic collaboration.

And so in the silence of savasana I realized my biggest fear of all. What if in the end I accomplish nothing more significant in life than being a mother. In all honesty how would I feel about myself then?

In all honesty I'd feel really shitty. I don't want to only be a mother. I want to be a writer, yoga teacher, and PHD student. I want to make movies and fly to LA to pitch my first TV pilot. I want to publish my first novel. All these dreams may not, at least initially, fit with my experience of motherhood. It's not that I'm not excited to be a Mom. I'm just maybe not as OK with myself as I thought I was. My self-worth definitely still hinges on my own perception of success over experience.

 
So this lesson of surrender is an important one, at least for me as a new Mom. Surrender does not mean giving up, it means letting go of whatever expectations you may have of an experience so you can truly appreciate the experience itself. Maybe my yogic and creative journeys won't take the path I thought they would take, but that's life. If my path changes, it will be because there's something better out there for me. I'm not giving up my dreams, I'm just surrendering to a future I never imagined was possible.

And you know what's kind of cool? Even though I'm still anxious about what the next year will bring (whether it be as a writer or a yogi or a Mom) since I've been embracing this idea of surrender, the pain in my ass is gone. It's been replaced by a warm fluidity, a calm and quiet acceptance that I am much more than my accomplishments. Even if I struggle as a parent, don't write anything but a few shitty Haikus for a year, forgo my healthy plant-based ways and eat nothing but processed box cakes, I'm still a good person. I'll still be OK.

Svāhā xo 

Introducing... The Female Organism

27 Weeks

I loved biology when I was a kid. I wanted to be a marine biologist for a long time, until I decided I wanted to be a writer because I could write more eloquently than I could swim. Yup, writing was much more practical. 

I remember the first assignment I wrote in biology lab. The school I went to in England was originally a boy’s school built in 1893 on the site of the city's old Botanical Gardens. The school became co-ed the year I joined in 1989. I was one of about twenty girls in a group of over a hundred students. I was eleven years old.
  

We were instructed to write a two-page essay on the characteristics of a living organism: nutrition, excretion, respiration, sensitivity, reproduction, growth, and movement. I felt pretty confident I'd aced my assignment, science buff that I was, but to my surprise my marked essay was returned covered in red ink. Apparently I'd made a few spelling mistakes. In place of the word 'organism', I'd repeatedly written the word 'orgasm'. My teacher circled the offending words and drew an arrow followed by an exclamation mark (!) in the margin.

I wasn't entirely sure what an 'orgasm' was at the time, so like a good little schoolgirl I looked it up in my Oxford English Dictionary:

Orgasm

noun 
the climax of sexual excitement, characterized by intensely pleasurable feelings centred in the genitals and (in men) experienced as an accompaniment to ejaculation:  

she managed to achieve an orgasm  

[mass noun]: 
they don’t know what it is to reach orgasm


Oh yes... orgasm. I can only imagine what my very proper, very British, biology teacher thought when he read that word peppered through my essay. He gave me a B-, with marks lost for poor attention to detail.

So my first introduction to the female orgasm was that (i) the orgasm was only obtained through sexual activity, (ii) that men ejaculate and women do not, and (iii) that there is a substantial population of 'they' in the world that "don't know what it is to reach orgasm", and it sucks to be them. 

It's a reasonable definition, and I've never questioned it much. Until now.  

Since I've become pregnant I swear on my quivering loins I've had more orgasms in the past 6 months than I've had in the past few years put together. The words 'orgasm' and 'tired thirty-five year old pregnant lady' are usually not synonymous, so trust me-- I'm as surprised as you are.

Here's how it works. I'll fall asleep exhausted. I'll dream really vivid really weird dreams about non-sexual things like brushing my teeth with a bar of soap. Sometimes something sexy will happen, usually with a person that is strange to me, or my husband, or on one occasion with Ryan Gosling. I'll then wake up to a string of 4 or 5 orgasms. I'll open my eyes, my husband snoring away beside me, my hands tucked innocently under my pillow. The orgasms will cease, but the warm sensation in my crotch and a lingering sense of confusion remains. I'm pregnant. I'm as rotund and hairy as a pot bellied pig. I'm supposed to be the antithesis of sexy. Right?

But then I started reading this book called "Ina May's Guide to Childbirth". Whether you plan to have a baby or not, I highly recommend reading Ina May's work. It's revolutionized my perception not only about the politics of pregnancy and birth, but also about female sexuality and the sheer genius of our beautiful bodies.

Ina May looks at being pregnant and giving birth not as an experience to simply survive, but something to fully immerse ourselves in, and for most women (complications aside) even enjoy.  

Check out this video: 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5bm9-B6Ec4

Anatomically, the idea of spontaneous orgasms during pregnancy and birth makes sense. Look what's happening in our bodies: increased blood flow, increased circulation and pressure on the vaginal canal, and increased sensitivity. And yet the sexual dimensions of pregnancy and birth are often ignored. It's certainly not something I've ever talked about. 

Why? 

Because we watched too much TV growing up, saw pregnant woman limp around in moo-moos and give birth screaming on their backs in hospital beds. 

Because our mothers/ aunts/ sisters/ grandmothers/ girlfriends/ told us that pregnancy sucks and labour hurts like hell. 

Because it would be embarrassing to doctors to have women pleasuring themselves though birth, even though pleasuring oneself has been proven to block pain (even in migraines) and aid in the birthing process.

Because most women in America give birth in settings where they aren't able to enjoy their bodies because of fetal monitoring devices, pain medication, C Sections, and the absence of food or water.

All of these limitations make a pleasurable birth experience less likely and less imaginable. Is it any wonder that our reproductive process is as uninviting as two-week-old bikini stubble? 

My question to you is this, what if things were different? Suppose your best friend told you her pregnancy was awesome because her genitals were singing her to sleep every night. Or your Mom told you her birth was amazing because she had a midwife and a doula who helped her believe in herself, rather than some doctor complaining she was taking too long. Or when your aunt had a caesarean, the doctors broke their respectful silence only to sing happy birthday softly to her baby as they pulled it out of the womb and placed is straight into her arms. 

Even if you suffered horrible morning sickness, gas, or bloating, would knowing that this kind of pleasure is possible make the prospect of surviving pregnancy and giving birth more empowering?

Orgasms aside, our attitude towards birth and pregnancy sucks. Our fear and shame are sad, not only because they are limiting our potential to experience life to the fullest, but also because they speak to our lack of trust of woman in general. The implication is that women can't be independent, that women's bodies can't be trusted, and that women can't do anything right. 

To be honest I don't think my spontaneous orgasms will last through labour, unfortunately. However, I truly believe that Ina May and the Orgasmic Birth movement are onto something. Our bodies are not a dangerous mistake to be heavily medicated under the glare of bright lights. Our bodies are powerful and sexy, and that sexiness is not something to be ashamed about. It's something to talk about.

Women are truly miraculous orgasms. 

I mean organisms. 

(!)

Life, Death and Exploding Vaginas

26 Weeks

"When you realize how perfect life is, you will tilt your head back and laugh at the sky..."

-   Gautama Buddha

My best friend died when I was two months pregnant.
 

I hadn't spoken to him in a while, not since he left for rehab. I knew he'd be back at the end of May. We share the same birth week, and I was looking forward to showing him my baby belly over a cupcake and a game of chess. 

Unknown to me, he flew back earlier than expected. His sister's husband was found dead in a jail cell. There was an article in the paper about it. My friend returned home to comfort his family. Not even 48 hours after arriving in Vancouver he fell asleep on a Saturday night and suffered a heart attack. He never woke up. He was a musical maestro, gifted artist, poet, and a practicing Buddhist. He was my best friend.

On the day of his funeral, the church pulsed with a swell of familiar faces. My friend's extended First Nations family, co-workers, and even the odd Buddhist monk showed up to pay their respects. The ceremony lasted over 3 hours, which we were told is short for a First Nation's funeral. It felt like an eternity to me.

Despite being utterly exhausting, sitting silently in a room for so long was also extremely cathartic. Sitting still with nowhere to hide from my pain or my friend or his absence blew to smithereens whatever icy shackles previously contained my grief. I came undone. I dissolved. I cried until my throat hurt. At the same time, in the space of my friend's not yet too distant memory, I settled on some interesting insights that I'd like to share, made all the more poignant by the invisible life blooming inside my belly.

First off, death sucks. No matter how spiritual, evolved or positive you want to be about it, death fucking sucks. The fact that the person you love is no longer around to sit with in the sunshine or snort coffee out his/her nose as you both laugh uncontrollably about something that isn't even funny, it's the shits no matter how you slice it. At the same time, life wouldn't mean much without death. Would it? If everything and everyone stuck around forever we'd inevitably take it for granted, even more so than we do already. Death has a way of snapping the life back into you. If you let it. Since my friend died the little things that used to bug me don't bug me so much. I squeeze my husband a little tighter. I forgive the people who hurt me a little more quickly. I guess in this way death can be a gift as well as a curse. As much as it fucking sucks.

Second, it really does take a village to raise a family. At the funeral my friend's sister, brothers, mother, and close aunts and uncles sat together in the front row. Periodically one of them would stand up, bereft, walk or run out of the room and/ or simply collapse in tears. They were never left alone. There was always someone close by, a warm body to hold tightly or someone waiting in the wings with a glass of water. One of the speakers later told us that 'delegating' like this is a traditional model of care. In death or tragedy the village gathers and each individual is assigned a specific task, or person, to take care of until the worst of the tragedy is over. I can only hope to conceive such a conscious sense of community for my baby. The tight circle of love my friend's extended family created was truly inspiring. If this was the kind of community he grew up with, no wonder he was such an exceptional human being.

Finally, I realized death is not the end. I'm sure of it now more than ever. My brother and I often debate the old life after death question. He's an amazing physicist who operates particle beams to create radioactive medical isotopes. He talks about impossible-to-understand things like black holes in coffee cups. He thinks there is a scientific explanation to everything, which I disagree with entirely. I mean, if a black hole in a coffee cup isn't magic, than what the hell is? Anyway, even if we were to take scientific 'law' into account, the first rules of physics are that:

1. You can't make something out of nothing, and 
2. You can't 'destroy' energy, you can only transform it.

Death is therefore not destruction, it's a transformation. In the same way birth is not creation, it's a transformation.

I have no idea what exactly this means, only that my friend is now everywhere. Even though I can't call him on the phone, he is with me as I write this, sitting in the park where we played chess, listening to music on my iPod, laughing at the assholes in Canucks shirts, calming me down when I'm upset, feeling the flutters of life inside me. He's around even more than before. And I know that when I face down my demons and shake under the overwhelming weight of my fears, he'll be there. When my vagina explodes with new life and I explode with joy, he'll be there too. I can see him now, laughing at the sky as our cruel and elegant cycle of life continues. 

I hope we all keep laughing with him.

I Love my Tits!

25 Weeks

I'm indisputably pregnant. Strangers are giving up their seats up on the bus, yoga teachers approach me with fear and hesitation, and none of my pants fit without an elastic band through the buttonhole and an unzipped fly.   

So I figure I should write this shit down. Apparently new Mom's forget everything once the baby is born. Probably a good thing. If we remembered every scary, awkward, smelly and downright painful moment of our 9 months of incubating, we'd probably think twice before saying, oh fuck it honey... let's see what happens just one more time! 

Not that I'm complaining. I feel extremely lucky. I became pregnant at 35, the one and only time I had unprotected sex with my husband. I slept through my first trimester, about 12-15 hours a night, and was fortunate to be able to do so without stressing about work or taking care of kids. I only puked once, and that's because I didn't realize I was pregnant, drank a beer and slept 5 hours before waking up for work. After my morning cleansing ritual of lemon water and manuka honey, I promptly barfed honey-flavored-lemon-bile all over my favourite sexy pj's. I never barf, even in the old days when I drank a case of bear and stayed up for 2 days. My baby was like, nope! No more beers for you bitch! And that's when I knew my life would never be the same again.

The only real inconveniences so far are:

1. Waking up slightly more than normal to pee. The baby is sitting low, and enjoys back-flipping on my bladder especially at around 4am. 
2. Sometimes I wake up inconsolable hungry and have to eat a container of cold porridge before I can get back to sleep. 
3. I also suffer a searing pain in my hip sockets when I stand or roll over in bed that feels like someone's sticking a red hot penis into the very center of my butt cheek. It really takes my breath away, but the pain will pass I'm told. Just like everything else.

I've escaped many of the ailments that I read about on birthing blogs. No vice-like leg cramps, no bladder or kidney infections, no incurable heart burn, no lack of mobility-- despite the searing penis pain in my hips I can still run, do yoga, TRX class and Pilates with some modification. No overwhelming weight gain, no swollen hands or feet, no weird unhealthy cravings, and no persevering thoughts of murder or suicide. Touch wood, I sure hope my luck lasts.

Did I also mention I love my tits? I've never had bigger than an 'A' cup before so it's all very new and exciting. I plan to wear as many cleavage plunging tops and slut it up while I can before the baby sucks all the milk out of me and leaves me with a pair of rocks in socks. Boobs are fun and I'll miss them when they're gone.

On a more profound note, I'd like to take a moment to talk about love. 

I thought I knew about love. I'm married. I have beyond amazing friends and family, the coolest cat in the universe. I've meditated (and medicated) myself into ecstatic states, practiced yoga every day for most of my adult life. I've slept under the stars and swam in oceans so clean and calm I felt like I was swimming through a mirror into another dimension. I've traveled the word and met people that are so beautiful and awe inspiring that I cry when I think about them. But I swear on my heavenly breasts as soon as I became pregnant I felt like someone made a serum of pure, clean, bright, unconditional love juice and injected it into my veins. It's a love that I didn't think was possible, and wonder if it would have been possible had I never become pregnant. 

Now I want to make it clear that it's not just that I love my 'baby'. To be honest, the idea that the squirming sensation in my guts is something other than gas is still a bit surreal. No. It's the realization that love is at the center of my being. It's not only the life-force growing in my uterus... it's who I am. It's me. All my dry cynicism aside, love is the gift I receive. Love makes all the heady bullshit, all the self doubt, worry, anxiety, expectations, regret and stabby penis hips absolutely laughable. After all, what's the point of life if not to learn how to love uncontrollably? And what's the point of loving uncontrollably if you can't spread it around? Giving up my body so I can give the gift of life, and therefore love, to someone else? That's the most crazy profound shit there is.

Babies are great, but love is the biggest gift of all friends.


ps i love my tits!!!