martedì, maggio 08, 2012

Taking it easy, hardcore

I'm taking my relaxation seriously. Today I started with an hour-long qi gong class, three hours of yoga, and then an hour of acupuncture which stretched into 90 minutes when I fell asleep on the table and the therapist didn't have the heart to wake me. I was snoring, he said. Well. Thanks, acupuncturist. I needed it.

My brain is tangling with the complex but pleasant puzzle of how to stay perfectly nourished and perfectly relaxed over the next six months, whilst travelling in Asia and Europe. I'm not actually going anywhere I haven't been before, unless you count a new city or two in countries I already know pretty well, so I have it pretty much mapped out in my mind. I'm always a pretty relaxed traveller, so really it's my normal routine with a lot more first-class tickets and massages thrown in. It's a write-off . . . and anyways, this is probably my last chance to travel first-class for awhile . . . soon I'll have children, which means I'll be poor. That's how it works, right? Anyways, when you book this far ahead, the price difference between coach class and business class is about 20 bucks.

Today's yoga class was a scream. I was really out of place there, like by asking what simple exercises I could do on a series of eight long-haul flights over the next month while everybody else had questions about the utility of homeopathy and raspberry leaf tea, but that was fine. Everybody else was white but had names like Indra. What was interesting in that context was that at the conversation bit toward the end, when people started sharing their snuff flicks birthing stories, was even these absolute hippie types had no problem reaching straight for the pain killers and C-sections as soon as they started feeling it was necessary.  Nobody had managed shit without nitrous, which was encouraging.

I guess I've been inculcated with the idea that I really have to do everything naturally or else I'm somehow a failure as a woman, and I've had to come to deal with the fact that there's a fairly high chance for me in particular that things are not going to happen naturally in the least, if I want Ren and I to live, anyways. That's made me sad, or testy, or something, but the more fucking horror stories birthing stories I hear, the more it's coming home to me that childbirth really has been to women what war has been to men in martial societies - something that just happens, and back in the day you couldn't go into it confidently expecting to survive, unless you were a bloody fool.

But Ren and I happen to be happening now, when childbirth just isn't as awful as it used to be for people of our income bracket and nationality, just as war isn't as awful as it used to be for all those guys flying around other people's countries and dropping bombs on them without getting too close. But I'll probably still make a good and thriving baby, and you won't find too many aerial campaigns that have made a good and thriving war. So. I guess my point is, if I have one, that thank fuck things are as they are.

4 commenti:

e.f. bartlam ha detto...

None of the women in my life have had hang ups about natural births. Martha had no qualms about the dope....in fact she was irritated they didn't come with it quicker.

Only so many people are gonna know how it went down... Just make up some terrible ----.

Mistress La Spliffe ha detto...

All the hippies too. Not complaining about needing drugs, C-sections, etc., just complaining when they took too long to happen.

Melbine ha detto...

I think that it depends mostly on your level of pain tolerance. I wail like a baby when I bump into my dresser, so I knew that I was going to need to be a bit high to get through childbirth.

I’m glad that you’re realizing that you’re not a failure because you might need some help during labour. You don’t think the pioneer women wouldn’t have thanked the Lord for some pain relief? Can I get a, ‘Hell yeah!’?!

I’m so glad that my brain has remembered about your blog. I really enjoy it!

Mistress La Spliffe ha detto...

Hell yeah! I don't know what my level of pain tolerance is. I'm not really curious to find out but such is motherhood I suppose.

Glad you're reading my dear. Miss you tonnes.