u s e y o u r h a n d s

I’d been looking forward to Heather “Dooce” Armstrong’s book for a long time. Before I got pregnant, I liked her writing, thought she was funny, etc. But as a pregnant person with deeply depressive tendencies, I looked at the stories of her first pregnancy and the subsequent post-partum depression more like foreshadowing.

When I heard that Heather would be reading tonight in Oak Brook, I knew I had to go not only to support a blogger I’d been reading for longer than I’ve lived in Chicago, but also to see that she had, indeed, gone through a crushing depression and managed to emerge a better person. There were many, many pregnant women at Heather’s reading. I do not often see pregnant people, so when I do, I stare at them and want to ask them questions. But what I really wanted to ask, I didn’t. I wanted to ask them if they also were there to collect Heather’s words as a talisman against what they felt was inevitable, the battling tides of post-pregnancy hormones and new-mother anxiety.

In the past few weeks, I’ve been struggling with feeling very, very alone in the pregnancy experience. I work for myself from home, so I don’t have colleagues who tell me personal or second-hand stories. I don’t have many friends with children. I don’t have close family and I have no nieces or nephews. It’s just me and Brian, the cats and a growing blogroll of mom bloggers whose words I live for.

When I feel alone, I get sad, which makes me purposely isolate myself. Not a great recipe for post-baby bliss, and I know that, which is why I need to be extremely vigilant in the first few weeks and months of Gus. To watch myself, to always monitor for the signs that there’s a cliff approaching. However, when you already feel alone and there’s danger looming large, you also feel that there is nobody you can ask for help.

And when that time comes, I’ll read Heather’s book. Again.

In preparing for Gus’ arrival, I’ve been studying my hypnobirthing materials, reading positive stories of birth, and generally trying to think positive thoughts about this whole experience. It’s been very striking to me that in order to fully embrace the idea of a peaceful, natural labor and birth, I have to let go of judgment. Judging myself, my husband, the medical facility I’ve chosen. I have to accept that with practice, I will be what I need to be to have this experience. I have to accept that with patience, my husband will be an admirable birth partner and wonderful father. And I have to accept that with the research I’ve done, the medical practice and midwives I’ve chosen will help me shape the experience.

Since I’m ordinarily incredibly cynical and negative, this way of thinking has forced me to challenge a lot of my daily thoughts, not just the pregnancy/childrearing-oriented ones. I’ve had to challenge my natural tendency to judge people poorly for offenses big and small. While this doesn’t mean that I have suddenly started to tolerate some of the things which are my big pet peeves, it does mean that I’ve started to cease holding on to these feelings for as long as I have.

This letting go of holding on is something I’m thankful for and hope to continue to practice going forward.

While there are many fun things about my alternative, hypnosis-based childbirth class, the most productive has been the assignment to craft a theme for birth and contrast it with one’s perceived life theme. If they match up, yay! If they don’t, you need to alter, tweak or flip your life theme.

Let’s take the life theme, “Nothing ever works out for me.” Lots of people have this theme, and lots of people have challenging experiences. But this theme almost ensures that you’ll never have anything work out — including your labor. A subtle change to that theme, for instance, “I rise to my life’s challenges,” is way more empowering. It’s easy to have a negative life theme. But in looking for small, positive things, I’m finding it’s easier to bounce back from negative ones.

A nice example came courtesy of the University of Illinois Extension. I need to expand my garden and would like to remediate or enrich the existing soil, but since we live in the city on an older plot, I’m worried about lead. It’s been a pain to figure out where to test, so I turned to the Extension. I found the Chicago Urban Gardening blog managed by Ron Wolford. An email to Mr. Wolford was soon answered. He told me where to get my soil tested and to call his assistant for a kit. His assistant was totally helpful and now I’m waiting for the kit to show up.

Now, that’s a positive experience that I can use to shape my life theme! And I don’t care what goofball, hippie-sounding thing I have to do in order to gain a more positive outlook and have a pleasant birth.

Wouldn’t you?