Category Archives: Mindful Pregnancy

25 Weeks Pregnant: Tis the Season to Dress to the Nines

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December 8 – December 14: 25 Weeks 0 Days – 25 Weeks 6 Days.

I just read an article about how tech companies throw impressive holiday bashes to retain employees, and not to be outdone, Richard’s company had its party this Saturday on the U.S.S. Hornet, an aircraft carrier. The invitation requested we “dress to impress.” Minor discomforts aside, I’ve felt good in my second trimester, so I was looking forward to it.

I have several high-waisted dresses, and I thought I’d easily be able to squeeze into one of those because it’s only my belly that’s growing, right? Wrong. Thursday evening I tried on dress after dress, and the zippers wouldn’t come anywhere near closing. There was a dress or two that I could use if I was desperate, but nothing that looked that “impressive.” Friday, I headed to the mall to search for a maternity holiday dress.

First stop: Motherhood Maternity. They had a couple nice dresses there, but in response to nearly every one of my hopeful inquiries, the saleswoman replied, “I’m so sorry, we no longer have that in your size.” Disappointed, but unwilling to give up, I got took every marginally winter-appropriate dress they had in my size into the fitting room.

We don’t have bright lights or a good full length mirror at our new home yet, which I guess has left me with some body blind spots. Upon putting on the first mid-thigh-length dress, I turned around in front of the mirror to see how it looked, but froze when I caught a glimpse of the back of my right knee (what’s that area called? The knee pit?). It was blue! Horrified, I laboriously bent and twisted to try to get a better look. Are those spider veins? No, those are definitely varicose veins. Two of them? No, three?! Oh my God. (I still don’t know how many there are, I can’t get into a position where I can closely examine my own knee pit). I tried on all the dresses I’d brought in, but I was so distracted by examining and re-examining the back of my knee that I probably didn’t genuinely see most of them.

Pregnancy Art Therapy - 25 Weeks

“Close your eyes. Visualize your body as you breathe in and out. Try to imagine your breath as a particular color as it enters your body, another color as it exits. What do you see? Draw an outline of a body on a large sheet of paper, and inside, create a watercolor based on your bodily state. Think about what these colors mean to you, where they are densest, where they are most opaque.”

The previous day, I’d tried an art therapy technique in which I drew an outline of my body, meditated on my state, and filled in the outline with watercolor. I feel like I need to do another one using the body shape of me contorting to try to see the back of my knee. The agitation I felt in that moment is probably worth processing. Those varicose veins represented something more significant to me. Maybe I was upset because I saw it as the first evidence of a permanent change pregnancy would have on my body (which is not necessarily the case, sometimes varicose veins shrink or disappear after pregnancy—during pregnancy blood volume goes up 50%, contributing to bulging veins). Maybe seeing them shattered my sense of invincibility, thrusting me into a tempest of worry about all the other things that could go wrong (my gestational diabetes test is this week). Maybe they just made me feel old, unhealthy, or unattractive. I don’t really know.

I was alarmed by the the variety of textures and colors on the back of my knee. (Reality check: they have become less and less pronounced every time I’ve looked at them in the days since—they are not even that bad). I Googled “blood clot vs varicose veins,” as I bumbled through the mall and was satisfied that my symptoms were benign. However, when I got home (empty-handed) I phoned the nurse-midwife who was on-call after hours at my hospital and described my symptoms to be reassured that I was really okay (She was graciously nice about it).

I accepted that I wasn’t going to get a fun new holiday outfit, and resigned myself to wearing an old relaxed white sweater dresses the party. On Saturday morning I headed back to the mall to buy some maternity nylons and other flesh-tone underthings to complement. The saleswoman at Motherhood recognized me and said, “Hey you were in here yesterday, right? That dress you really liked—we just got a shipment in and we have it in your size now. Do you want to try it on?” The previous day, when I looked in the mirror, the appearance of each dress I tried on was outshone by the pulsating blue aura emitted from my gnarly knee pit. With the perspective of a new day I still checked out my new found body change in the full-length mirror, but I was more focused on envisioning which necklace I would wear to match and how I’d do my hair and make-up. Here’s how it turned out:

Maternity holiday dress

Ready for the holiday party!

Richard and I had a lovely time at the holiday party. He was like a kid in a candy store on that aircraft carrier—he wanted to see everything! I’m glad I brought flats, because the stairways were practically ladders. We stayed until almost midnight, which made me recognize how much more energy I have now than I did in my first trimester. One thing I’ve come to depend on in pregnancy is that, for better or worse, every week something changes (And in the big picture, as long as the baby is growing and healthy, it’s all for better). One of the Joyful Pregnancy Affirmations in my Hypnobabies home study class was particularly poignant this week: “I love my pregnant body and accept it every day.” This was the first week I felt like I needed that statement.

I’ve since read up on how to minimize varicose veins to prevent complications. The whole time I’ve been writing this post I’ve been diligently trying to avoid crossing my legs. I’m still trying to figure out how to sleep on my left side and elevate my legs at the same time, but I’ll keep trying (lying on the left prevents the baby from compressing the inferior vena cava, which can inhibit blood from returning to the heart, and elevating the feet prevents blood from pooling in the legs). Daily cardiovascular exercise would help, so maybe it’s time to locate my closest swimming pool. For now I’m off to spend a few minutes in legs up the wall (viparita karani).

11 Weeks Pregnant: Hypermobility and Pregnancy

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September 1 – September 6: 11 Weeks 0 Days – 11 Weeks 6 Days.

When we measured hamstring flexibility in high school gym class, I blew past the end of the gauge on the sit-and-reach box (which was about the only thing I was good at in P.E.). At 19, when I first set foot in a Bikram Yoga studio, I was already one of the most flexible people in the room. I often had yoga teachers ask me if I was a gymnast or a dancer—I wasn’t; my bendiness is mostly genetic. Needless to say, I’ve always been flexible in certain directions; however, I don’t know if I’ve always been hypermobile.

Flexibility is mainly a function of how long and pliable your muscles are. Hypermobility relates to different tissues. If you removed all the muscles from a human body (don’t try this at home), the bones would maintain a skeleton shape because of tiny straps called ligaments that hold the bones together at the joints. Ligaments have some elasticity, but unlike muscles, they don’t contract and relax. If you work diligently to build flexibility in a muscle, you may quickly lose your flexibility if you stop your stretching regimen. However, if you stretch out your ligaments, they stay that way for a quite a while. Some examples of actions that stretch ligaments:

  • Twisting your ankle
  • Pushing your elbow to straighten as far as it goes
  • Making sudden stops or pivots while running
  • Sinking into yoga poses as deeply as you can rather than maintaining integrity

If the ligaments get so lax that the joints are no longer stable (e.g. the shoulder easily comes out of place in its socket), it is called hypermobility. For people who get to this point, it’s of utmost importance to strengthen and refine control of the muscles around hypmobile joints as a second line of stability.

Pelvis

A view of the pelvis from the front.

All of this matters when you’ve got a baby on board because pregnant women’s ligaments become more pliable. Especially during the first trimester, pregnant women’s bodies release elevated levels of a hormone called relaxin. Bear with me for some anatomy: everybody knows that the hip joint is where the thigh bone attaches to the pelvis, but the pelvis also has a couple less illustrious joints that maintain its structure and don’t move that much under normal circumstances. The pelvis is made of two large irregular bones called the coxal bones (the iliac bone labelled in the diagram is part of the coxal bone), which come together in pubic area in the front and wrap around the sides and to the back where they join the sacrum bone, which (along with the coccyx) is the bottom part of the spine. One of relaxin’s function is to relax the ligaments of the joint in the front of the pelvis between the two coxal bones—the pubic symphysis—and of the joints between the coxal bones and the sacrum—the sacroiliac (or SI) joints. It makes birth a heck of a lot easier if the pelvis is mobile.

Because relaxin is released systemically, not just to those few pelvic joints, it affects all the ligaments in the body. People who have tight joints tend to enjoy this period of relative mobility. By the time I got pregnant I’d already been working with a couple hypermobile joints (including my SI joints) for two years. I had worked with a physical therapist to rehabilitate my body enough that I could teach yoga regularly and practice a couple times a week on top of that, but there was definitely a limit on how much stretching I could do before destabilizing my joints. My favorite classes became the ones that prepped the body for inversions, because they usually focused on strengthening instead of stretching. I kept telling myself, Before I get pregnant, I have to get back into doing my physical therapy exercise daily, start doing Pilates three times a week, and maybe even get back into weight training to stabilize my joints. But I didn’t get around to it, and I got pregnant a lot quicker than I thought I would. When I found out I had a baby on the way, I knew I was in trouble.

I’ve never striven to be that mama who’s 36 weeks pregnant doing a one-legged wheel through an Instagram filter (No disrespect intended—you are amazing and gorgeous; thank you for sharing what’s most authentic to you during pregnancy). However, I visualized myself continuing to work through pregnancy. When I was a lifeguard in college, there was a diving coach who worked at the pool named Betty-Sue, or Anna-Jane, or something like that. She was tall and boisterous, had pixie-cut stark red hair (before it was cool), and a giant pregnant belly. Fueled by the only images we had of pregnancy childbirth—the hectic emergency situations portrayed on TV and in movies—the other lifeguards and I were horrified that she was still working. We were sure we’d have to deliver a baby on the pool deck, armed only with the three-minute section about emergency childbirth we’d discussed in our first aid course. Years later, I think back on that diving coach as a powerful role model. During pregnancy, I wanted to be out there fulfilling a purpose greater than my own needs right up until my contractions started.

Needless to say, giving up a big chunk of my teaching was a tough choice, but it came down to the question: “Would you rather have the physical integrity to hold and carry your future child or to continue to practice contortion?” For me, there is no contest. As soon as I found out I was pregnant I stopped practicing yoga in public classes. My home practice has consisted almost exclusively of low lunge, legs up the wall, and savasana. Within a week of finding out I was pregnant I gave a month’s notice on the public vinyasa classes I’d been teaching. In that month it became clear that I’d made the right choice. After sitting cross-legged for long periods my ankles feel kinked. If I go to my full depth in a forward fold (let alone doing it repeatedly in a series of several sun salutations), my SI joints ache like never before until I can do some of my rehab exercises. After samokonasana (side splits), I feel pins and needles in my pubic symphysis for the rest of the day. Even in gentle back bends I feel sharp discomfort in my upper abdominals. Twists make me nauseous. In short, vinyasa yoga is not therapeutic for me at this time. I’ve had several pregnant women practice in my vinyasa classes into the third trimester, but it just isn’t meant to be in my body.

Last week, was my last week teaching vinyasa. I’m continuing to teach Seniors’ Yoga, yoga and meditation to people with chronic pain, and a couple private classes, which has been lovely and soothing for my body this week.

For others who have (or think they may have) hypermobile joints (during or not during pregnancy), here are some yoga-related insights I’ve gleaned from living in a similar body:

  • The cues in yoga classes don’t always apply to you. For example, a common cue in yoga is to tilt the pelvis forward (or reach the sit bones upward) during forward folds. If you’re already flexible this may destabilize the SI joints. Ask an anatomy-focused teacher for tips to suit your specific body after class, or sign up for a private session!
  • Yoga not just about softening and relaxing. The dialog around softening to intensity is one of the reasons yoga is so healing, but when you have hypermobile joints, there’s an art to it. With practice, you can learn to completely relax and release in one area while engaging the muscles to stabilize another. For example, in frog pose, can you soften your inner thighs and groin while engaging your core so your spine doesn’t hammock down? At first it can be like patting your head and rubbing your belly. Anusara-inspired yoga teachers often include great cues about stabilizing the joints.
  • Being hypermobile doesn’t necessarily mean you’re flexible. For one, muscles can automatically tighten up to protect hypermobile joints. Also, sometimes areas of immobility can actually contribute to hypermobility. For example, due to very mild scoliosis my upper back is less mobile than average. Above and below that immobile area, I have developed hypermobile joints that have compensate so I can approximate fun, sexy positions like wheel pose. Relying on hypermobile joints to achieve yoga poses is not a sustainable practice.
  • The posture should be steady

    The posture should be steady, comfortable, and grounded in joy – Patanjali (This photo was taken long before I was pregnant)

    You may not be able to feel your edge. You can easily and comfortably press hypermobile joints into unstable positions that may continue to stretch or damage surrounding ligaments. Because the ligaments are long, you don’t feel pain until the joint is really out of place. The cue, “Breath into the discomfort” in the absence of cues and enforcement of alignment did not serve me as a developing yogi. When I didn’t feel discomfort in a pose, I’d go searching for it. In some directions, the only discomfort available was achieved by destabilizing my joints. I used to hold resting pigeon 6 minutes each side per day because it was so beautifully intense—as if it was stretching the fibers of my soul. Turns out it was so intense because the way I was sinking into it was pulling apart the tissues that stabilized my SI joint. That sounds like it would be painful, but it’s important for other bendy yogis to know that it never felt bad or destructive to me; it felt transcendental. Now, my personal rule of thumb is that the stretching part of a pose should be comfortable and pleasant. Don’t worry, in most styles of yoga, there’s still tons of uncomfortable strength work as an arena to develop equanimity.

  • You may not have the strength to do the poses that most people don’t have the flexibility to do. The typical class that works up to wheel as a peak pose focuses on flexibility. This isn’t enough prep for me. Because I have the hypermobile segments in my spine, it takes an incredible amount of core/abdominal/back muscle control and strength for me to bend evenly in my spine instead of just collapsing into those “easy” joints. To do wheel comfortably, I need to spend a good chunk of time priming the strength component of the pose. (Actually, this is good advice for anyone. Doing wheel without engaging the abdominals to control the back bend is a really effective way to develop painful hypermobility issues).
  • Typical sequencing may not work for you. For me: Ashtanga and other sun-salutation-heavy styles—yuck, too repetitive and extreme-to-extreme to keep my joints in place. Sequencing that’s so focused on the peak pose that is sacrifices balance—ick, imbalanced muscle groups can easily pull unstable joints out of alignment. Hamstring stretches until the sacred cows come home—my SI joint says no thanks. Yin yoga—Oh God no. Those long holds are designed to get into your connective tissues, that’s the whole point of them. I don’t need my ligaments to be any longer than they are. It’ll be different depending on what you’ve got going on in your body. It’s okay if not all styles of yoga resonate with you. It’s okay if no style of yoga resonates with you.
  • Yoga is not a cure-all. Anyone who tells you otherwise probably has a financial interest in you continuing to practice yoga exclusively. There’s a glaring (but sometimes hard-to-accept) difference between a practice that’s therapeutic and one that’s only tolerable; just because you can do all the typical yoga poses doesn’t mean they’re improving your physical state (or improving your ability to sit in meditation). Check in with your body. You may have incorporate other types of exercise or therapies into your regimen to restabilize your joints. I’m not qualified to give medical advice, but for my body, seeing a physical therapist who could specifically evaluate what was going on in my body, give me physical hands-on adjustments, and assign homework exercises to keep those adjustments in place worked better than anything else. Pilates with an experienced teacher is also great. Since I’ve been pregnant I’ve been taking Preggo Pilates with Stephanie Forster. Update: Nearing the end of my second trimester, I swear even more vehemently by prenatal pilates. When life has painfully kinked my joints, pilates has snapped me back into place.
  • There are seven other limbs of yoga, all of which you can still practice, even with hypermobile joints. Let your asana be a practice that serves you—not a practice that adheres to what other people tell you that you “should” be doing (Prenatal yoga is such a staple in San Francisco that not one doctor, midwife, or acquaintance could resist telling me I should try it even after hearing about my joint issues. You know your body. You know what’s right—that knowledge just may be hiding under a couple layers of ego). I’ve been using the Hypnobabies home-study course (see my review of it here) as a form of meditation and connection to my baby.

Having hypermobile joints can leave us feeling lonely and judged because there are relatively few of us out there, people don’t have much compassion for us (“You’re too flexible? I’d love to have your problem!”), and sometimes we’re even shamed for succumbing to our challenges (yoga teachers may tell us to “let go of our ego” when we’re sinking too deep into yoga poses rather than helping us find alignment in the lax joints we have a hard time sensing). My hypermobile sisters and brothers: know that you are not the only one. It’s okay to have the body you have—just because certain things don’t work for you doesn’t mean your body is bad or wrong or broken. If a teacher makes you feel that way, it’s a sign they don’t have the knowledge to help you; find a new teacher. Your body is perfect, and there is a practice out there that will be therapeutic for you. Trust that if you let go of dogmas around asana, put the other principles of yoga to work, and get a little one-on-one help from an experienced teacher or therapist, you will find your way.

24 Weeks Pregnant: Horizontal Growth Spurt

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December 1 – December 7: 24 Weeks 0 Days – 24 Weeks 6 Days.

Eight weeks ago I was wondering when my bump was going to pop. Well, it’s here!

24 Week Bump

Filling out my maternity clothes.

Over the last two weeks I had a horizontal growth spurt. So far in my second trimester I’ve been gaining a pound a week or less, but in the last two weeks I put on around 5 lbs. At least some of that gain was to my thighs and butt, but I’ll consider that stored energy for the baby when she’s so big that there’s barely any room in my stomach for food (although, if I start feeling like I’m going to split my maternity pants, maybe I’ll lay off the butter and bacon).

What I love most about the bump: Seeing evidence that my baby is growing. I’ve been feeling her kick more and more, too, which is so cool.

Other bump advantages:

  • Filling out my maternity clothes instead of swimming in them. My “I ate a seed” shirt finally makes sense.
  • Being recognizably pregnant. Growing a human is hard work, and it’s nice to be acknowledged for it! I love telling people, “It’s a girl!”
  • Getting special pregnant lady treatment, like being allowed to use a restroom that’s not normally for customers or having three grocery store employees desperately (but ultimately unsuccessfully) trying to help me find the perogies I’m craving. Sometimes people do go a little overboard. I can still pick stuff up off the floor on my own, carry quite a reasonable amount of weight, and walk a modest distance. I appreciate the thought though!

Bump Inconveniences:

  • Before I was pregnant: if I had to fit through a tight space, I’d turn sideways and squeeze through. Now: if I can’t fit through facing forward, I probably can’t fit through facing sideways either. I clipped my belly pretty hard on a door handle trying to sneak into a meeting room one day this week.
  • Putting socks and shoes on is awkward. I can’t really bend my knee into my chest any more, and it’s hard to tie my shoe with my ankle crossed over the opposite knee.
  • I don’t think my feet’s integrity has caught up with the extra weight I’ve gained. By the end of some days this week, my tootsies were aching, especially if I’d been wearing non-supportive shoes. I think a key to my third trimester will be finding supportive (but hopefully still attractive) slip-on shoes. Any suggestions?

My biggest bump challenge: Now that the baby is bigger she is starting to press up against my stomach, which is causing heartburn. One day this week the heartburn was intense and relentless. It feels like the baby may have turned upside down so she can kick up against my stomach (in the long run, this is a good thing as the ideal position for birth is when the baby is upside down—most hospitals will do an automatic C-section if the baby is feet down). I’ve been managing the heartburn with food and lifestyle choices so far (sipping almond milk, going for walks after eating, sleeping on an upward slant). The next thing on my list of things to try is papaya, which several reputable sources have recommended. That said, I’ve Googled, “Are Tums safe during pregnancy?” several times, so my resolve may be wavering.

Identity shift: I couldn’t categorize this as good, inconvenient, or bad because even when change is wonderful, healthy, and productive, it’s hard! With the physical changes in my body, Richard sees me differently. I’m no longer just a wife and a woman, I am a mother and the carrier of his already-beloved daughter. He cares for me in ways he didn’t before, and seems to have a heightened protective instinct for me and the baby. Obviously this shift in both of our identities is amazing, necessary, and there are parts of it I love (like having Richard make me snacks), but I still have a sense of melancholy around losing my old, simpler identity. Also, these new roles entail all sorts of a scary responsibility and stir up a deep-seated evolutionary need to not mess up, which can degrade into self-doubt and self-judgment. The questions around my future work situation contribute to the feeling of getting a total lifestyle makeover. More and more I’m willing to dive wholeheartedly into this new adventure and see myself as a mother (the books I’ve been reading have helped), but there are still moments when I just want to be a woman and a wife. I guess that’s what babysitters and date nights are for!

10 Weeks Pregnant: Sharing the Joy (And Splitting My Pants)

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August 24 – August 31: 10 Weeks 0 Days – 10 Weeks 6 Days.

Forget waiting until twelve weeks. I finally announced on Facebook that I’m pregnant (I hated keeping the secret). Before I was pregnant, I foresaw myself being that pregnant lady who gets a photo in same position and clothing every single day and strings them together into a time lapse YouTube video after the baby is born. Turns out modeling in front of a camera is the last thing I feel like doing while nauseous, so I have very few photos of my first trimester. However, Wednesday morning I had a lull in my nausea, and I mustered up the wherewithal to snap a photo in our backyard to share on Facebook:

Pregnancy Announcement

It was so nice to share the news with friends and get some much-needed support and encouragement around the nausea and fatigue! Turns out I let the baby out of the bag just in time, because I couple days later I had quite an embarrassing event, and I don’t know how I would have coped if I hadn’t been able to share my chagrin on Facebook and laugh at myself with friends.

Saturday was a productive day: All morning I toured the most promising garage sales within a 45-minute drive, and came back with a carful of small furniture items we need for our new house. That afternoon I talked Richard into stopping off at some thrift stores to go desk shopping on our way to Lowe’s (we’ve been chipping away at a long list of home improvement projects we hope to complete before the baby is born). I was wearing a pair of green cargo capris, which were themselves bought from a thrift store years ago. The button at the top of the fly had been replaced by a safety pin, and many of the snaps that close the pockets had become detached; but, they rode low and weren’t skintight, so they were one of the few pairs of pants I still enjoyed wearing.

As I got back in the car after visiting our last thrift store I thought I heard something rip. I shifted from side-to-side and my pants felt intact, so I rationalized that I’d just imagined it. Our next stop was a decorative hardware store, which we were disappointed to find was closed for the long weekend. As passersby strolled behind us on the sidewalk, Richard and I alternately stood on tiptoes or bent over to peer through the windows at the various options they had for faucets and sinks. This time when I got back into the car, I definitely heard something rip. I felt around to my butt and shrieked. There was an enormous split in my pants that ran from my waistband to my mid thigh, completely exposing my lacy lavender panties. When I divulged what had happened to Richard, he howled with laughter and couldn’t stop.

I haven’t gained that much weight during pregnancy—maybe three or four pounds. However, I haven’t been exercising nearly as much, so, because muscle is heavier than fat, I could have easily lost a chunk of muscle and packed on a greater volume of fat to my butt and thighs without gaining an ounce of weight. I’ve had good control over my weight for the last thirteen years, so this kind of temporary shift wouldn’t normally bother me. I gained ten pounds on my ten-day honeymoon in Hawaii; instead of freaking out and enacting a rigorous diet and exercise program when I got home, I simply went back to my normal habits and calmly lost the weight as quickly as I’d gained it. However, something about my butt busting through a hearty fabric like khaki was too much for a pregnant lady to handle.

I saw the humor in what had happened and I was laughing along with Richard, but it was the type of laughter that was a dam restraining a deluge of tears. When he suggested I tie a sweater around my waist so we could still go to Lowe’s, I think he could tell that dam was a about to burst. He didn’t argue when I insisted we go buy me a new pair of pants immediately, and that he come with me for emotional support instead of just dropping me off at the mall. I picked out a pair of loose, low-riding, boyfriend-cut pajama pants, which got me through the rest of our errands.

A day or two later, we went shopping for my first pair of proper maternity pants.

Maternity Pants

My first pair of maternity pants.

23 Weeks Pregnant: To Work or Not To Work?

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November 24 – November 30: 23 Weeks 0 Days – 23 Weeks 6 Days.

Since I stopped teaching vinyasa yoga at the end of my first trimester, I haven’t been working as much (more details on this to come—my hypermobility issues have been one of my biggest pregnancy challenges, and, as per the advice of a book I read I read to inform my last memoir-writing project, I’ve been letting those particular emotions age before blogging extensively about them). With Thanksgiving this week, I worked much more than usual filling in for colleagues who were out of town. This had me dropping my Richard off at his shuttle stop in the morning, then whisking Foxy off a friend’s house for the day, sitting with protesting joints in rush hour traffic during my long, rainy commutes, and missing my freedom to snack and rest the way my pregnant body wants to.

Working itself felt wonderful—having a sense of purpose that is my own is important to me, and my body has been cooperative during my second trimester. However, the experience left me wondering if I could maintain that schedule and add in arranging care for a baby, pumping breast milk at work, making a healthy dinner at the end of the day, interacting meaningfully with my family, and still practicing self-care.

I think equally good arguments can be made for providing a child a rich environment at home or immersing her in a social setting at daycare. If I work, I’ll feel bad about missing out on knowing and experiencing my children as much as I can, and if I stay at home I’ll feel bad for letting down womankind and sabotaging my career. Unless I change careers: after childcare, doggy daycare, and the cost of commuting, working would not put me that far ahead financially. Richard makes enough for us to get by and is supportive of me doing whatever I think is best for our family. So the question really comes down to how I want to spend my days. Lately, deliberating over my future work situation has started to feel like this:

Obviously “to work, or not to work?” is a false dichotomy. Work is a multi-dimensional spectrum with varying hours (full-time, part-time, temp, contract, etc.), activities (office job, teaching movement, manual labor, etc.), and location (work-from-work, work-from-home, traveling, etc.). It’s hard to know ahead of time where on the spectrum is best for me. A few pieces of advice I got this week gave me a little clarity:

  1. I put a dent in reading Baby 411 over the long weekend, and have been enjoying how the authors provide information to help parents make informed decisions without undertones of guilt and shame (My reviews of pregnancy books reflect my distaste for books that purport that there is only one right way to do things). In Baby 411, the authors say that whether you decide to stay at home or work, run with it—you can always reassess down the road. No matter what decision you make there will be people who judge you; it’s probably because they’re insecure about making a different decision than you did, and feel the need to justify it.
  2. I gave my e-mail to two or three pregnancy-related businesses, and now my inbox in inundated with baby spam. However, when this article about what NOT to worry about during pregnancy popped up in my inbox, I eagerly clicked the link and read it. In support of the sentiments in Baby 411, one of the quotes is: “No matter what decisions you make, someone will always disagree. Try not to let the negative comments upset you, and if you’re really worried about something, talk with your doctor or a nonjudgmental friend.” Who wants to be my go-to nonjudgmental friend?
  3. Someone I recently met quipped, “People always say they need to work to make money for their kids. Kids don’t understand money, they only understand love. They only want you.” Of course, if kids are going hungry because there isn’t enough money to buy food, they’re going to understand that something is wrong; however, this statement resonated with me with respect to my own situation.
  4. According to Baby 411 the old adage is true: research shows that quality time is more important than quantity time when is comes to parents and children.

Combining the ideas above, my take-away is to guiltlessly work as much (or as little) as I need to stay connected to my career, stay sane, and make any supplementary income we need to get by, but not so much (or so little) that I’m too drained to spend quality time with my family. Unfortunately this is still a pretty vague statement. How many hours should I work? What type of job? Is it worth missing out of my baby to be stuck in traffic on a long commute? What about a short commute? Should I find a job I can do from home? Should I hire a nanny or use a daycare center? What about the dog? I wish I could end this post with a concrete realization, but I don’t think I’ll get any clear answers until after the baby is in my life (and maybe not even then!). All I can do is start with a work schedule, and refine it as gracefully as possible through trial and error. In the meantime, I’m going work on the “guiltless” part: discovering and accepting what I think is best for my family, regardless of others’ judgments.