Mindful Pregnancy Table of Contents

This blog series is not meant to express an opinion about how anyone else should navigate pregnancy, childbirth, or parenting; this is simply the story of how one urban yogi in America moved through her own normal, relatively uncomplicated first pregnancy and childbirth. Although my posts end on positive notes, many parts of the process were challenging for me, and writing this blog helped me stay sane. My hope is that by being authentic about my experience I will empower other mamas to do the same. Because I shared what I was going through, friends from near and far reached out to support me, which made the difficult moments manageable and the joyful moments ecstatic. I thought it would be the birthing process that was empowering, but it was the solidarity from other women that gave me the fortitude to rise fully and completely to the challenge of motherhood. My hope for other mamas-to-be is that you will acknowledge your experience as it is (whether whether that’s blissful, horrible, or somewhere in between), will be unashamed to express that, and will be able to attain the resources you need to navigate your path.

I blogged my whole first trimester after-the-fact (alternating with present day posts), which makes it a little hard to navigate my Mindful Pregnancy posts in order. Here is an ordered week-by-week list of all my posts:

2 – Conception
3 – Pre-Conception Nutrition
4 – First Symptoms of Pregnancy

Bound Side Angle

4 Weeks Pregnant.


5 – Peeing on a Stick
6 – Secrets
7 – Nausea
8 – Surrendering Control (Or Not)
9 – New Joys
10 – Sharing the Joy (And Splitting My Pants)
11 – Hypermobility and Pregnancy
12 – Head Cold with a Side of Morning Sickness

12 Weeks Pregnant

12 Weeks Pregnant.

13 – Ascending From the Haze of the First Trimester
14 – So, What Type of Birth Are You Having?
15 – Beginning to Plan for Birth
16 – So When Do I Get That Baby Bump?
17 – Big Feelings
18 – Pregnancy Firsts

18 Weeks

18 Weeks Pregnant.

19 – It’s a Girl!
20 – Coping with Insomnia
21 – Beyond-The-Basics Nutrition
22- Pregnancy Book Reviews

22 Weeks Bump

22 Weeks Pregnant.

23 – To Work or Not To Work?
24 – Horizontal Growth Spurt
25 – Tis the Season to Dress to the Nines
26 – Baby Movements
27 – Home for Christmas
28 – 13 Misconceptions I Had About Babies

28 Weeks Pregnant

28 Weeks Pregnant.

29 – Nursery Mania
30 – Things I Love About My (Early) Third Trimester
31 – Healing an Eroded Body Image
32 – Birth Prep Class
33 – Dessert Decoration, Dog Deodorizing, and Dutailier
34 – Commitments to my Daughter
35 – “Lightening,” An Early Sign of Labor

35 Weeks Pregnant

35 Weeks Pregnant.

36 – Thoughts About Labor
37 – An Epileptic Mama’s Postpartum Plan
38 – Selfie Photoshoot, Stuck Rings, and Staycation

prenatal-belly-gaze

38 Weeks Pregnant.

39 – Encouraging Labor Naturally
40 – Equinox Firestorm’s Birth Story
40+ – Mindful Pregnancy Epilogue: The Fourth Trimester

34 Weeks Pregnant: Commitments to my Daughter

February 9– February 15: 34 Weeks 0 Days – 34 Weeks 6 Days.

I nearly titled this post, “Commitments to my Future Daughter,” but “future” doesn’t seem to apply any more. She has grown big and strong, has visible and frequent movements, and even responds to Richard’s voice. On Monday, I read BabyCenter’s 34 Week Pregnant blurb, which included the following:

…you’ll be happy to know that babies born between 34 and 37 weeks who have no other health problems generally do fine. They may need a short stay in the neonatal nursery and may have a few short-term health issues, but in the long run, they usually do as well as full-term babies.

The message I got: I could have a perfectly healthy baby tomorrow. Woah. I cried at least six times that day. It didn’t feel like “I’m not going to be able to do this” crying or “I don’t have enough support” crying. It felt like coming into acceptance crying.

34 weeks pregnant

Bump update: I finally grew into my “I ate a seed” shirt. Everything takes more energy now. On Sunday, I went for a swim, then took Foxy to the beach, then had to have a three-hour nap.

Yogic Musings

When I did my first yoga teacher training, the instructor was against having kids. Her opinion was that our evolutionary instinct to love our kids above all others and protect them at any cost destroys our spiritual practice. Instead of seeing all beings as equal, as the same as ourselves, as one, having a child pushes us to create division, strongly differentiate between yours and mine, and to even start wars. However, at the same time, this teacher had a beautiful view on how mindful romantic relationships can actually accentuate the spiritual practice. I like to think that having children can deepen the spiritual practice in a similar way.

Before Richard and I started trying to get pregnant, I did a stream-of-consciousness journaling exercise from The Four Desires by Rod Stryker. Through this, I unearthed what parenthood meant to me and what I hoped to get out of it. Here are my thoughts (as a mother-to-be with no real experience): I believe that children crack us open, unleashing overwhelming feelings of love, connection, and protectiveness that may have been inaccessible otherwise. I believe that children awaken a power and courage within us to become the people we want our little ones to have as role models.

If we can look past the haze of fear, defensiveness, and possessiveness, I believe that our children can be our windows into the universe; we begin to see our children in other people, inciting our deep seated love, compassion, and acceptance for our children to seep out beyond the confines of our families and embrace others. Through meditation we recognize that if we truly love our children unconditionally (right down to the point that we’ve peeled away all the transitory labels and only that which we all have in common is left), we must love all beings unconditionally.

This does not mean that we don’t give our children special treatment. Our children are our little pieces of the universe to tend to, and we have a duty and responsibility (not to mention an unshakable desire) to bathe them in care, security, attention, and affection. However, when we cultivate unconditional love for all beings, we bear in mind that although we care deeply for ours and our own, they do not inherently have any more worth than others. With this insight, we raise our children to be moral, responsible, generous, socially conscious, and ecological. We hold them accountable for hurtfulness, dishonesty, and apathy, and don’t completely shelter them from feeling the consequences of their actions.

I believe that as our children age, we recognize that through raising them, we have grown just as much ourselves. As our children become more independent and require less care, attention, and protection (or start to outright shirk it), we may take the energy we have radiated toward our children and the deep-seated love they have inspired us to cultivate, and redirect them to the rest of humanity. Parenthood ignites within us a potential, fierceness, and power that we can then harness to fulfill our life’s purpose. I don’t consider raising children to be my dharma (life’s purpose)—I consider it to be part of my moksha, my spiritual development, my pathway to freedom from the internal barriers, limitations, and misconceptions that may hold me back from my dharma.

Addendum: Having children obviously isn’t the only way to find this type of spiritual development. I totally support people who choose not to have children. Also, children are my moksha, but someone else’s children may be their dharma (purpose), artha (means to achieve life’s purpose), or kama (pleasure), which is amazing. For me, it helps to be clear on how my children fit into my life when thinking about things like my career.

Commitments To My Daughter

As the birth of the baby approaches—maybe tomorrow, maybe seven weeks from now—it has become strikingly apparent that there’s a piece missing from the musings above: they are all about what I hope to get out of parenting, but speak nothing to how I aspire to serve my daughter. When people get married, they recite commitments to treat each other with honor, respect, and love. If this ritual is important in a wedding between two consenting adults, I feel it’s a paramount part of birthing a helpless, vulnerable, unconsenting being into a lifelong relationship with her parents. When Richard and I wrote our wedding commitments, we called them “affirmations” rather than “vows,” and I use the same language here. This means that some of these commitments are loftier than they’d be if I had to pinky swear that I’d get it right on my first try, but they engender who I aspire to grow into as a mother.

To My Dear Daughter,

These are my affirmations to you:

I see you, hear you, and feel you for who you truly are so I can communicate love and support in a meaningful way. (This line is from Daddy and my wedding affirmations, so I guess it’s one of our family values now). In turn, I am authentic with you so you can genuinely know me.

I protect you when you are defenseless. As you grow and develop independence, I teach you courage, assertiveness, diplomacy, compassion and self-confidence to set you up to fight your own battles. When that time of independence comes, I support you with messages of trust and empowerment, and avoid interference.

I love you even when you hurt me, hate me, or make choices I don’t agree with. However, loving you doesn’t mean I enable destructive behavior. I have the insight and courage to discern between when you need support and compassion, and when the most powerful thing I can do is to step back.

I discipline you intentionally and consciously, not out of anger, resentment, or anxiety.

I care for my own physical, emotional, and mental health so I show can show up energetic, present, and joyful for you.

I instill in you acceptance, honor, and respect for your body, and stand against messages of shame. I hope that developing a positive body image will inspire healthy choices, especially when it comes to choosing partners when you’re older. I [do my best] to give you space to experiment, to fall head-over-heels in love, and even to experience profound heartbreak. I can’t make any promises about what Daddy will make space for.

I will probably dress you in frilly dresses and oversized floral headbands for as long as you’ll let me, but beyond this I treat you with gender-neutral respect, confidence, and expectations. Just as I don’t deny you anything simply because you’re a girl, I don’t give you special privileges just because you’re a girl. I [try to] keep Daddy from spoiling you, but I suspect he wont be able to help it—you are his dream-come-true.

I trust Daddy to take care of you in every way so that you two can have a strong, healthy bond. I make space for him to share his passions and interests with you.

I give you enough structure for you to develop security and trust, and enough freedom to explore, express your creativity, and make your own mistakes. I allow this balance to shift as you grow and develop.

Although I am responsible for you and care deeply for you, I hold onto no disillusion that I possess you, control you, or am entitled to anything from you. I cherish anything you offer me—whether it’s physical, emotional, mental, or spiritual—as a gift. I set you up to achieve my best understanding of a successful life, but ultimately trust your intuition about what success means to you.

As I get to know you, I’m sure these affirmations will evolve, and I’ll probably come up with many, many more. I am so excited to hold you in my arms and to see who you become.

Love,

Mommy

Write in a way that scares you

I had this post completely written well before Monday when I normally publish, but what I wrote definitely falls into the category of writing described above. It took me a few days to muster up the courage to make the final edits and share with the world.

30 Weeks Pregnant: Things I Love About My (Early) Third Trimester

January 12– January 18: 30 Weeks 0 Days – 30 Weeks 6 Days.

I think the beginning of my third trimester has been my favorite part of pregnancy so far. This may be partly because I finally started seeing a chiropractor—which providers and friends have been recommending for months—and my muscles and joints have been feeling much better than they were. Here are some other reasons I’m enjoying this stage of pregnancy:

1. I’m unmistakably pregnant, which is a prerequisite for many of the following perks.

2. People are incredibly nice and respectful. Goodbye catcalls. Hello strangers who ask genuine questions about my baby and my experience with pregnancy. Sometimes men still tell me I look great or beautiful, but it’s often at the end of a short conversation (instead of opening with “Hey gorgeous”), and doesn’t feel sexual, objectifying, or threatening. The next step for society is that we treat all women nicely and respectfully, not only the pregnant ones.

The teeny dark lining on this silver cloud is that sometimes people’s well-meaning or conversational comments are annoying. Many people’s opinions about how big pregnant women should be are informed by entertainment media, in which most women portrayed are in their second trimester. I’m not abnormally big, thanks. I’m just past the cute, photogenic stage of pregnancy that magazines like to publish.

30 Week Bump

30 week beach bump.

3. All the support I arranged months ago is kicking in. At this point my prenatal group sessions (equivalent of doctor’s appointments) meet every two weeks instead of once a month. It’s great, because it’s kind of like a support group.

We hired birth doulas (Britt Fohrman and Alexis Cohen) back in October, and we just had our first of two prenatal sessions with one of them. We didn’t talk much about our birth plans or preferences, but we discussed what Richard and I can do now to prepare mentally and physically for birth. If it’s not obvious from several of my type A blog posts, one of my challenges is letting go of control—a big barrier to natural birth. In our session, we discussed some techniques to help me practice surrendering control.

We also started our birth prep class with week, which was fun. On Britt and Alexis’ suggestion, we signed up for Rachel Yellin‘s Birth Prep Class, which focuses on relaxation, self-hypnosis, and other techniques for a achieving a natural birth (I will blog about my experience with the birth class once we’re done it in a couple weeks). Part of our homework (Or “home fun,” as Rachel calls it) is to spend a couple dedicated minutes a day bonding with and affirming our partner, which is really sweet.

4. I feel more comfortable asking for and receiving help. At no point in pregnancy has it felt great for me to do heavy lifting. Lifting is a whole-body action, and I always feel the brunt of the weight in the weakest link of the chain: the hypermobile joints in my pelvis. However, before I had a big belly I felt like I should’ve still been able to lift heavy objects, so it was harder for me to ask for help and I would often turn it down, even if it was offered.Richard has been giving me a hard time about this because doing too much manual labor inevitably leaves me complaining of aching joints and insomnia.

Maybe my aches and pains have been going on long enough that my will for independence has finally been crushed, maybe my obvious belly makes me feel entitled, maybe the conversations I’ve had about letting go of control have sunk in—in any case, I’ve been slowly accepting more and more help, especially from Richard. And, for the first time this week when the cashier at the grocery store asked if I needed help to my car, I accepted. However, I wasn’t quite ready to accept his repeated offers to help me get the groceries from my cart to the checkout conveyor belt (granted, grocery carts are deep when you’ve got a big belly in the way! P.S. So are top-loading washing machines)

5. I’m getting extra love, support and care from my partner. I don’t want to gush over my hubby too much, but I have to say I could not ask more a more dedicated partner. Day-to-day, he’s been incredibly willing to help me out physically. Although, he sometimes makes me explicitly ask for help (even if he knows I need it) so I can practice requesting what I need.

He’s also been prioritizing being present for birth-related stuff, while still attending to a career that provides for us and the baby. On Wednesday, we started the day with a two-hour meeting with our doula, he worked from home for the rest of the day, in the evening we went to a 3.5 hour birth prep class, then I drove him straight to the airport to catch a red-eye flight to New York that would land just in time for him to start work in the morning. Unlike the week-long business trips he’s taken in the past, this time he was back two days later to support me.

Our birth prep class is taught by a yogi-shaman-hypnotherapist, which is outside of Richard’s normal realm, but he was open-minded and accepting during class and has been on board with practicing techniques at home. That said, he was a little discombobulated by a questionnaire included inquiries like “What is your vision for birth?” and “What do you want your baby to feel during birth?”

6. It’s time to concretely prepare for the baby.

For me, the first trimester was rough, the second trimester involved a lot of watching and waiting, and the third trimester feels more action-packed. We’re meeting with our support team regularly, our nursery is well on its way to being assembled, and taking conscious time to bond with each other and the baby. It feels exciting that there are things to do. Here are a couple other action-items I’ve got on to do list:

  • Choose a pediatrician
  • Register ahead at the hospital (for less paperwork on the big day)
  • Figure out how to get a breast pump using my insurance
  • Buy a crib mattress (I have one all picked out, I’m just waiting until my Babies R Us reward dollars vest)
  • Complete nursery with smaller staples (e.g. nail clippers) and consumables (e.g. wipes) so we’re baby-ready
  • Pack a hospital bag
  • Write out my birth preferences
  • Keep brainstorming middle names (we agree on the first name, but the middle name is a continued issue of debate)

7. Superficial things bother me less.

I found out how mom’s start wearing mom-shoes. At this point in pregnancy, bending over to tie up my shoes is a chore and low-support shoes with slippery soles are a hazard. Frankly, supportive, slip-on shoes with grippy soles are not cute. At this point I don’t care. Today I’m wearing both compression stockings and Klogs, which I think may even be at the grandmother level of sensible attire.

Klogs and Compression Stockings

Compression stockings and Klogs. Sensible Attire Level: Grandma

8 Weeks Pregnant: Surrendering Control (Or Not)

August 10 – August 16: 8 Weeks 0 Days – 8 Weeks 6 Days.

Big Cousin

We announced my pregnancy to my family with this big cousin shirt for my niece, Rosie.

Richard and I spent three days last week driving from San Francisco to Vancouver. I knew my mom would have dinner on the table as soon as we got to Vancouver, and I wanted to share the news of our pregnancy first thing so that any nausea-induced rudeness (like pushing the brussels sprouts as far away from myself as possible) would be interpreted in context. We sat down for dinner with my parents, my sister and her husband, and my two-year-old niece, Rosie. Before we could even say grace, I produced a green tissue-paper-wrapped gift and said, “We got something for Rosie. Let her open it right away!” Rosie unwrapped the package and held up a pink shirt. My sister read aloud the words printed below two amicable elephants: Big Cousin(A reformulating of my initial plan to tell Richard I was pregnant the week I found out). Everyone was pleasantly surprised and congratulated us. My mom got up to give Richard and me a hug and cried happy tears.

Normally I would be the one to play with Rosie while Richard helped out with cleaning up from dinner, but this trip I spent a lot of time laying on the couch and “Auntie Riri” (what Rosie calls Richard—she hasn’t quite figured out the difference between aunts and uncles yet) got to interact with Rosie a little more. Nothing is as reassuring to a pregnant woman as watching her partner successfully care for a child. He said that having his own baby on the way gave him a new confidence with children—or at least motivation to start practicing.

I saw several friends while I was in Vancouver, some of whom guessed I was pregnant before I could break the news! Normally with my friends and family I go on a hike, or kayaking, or skiing. I was grateful that my loved ones were willing to go on gentle walks or do other activities that I could bring a folding chair to. I’ve heard that—contact sports aside—expecting mothers can continue doing most of the activities they did before pregnancy. It must be true for some women, because I’ve seen pregnant ladies running and women in my vinyasa yoga classes up until their last month of pregnancy. That’s not the case for me. While gentle physical activity makes me feel better than sitting around resting all day, my body seems resolutely against anything strenuous. Activities that push my cardio, strength, or endurance make me feel nauseated. Even deep stretching doesn’t feel good. My pregnant body is a Buddhist, urging me to embrace moderation—the middle way.

We got home from Vancouver and immediately started packing our whole life into boxes. We’d owned our new home for a month, and it was finally time to move in! We’d originally planned to rent a Uhaul and do the heavy lifting ourselves (with the help or a friend or two). After lugging a few preliminary boxes up to the house in our Honda Civic—just to get the process started—I abashedly convinced Richard to hire movers. I realized that I would not be able to contribute much to helping with the move, and I didn’t want Richard to hurt his back trying to compensate for me. Obviously I had a good excuse and there was nothing to feel guilty about, but the raw truth is that I hate having limitations. A common theme in yoga and meditation is learning to be with discomfort without needing to change anything about it. I teach this all the time, and I thought I was fairly good at it. I knew that pregnancy would be uncomfortable and rife with change, but I thought I would be able to ride its waves with equanimity and acceptance. Sometimes I do. But sometimes when Richard gives me the sage advice, “Go lay down on the couch and let me handle this,” I snap back, “I don’t want to go lay down!”

At least because of the meditation I can take a step back from my outbursts to laugh at my gracelessness and accept that I am a human on a journey.

~ * ~

Perspective: As I publish this at during my twenty-second week of pregnancy, I can’t help but laugh reading back over this journal entry. One evening this week, I asked Richard if he could cut up a mango for me and get me a glass of water. As he obliged, he said “I think you’re finally getting the hang of to letting me do things for you.” I felt equally proud and chagrined. I think he could sense my cognitive dissonance, because he added, “That’s a good thing!” Hopefully by the time my baby’s birthday arrives I’ll have enough practice to be able to completely and shamelessly surrender my need for control. After all, as Richard often tells me when I’m combatively independent, “You know, eventually you’ll have to leave our children alone with me for a few hours, and just trust me to take care of them.” I would never want my type-A personality, control-freak mentality, lone wolf tendencies to cost him trust, respect, and precious one-on-one time with his children. As I wrote fourteen weeks ago, I am still a human on a journey.

17 Weeks Pregnant: Big Feelings

October 13 – October 19: 17 Weeks 0 Days – 17 Weeks 6 Days.

I may have freaked out this week.

A few years ago I took a yoga training with Hala Khouri about teaching at-risk youth. She explained kids’ emotions in a way that stuck with me: kids have big feelings. When little Jimmy drops his ice cream on the ground, his emotional response is not the same as an adult’s. We may dismiss him: “Don’t get so upset. It’s just ice cream;” but for him, it’s a death in the family, an amputated limb, the rapture and he was left behind. In order to hold space for little Jimmy to process this experience, we must acknowledge that what he’s feeling is enormous. A more compassionate response might be, “I understand that it’s hard to lose something. It’s okay to feel upset.”

I don’t know if it’s the yoga or just my personality, but I usually have the opposite of big feelings. Rage and jealousy are rare for me, I can’t be bothered with grudges that last more than a couple hours, and I’d describe my experience of excitement more as joyful anticipation. Pregnancy put an amplifier on all that.

In my first trimester I was introduced to pregnancy crying. I’m okay with shedding some tears and all, but, just like little Jimmy who dropped his ice cream, once I start crying I can’t stop! On top of that, it escalates: sniffling progresses to sobbing, sobbing progresses to wailing, and when I was at the height of my nausea, wailing progressed puking. That equanimous part of my psyche that stands back to observe my experience understands that my reaction is way out-of-proportion to whatever the trigger was, but instead of doing anything about it she stares on in helpless disbelief and mutters, “WTF.”

This week wasn’t my first freak out: early on in pregnancy, I got mad at some movers for having too long a truck (our apartment building had two large parking garages, and they either had to block one garage door or the other). When I confronted them I wasn’t trying to leave the building, I was just upset on principle. Maybe this reaction would be normal for people with a more confrontational disposition, but I wouldn’t usually expend energy and circulate a bunch of stress hormones over a problem that would most likely solve itself. Sure enough, after moving the truck back and forth several times to let tenants in and out, the movers separated the cab from the trailer to accommodate both garage doors. What happened this week had less of an external me-telling-people-off component, but the internal emotional experience was immense.

Patio before and after

I replaced my patios wood mulch gardens with black Mexican pebbles.

When we were looking for our new home, the intention was to find The House. You know, the one you pour blood, sweat, and tears into making your own, raise your kids in, and retire in. The house we bought and now live in has plentiful outdoor space, and my first blood, sweat, and tears project is to zen-ify the front patio.

Last Saturday I picked up my fourth and final 200-300 lb load of black Mexican pebbles, which Richard diligently loaded and unloaded for me (my low back hasn’t been tolerating heavy lifting well). As soon as I poured the first bag into the garden, I knew something was wrong—they didn’t match the other rocks. I dug them out of the garden and put them back in the bag. A couple days later, Richard loaded the rocks back into the car for me, and I took them back to landscaping store first thing in the morning to suggest that my pebbles may have been mismarked. After examining the rocks through the dusty bag I’d packing-taped shut, the man at the landscape store kindly insisted that the stones were black, but offered to exchange the bags for different ones anyway if I really wanted to. “No, it’s okay,” I sighed, feeling kind of silly, “I must have overreacted.”

Mismatched stones

I poured water over the stones compare their colors. The stones on the left are the ones in the rest of the garden, the ones on the right are the last batch. (See, they -are- different!)

I took the bags home (where Richard had to unload them yet again), and immediately dumped all six 50-lb bags into the garden. And then I really overreacted. The new rocks definitely did not match the others. The old rocks were exclusively shades of gray, the new rocks included shades of green and orange. Overwhelmed, I ran back inside the house and took a couple deep breaths, then went back outside hoping to have a fresh perspective. I kid you not, when I saw those motley stones my life literally flashed before my eyes: I saw 5 years, 30 years, 50 years into the future, how every time I stepped out into my patio for the rest of my life I would cringe at the sight of the rocks. I put my hand over my mouth and ran back inside.

I repeated this melodramatic (but very real to me, at the time) sequence several times, each round featuring a different train of thought tragically crashing in an explosion of big feelings and sending me running back into the house near tears:

Maybe it was just the lighting… Oh God no, they’re so different. Why do they only have men working at the landscaping store?? Men are much more prone color blindess!

They look like rainbow-colored aquarium pebbles! My patio is lined with giant aquarium pebbles. I can’t even…

The colorful rocks aren’t so bad. I can just mix them in with the others so the garden looks more uniform. Then I looked at the side of the patio that was completed to my vision. No! Green and orange accents were not what I had in mind. These rocks are a bastardization of my vision. I hate them and I can’t even handle looking at them! But they’re already all in the garden. What am I going to do??

By the time Richard told me it was time for me to drive him to his bus stop I was beside myself, fanning a hand next to my temple like a swooning southern belle. While driving, I tearfully redirected my frustration toward myself, “Why didn’t I trust my intuition? I knew those rocks weren’t right, but I didn’t exchange them even though the guy said I could. Why didn’t I trust myself enough to just exchange them! I was right there, it would’ve taken less than ten minutes.” I don’t think I was actually expecting an answer, but I got one anyway. Richard said plainly, “Because you don’t like asking for help, and you didn’t want to make those guys unload and reload the rocks for you.” In that moment, that didn’t make me feel better and didn’t stop me from continuing to lament (I think Richard was pretty glad when he got to get out of the car), but wow, how accurate.

In retrospect, that clear statement from my husband, my mirror, was invaluably informative. I was willing to completely disregard my knowledge and intuition to avoid inconveniencing someone, even if the result would be life-shattering (or at least feel that way for an hour). I will have to reverse that habit before attempting a natural birth in a hospital setting where medical interventions may be offered as often for your health as for convenience, comfort, and liability reasons. From everything I’ve read and learned, natural birth is all about intuition and self-trust; one of my affirmation is: my body knows exactly what to do.

By the time I got home I’d calmed down and started focusing on the solution rather than the problem. I went to work digging the rocks out of the garden and repackaging them. I put my low back out of commission for the rest of the day by lugging one of the bags down to the landscaping store and exchanging it for a bag of black Mexican pebbles that beautifully matched the rest of my garden. The next day Richard obligingly loaded the rest of the offensive rocks back into the car and then unloaded the ones I exchanged them for. I tried not to feel guilty about asking him for help.

My patio

Here’s how to patio looks now. Looking forward to adding more plants!

My matching rocks were all in place or the housewarming party on Saturday and I even had time to put in some more potted plants. My vision is coming together! As for the big feelings: I’m continuing to take them in stride, allowing myself to laugh about them in retrospect, and trying to remember to thank my husband for being so incredibly supportive.

Succulent cupcakes

Succulent cupcakes for the housewarming party to match the plants in the patio.

ps – If you’re interested in making the succulent cupackes, I used this tutorial.