Transcendent Gerbil

Okay, so today was the big day and we got to see our baby in greater detail at his 20 week ultrasound. It was AWESOME! Both mama and papa were in grumpy moods until we hunkered down in that darkened room. We left the doc's office today in agreement: We chose the right obgyn.

I will have to scan the pics and put them up later on. Meanwhile, here's the story I read at our event the other night. Enjoy!

From “I Was A Teenage Mystic” -- a memoir

Transcendent Gerbil

I had a childhood full of prophetic and clairvoyant dreams, vivid ghosts, demonic possession, repressed sexuality, brutality, mystical intimacy and direct experience with something greater than myself. I spent most of my time outside, with my horses, or in the water, tasting every fruit that ever grew on a bush or a tree. That was my true church, the only place I ever felt real and fearless.

So it was on the way home from having spent an action-packed weekend of riding horses, crawfish hunting, and cousin-torturing in Sulphur, Louisiana, at my grandmother’s house, that I learned my puppy had died at the hands of the neighbor boys in Houston. My mother prefaced the bad news with a speech about how she, unlike other Catholics and Christians, believed that surely animals had souls. My brother and I were sufficiently shocked that we actually stopped fighting long enough to cry. For a minute, we thought my mom was going to tell us something terrible about our sister, Shanna. My parents had just placed her in the state school for the profoundly retarded, and all the talk about animal souls and retarded people’s souls and where those souls went when the bodies died had us worried and confused.

I knew that unborn and unbaptized babies went to a placed called Limbo. I always pictured it as a place wallpapered in beige, with white cloudless skies and no furniture, with featureless fetuses and crying, scared babies floating around all the time, waiting for a chance to move on up to Purgatory, a kind of Las Vegas without casinos. And I knew that if you died before you had a chance to confess your last round of sins you’d go to Purgatory instead of Heaven, doing time until you got admitted past the pearly gates later.

I had even vaguer notions of Hell. At eleven years old I was still fairly clean and didn’t really understand how my sins could relegate me to a place of constant pain and suffering. I figured Purgatory is where I would end up, since I couldn’t seem to control my bad behaviors of cursing my parents secretly, saying “fart” and beating on my brother. Not to mention the funny feeling I got when I rubbed my giant stuffed teddy bear on my belly and crotch on Saturday mornings. It felt so good, could it really be a sin? I wasn’t sure, and I would never ask. I just assumed.

My beloved, my darling, my puppy was gone. It was incomprehensible. I had named her Darkie, not knowing the political incorrectness of that, and not being corrected by any adults in my life, who only snickered about it instead. Darkie had long black and brown fur. The loss was unbearable. I realize now that it was probably the loss of Darkie on top of the loss of my sister from my life that made it so painful.

Well. At least I still had my gerbil, Stuart. I would cry and cradle him, knowing that only he understood. He was the last in a long line of gerbils that started many, many years before in Detroit with a couple named Bonnie and Clyde. Stuart was smart, and cute, and he loved to tread his little wire wheel. I relished the smell of the cedar shavings in the bottom of his cage. It was tirelessly entertaining to watch him eat, and chew an entire empty toilet paper roll to shreds right before my eyes. Stuart would perch on his hind legs and greet me every time I walked into the room. I loved him.

When he died I was devastated. It was not long after losing Darkie. I found him cold and lifeless in the bottom of his cage. Presumably, possibly, he’d died of old age. Gerbils don’t live long. We had a burial for him, complete with prayers and poetry and lots of tears.

I put the Polaroid I had of him inside the shoebox with Darkie’s things. Even months later, after her death, her collar still smelled like her. Anything could start a fresh batch of tears. That night, I began a keening call for Stuart. My parents had already gone to bed. As usual, I was the last one awake in the house, a fact that haunted me. I paced up and down the hallway, crying out to God for Stuart’s soul. It must have been my mother’s attempts at explaining the difference between human and animal souls that got me started thinking about it in the first place. I was brokering a deal with God, that if Stuart had either NO soul he could have PART of mine to help him transcend to the next level of existence, whatever that may be. A Purgatory for gerbils? With endless wheelspinning and sunflower seeds? I cried and wailed all night. I sat with my back pressed against my parents’ bedroom door; they never opened it, choosing instead to ignore me. My mom told me years later that, at the time, she was actually afraid for me and how deep my grief seemed to run. I was surprised to hear her say that; I thought they’d always just discounted my feelings. There was the “Oh, you don’t really feel that way.” Or the usual “You’ll get over it.” It turns out they were afraid of their depth.

And it did seem like my grief knew no bounds. I was alone to wander the carpeted halls of our home, late at night. My sister’s bedroom, with the lock on the outside, empty. My brother immersed in his own world. My father home less and less often, supposedly renting an apartment downtown where he could sleep so he’d be closer to work. Knowing that my best friend had parents who beat her with any object they could lay their hands on. Irons, hairbrushes, dog leashes.

And me with my shoebox full of memories. My grief for the loss of an innocent life.

Halfway Home

Unbelievable.

This is Week 20. Only 20 more to go.

I taught yoga this morning. The theme was "aligning with the highest." Locating the hidden cave behind the heart that contains the True Self, to which we must always align and trust.

I did a reading last night called "Language of the Spirit for the Skeptical and the Confused." It was awesome. There is so much sadness connected to people's loss of religion from childhood; and there is sadness in restoring the faith. But most of all, it's hard to write about. I can post the piece I read if anyone is interested.

We have the deluxe anatomical ultrasound scheduled for Thursday. I will post pics afterward, of course!

I have a checklist of items I need to complete before baby arrives.

--eRYT 500 Registered Yoga Teacher certification

--begin Anusara certification application process

--renew RMT

--get book proposal written and book deal done for "Breaking the Cherry," my book on How To Write and Perform Your Own Pornerotic Text

--sell our house

--move to a new house

--breathe

I was going to teach another writing workshop AND take an Improv class, but...

Moms, did your life come more in to focus when you had your first baby, or did Things Fall Apart?

COMMENT on this if you will, below, by clicking on the word "Comments"

Looking for the Good

So the yoga workshop.

On both Saturday and Sunday, there were two intense asana classes followed by a 2.5/3 hour presentation on Tantra. I skipped the asana classes and attended both presentations.

Dr. Phillips, a Sanskrit scholar and philosophy professor at UT, gave the presentations. He actually comes to our classes and will correct our Sanskrit if we want. We are lucky to have him in our community.

On the first day, he presented the Upanisads and Bhagavad Gita, citing certain aspects and verses of each that he sees as precursors to Tantra. The karma and bhakti yoga discussed in the Gita definitely open the path for Tantra.

And then the next day, he gave us an overview of Tantra and talked about the great Kashmir Shaivite poet and commentator Abhinavagupta. Then he talked about the Kularnava Tantra, which is the text from which Anusara yoga gets its name.



It's impossible for me to relate all of the revelations I had just listening to these talks. They affirmed many of my core beliefs. I have been a seeker my whole life, and it wasn't until I stumbled into Tantra, and particularly Kashmir Shaivism, that I felt I had come "home." I literally stumbled into my first Anusara teacher, John Friend, in 1998. He has created this entire "system" of yoga based on the tantric philosophies of his guru and her direct lineage into K.S.

The essence of the philosophy is that all of life is auspicious. Even suffering is beauty-in-progress. And everything we do can be made an offering.

I really feel this way, and I really live my life this way. Every moment is gift, and everything I do is an offering of gratitude. I really try to be open and accepting of all that life has to offer. But of course it's not easy.

The other great piece in this philosophy is that life is not a problem. The body is not a problem. The monkey mind is not a problem. Everything is a means for liberation. And we co-create our existence with a higher power, by aligning ourselves to be in sync with the flow of Grace, of life around us. Enlightenment isn't something outside of us, or on top of a mountain we have to climb; enlightenment is already here, available to us at any time. We just have to become self-realized.

The mantra we began class with today comes from the Upanisads, and it roughly translates as:

"From the fullness, came fullness. Out of fullness, fullness returns. All is fullness."

In other words...Nothing's missing.


There is nowhere to go, nothing to do, nothing you can buy that will fill you; you are already perfect and full. Of course once you've accepted this, you have to get busy to take care and honor it and never forget it, and if you're a bodhisattva, you'll want to share this with all sentient beings to help end their suffering.

This is not to say that enlightenment doesn't require work; you must do a tremendous amount of work to OPEN and to make yourself available for this revelation. I believe that if more modern-day religious believers would become real practitioners, have a daily, personal, private spiritual discipline like yoga or meditation to rid themselves of judgment, and to open themselves to self-realization, we would have a much happier world. There are certain truths we can only access by sitting in quiet and finding the key to heaven hidden in our own hearts.

The bigger the bumper sticker, the smaller the spiritual truth.

Okay, that's my speech for today.

Come to my reading Tuesday night.

What's That Pee Pee Smell?

...Good Lord, it's ME!

I smell like pee pee. I really do. And can I just tell you, I'm getting a sweatrash under my boobs.

My boobs -- which were already pretty big to begin with -- weigh about twice as much as they did before I got pregnant. I haven't yet gone to purchase a maternity bra, but I will.

Last time I was at Petticoat Fair was before my wedding. They fitted me and I learned I'm not a 36 D, but a 34 F. Pretty cool, huh?

I think I will need to ditch my sportsbras soon. They've been such faithful companions through so many yoga classes. And they're cotton, which is nice and comfy.

I realize I should be blogging about the yoga philosophy class I took today/yesterday/Saturday, but it's quite late and my brain is about age thirteen right now.

Burnis Genes

Last night Andrew and I stayed up waaaay too late perusing our ancestors on ancestry.com.

I read somewhere recently that they had acquired millions of war records and were going to make them available online for FREE until June 6.

I've been doing my family genealogy since I was 15 or 16 years old. I am totally into it.

So I got really immersed in it, and Andrew found records of his grandfather's trips back and forth between Italy and the U.S. It was very moving to see the ship manifests and the draft cards. We really enjoyed ourselves.

Perhaps most mindblowing of all, I found a number of "famous" people to whom I am related. This list includes Judy Garland, J.M. Barrie, Rousseau, Mahler, Louis Pasteur, Franz Liszt, Mendelssohn, JACK KEROUAC, Joan of Arc, and Oscar Stanton dePriest, the first African American elected to congress in the 20th century.

How bad ass is all that?

Oh, and the list includes Richard Nixon, but please don't hold that against me.

I always wondered if I was distantly related to Kerouac. After all, he is French Canadian, and that's where the majority of my own personal gene pool collects.

COME TO MY READING!

This is a rare opportunity (these days) to hear me read. All of the writers/readers below are quite amazing.

Please come!

A LANGUAGE OF THE SPIRIT:

A Reading for the Skeptical and the Confused.


Featuring Liz Belile, Chris Strickling, Jill Anderson, Alyssa Harad, Mary Ceallaigh.



When:
Tuesday May 29, 2007
at 6:30 PM

Where::
Carver Library
1161 Angelina St
Austin, TX 78722
United States




Come One, Come All!

The Lapsed and The Longing!
The Snarky and The Sincere!

You know we’re talking to you.

Join one lapsed Catholic, one un-bat-mitzvahed Jew, one recovering Baptist, one solitary Mormon, and a Holy Doula for 90 minutes or less of dark irony, tenderness, and really good jokes, as we work to find a language of the spirit that doesn’t make us want to throw up...er, that we can live with. Featuring:

“I Was a Teenage Mystic,” (Liz Belile, founder,“Gynomite: Fearless Feminist Porn”)
“All Alone Just in Time for the Apocalypse,” by Jill Anderson
“A Cynic’s Lent,” by Chris Strickling (founder, Actual Lives Theatre Company)
“How to Have a Jewish Christmas,” by Alyssa Harad and
“Keepin’ it Savory” by Mary Ceallaigh….plus some Really Big Words.



Thanks to Bookwoman for their support! Alyssa Harad , workshop leader of A Language of the Spirit, is a member of The Austin Project, sponsored by the Center for African and African American Studies at The University of Texas at Austin.

Prenatal Fistfight

Today was a pretty good day.

It's my Long Day, where I teach a class at noon and another class at 6 pm. And take a nap in between.

The thing is, I always prepare for at least an hour for every class I teach. Today I was reflecting on a couple of things.

Last night I was reading Muktananda's book, Nothing Exists That Is Not Siva, which is his commentary on several major tantric scriptural verses, like the Siva Sutra, the Guru Gita, and a couple other fancy Sanskrit titles I can't remember off the top of my head...oh yeah, the Spandakarika.

Anyway, I was reading out loud to Tancredo, thinking it would be great for him to hear some philosophy in the womb. And I came across one little phrase, that "in India there is an old story that God hid the key the heaven in the one place no person would ever think to look for it: inside the human heart."

Wow. That really blew me away.

The key to heaven is hidden in the human heart. It's nowhere outside of us.

So that is what I developed into a theme for class today. And it was fun. We worked on handstands and backbends again. And this time, almost everyone in the class kicked up into handstand, and pushed themselves up off of blocks into backbends. Hallelujah!

But I almost got into a fistfight with one of my students. As you know from my last blog entry, I have some strong feelings about what prenatal yoga should be. And I said so right before class. I don't know that she was totally disagreeing with me, but it seemed to be a paradigm adjustment for her to think that perhaps they are overly aggressive in prenatal classes.

Anyway, I won't go back into THAT broken record. Plus it's untested territory at this point.

Another one of my students is a labor and delivery nurse. She brought me a present from a breastfeeding conference she went to last year. It's a breast milk storage system. I have no idea what that means. I am sure I will find out.

Then I picked up some dinner on the way home (I've got to start cooking again, ya'll) and we watched the Season Finale of LOST. It was awesome.

And I was not surprised, yet felt disappointed to learn that Jordin won American Idol. I really liked Blake. But I knew there were too many teens and tweens voting out there for him to win and her to lose.

Thanks for Massaging My Butt!

Well, every day is new day.

I had Big Plans for today. I was going to work on my book proposal -- I am pitching a book proposal to as many editors, publishers, and agents as I can at a conference in about four weeks -- and I was also going to polish my work for "A Language of the Spirit," a reading I'll be doing in about one week.

No such luck.

I felt like shit today. Yesterday was a high. I felt energized and happy all day. (Frankly, any day I am not spotting is a great day.) But today I was tired, cranky, paranoid and weepy. Not too bad, just enough to keep me feeling as grey as the sky was. And certainly enough to keep me from working on my book proposal. Or my overdue taxes. Or my eRYT requirements.

So what's a girl to do when she's feeling lowdown?

Get a massage!!!

I went to see my great friend Liz Quigg, who has worked on me off and on for the past couple of years. She does, among other things, Maya Abdominal Massage, which works wonders on the uterus. She also does fantastic energy work, and is so female-positive and reassuring. I loved having a person with so much knowledge about birth and fertility and yoga to talk to today. I realize I may have been isolating myself all this time, hardly talking at all with my fellow yoga mamas about all the crazy stuff I've been feeling.

I stayed up way too late last night googling "pain in pubic bone" as a symptom of second trimester pregnancy, and found that it could be something quite simple, or something quite frightening. I already know that the pelvis is opening up, that the hormones in my body are making it open up, and that it may cause a lot of pain in the joints. I've been battling a wonky psoas and sacrum for years anyway. Now they're really flaring up.

When I sleep on my side, either side, a deep deep ache begins in my hip joint. And when I get up, when I walk around, there's a deep pain in my pubic bone. It hurts, man!

So today, Liz worked on my butt, hip, and sacrum. It was absolutely wonderful. And it helped.

Now check it out.

I used to (pre-pregnancy) exercise for an hour a day, five to six days a week. I have my one hour yoga practice, and my massage practice at about ten hours a week. I give a very physical massage.

But all of that is gone now.

I just can't be doing all of that.

Tancredo won't permit it.

I have to rest, I have to recuperate, I have to hibernate and build strength. I am, at my core, a lazy layabout. My yoga practice has taught me to have discipline. My writing practice has given me that as well. And my years as an athlete taught me that, too. But still, I love just lying around doing nothing most of all. Still.

What I see everywhere in our culture, and I see it a lot, even in the most "empowering to women" pregnancy books, is a LOT of pressure to exercise. A LOT of pressure to "not gain too much weight." And a LOT of pressure to "lose the baby fat." Even the most hardcore medical establishment has fluctuating advice on weight gain during pregnancy.

WHAT THE FUCK?!!!

Can't a girl even get fat while she's pregnant? Can I just excuse myself from all the anti-cellulite commercials on tv? I do realize that I'm not the average fast food junkie gorging in the name of pregnancy. But still. At least some cool moms are talking about it.

It was great talking with Liz about all of this today. I am really in search of prenatal yoga and exercise expertise or advice that fits ME.

In the (USA) yoga world, there is too much emphasis on "the perfect pose" or the "most advanced asana practice." Too many expecting moms show up to prenatal classes, either thinking it's their time to get a good workout in, or wondering how they should approach their already-intense practices. You see pictures of yoginis in backbends and headstands with gigantic bellies. Now I'm not saying that some knocked-up bodhisattvas can't keep their advanced poses going. But come on.

There is, even in the yoga world, a lot of pressure to not let something like a little pregnancy get in the way of your advanced practice!

I grant that there may be a FEW advanced yoginis who can do these advanced poses -- and even Geeta Iyengar herself recommends inversions -- but I believe us preggers yoginis need to really stop and really listen to theirour bodies, not just give the concept lip service.

I am listening HARD and DEEP to my own body, and what I know is that I ain't about to do handstands or headstands or deep backbends. Tancredo is resting REALLY low in my belly -- hence pubic bone pain? -- and the last thing I need to do is SQUAT, which is like de rigeur in every prenatal book or DVD or class. Why would I want to open my pelvis right now? It's opening up all by itself, and a little too much for comfort.

Liz Q. said that her mentor, Judith Lasater, had rescinded her advice for yoginis to do inversions during pregnancy. She came to this conclusion after doing them for her first two children but not her third.

One of the benefits of yoga is that it makes you much more sensitive and in tune with your body, even with energy and blood flow in the organs. I can feel the ligaments in my hips and pelvis loosening, and I can feel when I do deep hip openers or go upside down that they are being OVERSTRETCHED. The problem with ligaments is that they really don't bounce back, like an injured or overstretched muscle can.

I can feel the weight of my womb pulling on all the fascia and ligaments, and I know when to stop. I don't know that every pregnant yogini can feel all of that, or even if she did if she would ignore it in the name of her ego and keep going. Why not? We do it all the time in our everyday practices. We push ourselves past pain, or the point where we know in our souls we are hurting ourselves. We ignore optimal alignment in the name of "getting" the pose. It's like we want the immediate gratification of "getting" the pose without being willing to put in the hours and hours and years and years of work that it sometimes take to finally "get" a pose. There's a thin line between what our mind/ego wants and what our soul needs in asana practice.

Whew! I didn't realize I had to get all of this offa my chest tonight! It's been on my mind for so so long now...I wish I could be nicer about it.

I remember a conversation I had with my teacher Mary last fall, when she was deep in the middle of her master's program in Applied Theology. (I love saying that.) Mary told me she was considering not teaching asana ever again. (I know I've mentioned this elsewhere in this blog, but anyway.) She said there was too much emphasis on the poses, and not on: WHO is it that is doing these poses? It's the question we never ask ourselves. We take the miracle of the breath and the heart beating for granted. We focus on the external. We are too afraid or we just don't know to ask the deeper questions. We think that "we" are the poses, or the body, or the shoulder injury, or the perfect meditator.

WHO is it that is carrying this baby?

WHO is it that is feeling tired, or hungry, or in need of some spiritual massage?

WHO is it indeed?

Birthday Booty

So today was great, very mellow.

I felt the baby move, really move, for the first time today. Great birthday present, huh?

I got calls from:

Mom
Dad
Nanny
Amy
Jennifer
Mark (in LA)
Rasa came over to bring me some cute maternity clothes
and I had lunch with my brother.

I am planning some sort of shindig, possibly a big dinner or something, in the near future. After all, I need to celebrate my last birthday of being a non-parent!

We really liked the doula we met. I'm going to see if I can get some massages from her; she specializes in prenatal bodywork.

Feeling tired, a little queasy, and the pain in my pubic bone is intense. But other than that, gloriously happy.

Happy Birthday To Me

I'm 43 years old today!

I'm having a great day. I'm sitting in my little local coffee shop, writing, and I'm contemplating walking next door and getting a pedicure.

I did not spot all weekend; YAY!

Right now I'm calling the baby Tancredo.

It's raining quite gently outside. I love that.

This was an action-packed weekend. Saturday night I went to see my friend Carol (and others) perform in "Actual Lives," a writing and acting collective of gimps, spearheaded/directed by my friend Chris Strickling, who is a writer and former occupational therapist. It is and was a wonderful theatrical event. I think this was my fourth one to attend. I loved the heartbreaking stories of bullies, group homes, independence, gimp sex, love, miracles, pain, joy, dreams, triumphs and more.

Then I tossed and turned all night worrying that I wouldn't get enough sleep to help me make it through Sunday, since I was scheduled to take a workshop called "Pain in the Neck" from 930 am til 430 pm. I *had* to take it in order to keep my massage license. It was taught by my wonderful former massage instructor Kirsten "Stan" Kern. I opted to do more observing than massaging. But now I know even more about how to actually relieve and fix those neck pains we all get.

I was a zombie by the end of the class, having only had two hours of sleep.

Insomnia has been a hallmark of this pregnancy. Even more so than fatigue.

I'm better today, though it's getting close to Nap Time.

Tonight we are interviewing Marcela, a potential doula. I am going to hire one to help with the labor and delivery. I'm excited!

I just learned that one of my favorite places in town, the Cosmic Cafe, has closed. It was one of the few all-vegetarian places in Austin. It was in Clarksville, on West Lynn. I always worried about it, since I knew the rent there must have been astronomically high and I rarely saw more than 10 people dining at a time. The food was fantastic, the ambience wonderful. Ironically, it's probably harder for a vegetarian place to survive now in Austin than in Houston or Dallas. We have a lot of carnivores here, in spite of our reputation for being crunchy granola hippie types.

Oh well. R.I.P. Cosmic. You certainly didn't go out of business for lack of my trying.

Viva Mr. Natural!

What's in a Name?

Okay, people. Now's the time to stop lurking and start interacting with me here. It gets lonely out in the blogosphere when you're not writing about celebrities or politics. (But just wait...I will get to that.)

So the big Question of the Day is:

"What are we going to name our boy?"

The last name is Italian. Some of you even know it. I don't really want to advertise it here, however. So let's just say it's from the Tuscany region.

The names we've been tossing around:

Enzo
Carlo
Dino
Tancredo
Leonardo (Leo)
Michael
Piero
Lucca


...and a few more. Right now Leonardo (Leo) is leading.

Just Call Me Miranda

Woke up this morning...no spotting!

Let's pray it lasts for another five months. Still tired, but eager to get back into normal life.

As I sit here typing, Andrew has put on something he calls his "Cowbell Mix" (it's either that or some evil Butthole Surfers thing) and is packing the house like a madman. We were both packing up the kitchen earlier and accused one another of owning the hideous San Francisco Steakhouse Hurricane glasses. (They went to Goodwill, and they weren't mine.)

If you've tried calling me and I've been MIA, well...just thank your lucky stars, because I have been one grumpy ol' bitch! Email is probably better right now.

We made a trip to Babies-R-Us today in search of a maternity support belt...wow, are they ever ugly! But I really need one. And just walking in that front door, glass whisking apart as the scent of perfumed baby stuff hit our faces in one big cloud, I had a feeling of panic. I was already overwhelmed in the parking lot. Once inside, it was sensory overload. We were the most obviously uncomfortable people in the store. After we asked a teenage John-Mayer lookalike where the maternity stuff was (why was he working in a Babies-R-Us? I wondered.) Of course they were out of the size I'd need, surprisingly a Medium and not a Large. (Even in the latest stages of my pregnancy, I pray that I don't require a Large one of those things.) There was lots of parent-candy in the store -- fetal heart monitors, etc -- and Andrew held up a "Baby Wipes Warmer," quoting from the box: "The Essential baby product." He asked me, "How is it that we've made babies for all these years without these?" I don't know. I really don't. Of course we are laughing now, but we may find out later that a Baby Wipe Warmer is, indeed, essential.

I feel like Miranda Hobbs sometimes. I'm not jolly or excited enough. I'm not planning my son's life yet. I haven't started decorating a room for him, even in my mind. I'm not stockpiling baby items. I don't even know what a newborn baby needs to survive, what tools we will have to purchase. Except a baby carseat, I know that. And Attachment Parenting, that sounds cool.

All I know is that I'll be feeding him, wiping up poop, pee, vomit and other bodily fluids, reading to him, singing to him, and forcing him to take music lessons from infancy.

Forgive me, I have a lot of recovering and catching up to do. And in a minute, I want to announce a reading I'll be doing in a couple of weeks!

Tito's Big Adventure

So I woke up this morning...still spotting.

Dammit! I'm getting angry. Frustrated. And oh, so sad.

I knew that I still had to at least leave the house. So I packed up Tito and took him with me in the car to go to the bank, then get some breakfast tacos. He thoroughly enjoyed himself.

Then later I went all the way down to South Austin to the Herb Bar and picked up some witches brew to prevent miscarriage. Love that place.

Much later, Tito went with me for a Sonic Malted. The waitress-on-wheels brought him a little doggie treat. In return, he nearly tore her arm off with his massive jaws.

Whew!

I just got back from the doctor and everything is fine. Baby's heartbeat is 156 bpm. Cervix et al doin' great!

I really hate this spotting stuff, though. Online it looks like lots and lots and lots of mamas have it throughout otherwise healthy pregnancies, but it is still disturbing.

My birthday is coming up!

Next blog entry will be a survey: What to name the Boy.

The Labor of This Love

Well, here it is, my very first Mother's Day as an official mother-to-be. And how am I spending it? In bed.

I don't mean to complain, really I don't. And I am usually the most upbeat, optimistic, happy person in the room. But I gotta tell ya, some of these pregnancy symptoms I've been having suck.

I started spotting again on Saturday morning. It's the plain brown stuff. Similar to what I had several weeks ago. A couple of calls to my nurse, and she tells me that as long as it's not bright red and accompanied by hideous cramping, I am experiencing something that is quite normal. She seemed much less concerned about the bleeding at 17 weeks than she was when I had it earlier, in my first trimester. Apparently that's the most dangerous time for the developing fetus. I have had several friends tell me they bled throughout their entire pregnancies and still delivered normal, healthy, full term babies. This is all very comforting, but it doesn't quite put an end to the nagging anxiety that this brown goo could lead to a miscarriage. I know, I said it, the "M" word. But as you know, I am pragmatic, and I want to be prepared for the worst...but hope for the best.

One friend told me about her experience with the dreaded bleeding and made me laugh, saying "Pregnancy is a young woman's sport." She was also Older when she had her first baby. It seems sad that this might be true. I know that my metabolism ain't what it used to be, but I also eat better and exercise more. My yoga practice is more advanced and deep than it was when I was 26. I'm way more emotionally mature than I've ever been, and I sometimes even occasionally feel like I have my shit together. So anyway. It seems a shame to have to worry about what's coming out of my vag...just as long as it's not a baby. Not yet.

I am taking anti-miscarriage herbs, as well. Wild Yam Root, False Unicorn, and Black Haw. They are delicious. And extra vitamin E. I'm about to drink some nettle tea for extra calcium.

It's hard to know what causes the bleeding/discharge. This is actually the time of the month when I would normally be having my period. I have heard that some women will bleed all during their pregnancies right around the time of their usual period. Maybe that's it. Maybe I overstretched Friday morning, before teaching my incredible Shakti-powered GODDESS MOTHER class -- it was so much fun; I had them in handstands and dropbacks and chanting Om Mata Kali at the end -- or maybe it was because I only got four hours of sleep, and hardly a nap in what was a very full, nonstop day.

Maybe I haven't learned my lesson yet in how to truly be still and rest and listen to my body's needs. I even drank a little black tea on Friday. And felt like shit up until right about now because of it.

On a happier note, my mama came to Austin this weekend...yay! I have really missed her these past few weeks. She has really been struggling with some health and survival issues. We talk on the phone often. I try to help her, but not try to "save" her. She seems to be doing better lately. We had fun with her here, even though most of our time together was spent with me lying on the couch. We watched bad tv, exchanged books, chatted, felt my belly for any movement, and had a nice late night breakfast Friday night. She left this morning and I already miss her.

Andrew, as usual, is being an angel. He's getting our house ready to sell, which means he's been totally re-landscaping the yard. I feel helpless and blobby just sitting on the couch whimpering, but he assures me that growing a baby is plenty work.

All Systems Go for Mother's Day!

Well, friends, it has taken me several days to write a new entry. And I do apologize for that.

But I have been a little depressed and freaked out this week. Yet the SUN has truly come out today. Let me tell you about it.

Okay, fade back in time with me for a moment. February, 2007 or thereabouts.

Andrew and I decided from the very beginning that we would undergo genetic counseling and testing to rule out any problems with the baby, especially since we're "older" parents. (Did you know that Cajuns are vulnerable to Tay-Sachs disease? Neither did I!) Navigating this territory is absolutely overwhelming. I am very pragmatic when it comes to anything Medical. I'm the type who wants to take every diagnostic test available, and will explore every option for treatment. I want to know the facts. I do not hide from bad news, I never have. I would rather know than not know...you know? I'm too obsessive-compulsive to ignore possibilities. "99% benign" is not an acceptable diagnosis as far as I'm concerned.

That being said, I am also a health nut progressive vegetarian weirdo New Age yoga teacher. I believe passionately in good balanced nutrition, proper supplementation, organic eating, homeopathy, massage therapy, acupuncture, hands-on faith healing, reiki, Sat Nam Rasayan, talk therapy, meditation, you name it...I've tried it and it has WORKED for me. I do not as a rule take antibiotics unless absolutely desperately needed. I only ever use local (or no) anaesthetic at the dentist. Etc. Yet I do take Tylenol, I believe anti-depressants are vital and absolutely crucial for some people, and I would gladly take them myself if I were unlucky enough to need them.

So there's also THAT.

Oddly enough, I could not find the literature or information about pregnancy and childbirth that applied to ME in either a) the New Agey/alterna/hippie category (too focused on how Evil all Western doctors and the Medical Establishment is/are) or b) the hardcore Western Med category (too dependent on drugs, obviously addressing either much younger or much less aware and/or unhealthy women). Every time I googled "First Time Mothers Over 4o" I got back tons of negative, fear-mongering entries that just didn't exactly meet my particulare demographic.

Where, indeed, are the progressive healthy mamas who are doing this for the first time?

But I digress.


I was definitely on my own when it came to figure out which prenatal testing to do.

Let's just say that I went the most frightening, grueling, high-risk and anti-holistic route. I tested for everything that could possibly go wrong and did all the Wrong Tests for a hippie Yoga Mama...and I just got the news TODAY, this MORNING, after a couple of weeks of waiting in hell that ALL IS WELL. "Completely Normal" are the words the genetic counselor told me.

WHEW!!! I finally feel like I'm really pregnant at last. Now I can tell the world. My Mother's Day will be a cause for rejoicing rather than being bitterly ironic. And my morning sickness seems to have tapered off quite a bit. I still can't eat Mexican food without paying bitter, horrible consequences, but I actually have Energy again!

So today, and tonight, I celebrate the SUN, and the MOON, and MY SON. I can go all goddessy on myself now. Take that trip to the Gulf of Mexico to commune with Mother Ocean. Breathe in Mother Air, Drink in Mother Water, sing and dance and write poems about how GREAT it is to be pregnant and ever-expanding Shakti Herself.

Now if I can just figure out a way to end this senseless war in Iraq and bring about world peace and stop global warming before he grows up, I'll have not a care in the world!

Weekend Warrior (II)

I really want to write here almost daily if I can.

So I'm still feeling pukey. Sigh. But what the hell? A girl's gotta live! So I taught my Yogic Lit class on Saturday with Ravyn as co-teacher. I thought it went fairly well. I ran out of time, as usual. I had to trek waaaaaaay down to far South Austin, about a 30+ minute haul, but I love those students so much. They ask great questions. And every time I teach the Lit class I have to go over the material again, which is so very good for me. I really would like to delve deeper into the Gita.

We are calling the baby "Burnis Gene," in tribute to my father's hated first name (Burnis) and Andrew's father's middle name, "Gene." We will come up with something better, something less likely to get him beaten up in school, but it annoys my father so much when I call the baby that I just can't help my wicked, wicked self...

Andrew and I went to see "Blades of Glory." We laughed. As you can see, we are going for much lighter fare at the movies these days. I want to see "300" --- anything with swords and breastplates -- but I don't know, I'm not really much for big thrills and bombast these days. I have already mentioned this, yes?

Tomorrow I'm invited to my friend Kisha's one-year old's birthday party. Will I go? I do want to meet Maeva, the birthday girl, and all the other babies who may be there. I want l'il B.G. to have some playmates with yoga moms. Perhaps if I'm feeling remotely better I'll go.

I woke up today after a nightmare about my cousin Torie, setting fires and stealing car keys. I felt instantly that I had to clean the house, which has fallen into great disarray. (It's filthy.) So we went for breakfast, came back, and had at it for about six hours. Slowly but surely we are getting it ready to sell.

I just learned of yet another yoga mom who gave birth last week to a baby girl. And I have two yoga moms about to pop!

Exciting times.

Quick-like

I taught my noon class today, and boy was it fun!

I'm working with the Mary material from last week; she told us the KEY TO YOGA. What is it? "You are already there." There is nowhere to go, nowhere to be, no one else to be, nothing else to do, not a book you can buy that will take you there, not a practice you can do that will bring you to it, not a God you can pray to outside of yourself that will give you the knowledge, but BEING HERE AND NOW. We think Union or Enlightenment is something outside ourselves. We think "If I practice yoga, I will find it. Someday, I will get it." If I lose weight, if I get a raise, if I find a partner... But the Truth is, we are already living "it." There is no separation between ourselves and the supreme, the Divine. We're not striving for connection, we are already connected.

This is a hard concept to accept, much less put into practice.

So we did lots and lots of handstands at the wall (not me, my students) and lots of pigeon prep and Hanumanasana and working on drawing into the core. I love watching my students take these principles and play with them.

Tomorrow I'm teaching, with Ravyn, the Overview of Yogic Literature class to teachers-in-training. I so love teaching this class. Ravyn will cover the Vedas, Upanisads, samkhya philosophy, and I will cover AUM, gayatri mantra, Bhagavad Gita and Ramayana. All in three short hours, thank you very much!

The little boy is doing fine, I think. I felt him moving around last night as I tossed and turned. One of my students, Sheila, is a labor and delivery nurse, and told me today that the way it felt when her babies moved was like "a parasite" or "a worm." Now honestly, that is the BEST description for what I have been feeling actually since week 14! Like a little worm behind my belly button, churning. Everyone else describes it so much more poetically, "fluttering," like "butterfly wings." Me, it feels like something I picked up from some bad water. It's a churning, isolated heaviness just behind and below the belly button. He's in there, practicing qi gong.

Heartbeat

So I went in for my regularly scheduled maintenance visit to the ob today. It was brutally early, and I was predictably late. I barely slept last night; I think our boy is going to be an all-night dj.

I really like the people who work at the ob's office. Even though it is always crowded, they are patient, smile a lot, and take good care of details every time.

So since my doc is on vacation this week, I was seen by one of her partners, Dr. Oliver, who was really cool. Her nurse came in first and put the doppler on my belly to amplify the baby's heartbeat. It took a while to find him, which of course nearly froze my blood. I had just seen him doing shoulderstand two days ago in the ultrasound, could he have died? Was it because I slept on my back last night without knowing it? Was it because I took false unicorn root? Was it the booze I drank in high school? But no, there it was, 148 bpm. Whew! He was just floating around in there, kicking up his heels, hiding from the doppler.

I made her check me for infection; I know I had my doc test my pee pee last week and it came out with no bacteria in it, and that we even had an u/s to check on the bebe, but I knew something was wrong. And I knew I could wait it out for a couple of days until my regular appointment. Sure enough, bacteria in my nu nu. Just as I suspected. It is always good to be persistent and know your own body. Now I can treat it and get RID of it!

Listen, if this is all TMI or not exactly what you want to read, well, tough titty. Get used to it. Sometimes I feel sorry for Andrew, having to always hear Vagina This, Vagina That....Uterus This, Uterus That. But you know I have no compunction about it, and when I was growing up my mom was very clear, pragmatic, and even clinical when it came to discussions on sex and on our Privates. Thank God for that. It's like in the Intro to the Vagina Monologues when Eve Ensler says she is worried about vaginas; she has a long list of the names people called their vaginas when they were little. It's uncanny how many people (and their parents) never referred to "It" at all.

My favorite euphemism for vag in that list was, and may always be, "coochie snorcher."

So here's to frank openness when it comes to pee pees and wee wees and hoo ha's and tee tees...

It's A....

Shoulderstand Baby!

Monday, April 30th, was one of the most profound days of my life. That is why I couldn't blog about it until today.

For weeks now, I've felt certain that the life inside me was a little girl, a mini-me, a feminist babe waiting to be born. I spent hours trolling through baby name websites, searching Italian, French, Latin, Celtic, Aramaic, Hebrew, whatever names for girls. Francesca? Bella? Naomi? Edie? What would it be? The nurse who read the doppler when she heard our baby's heart beating at 158 bpm said, knowingly, "It's a girl." My acupuncturist, disclaiming that she is always wrong, said with a frown, "I could be wrong, and I usually am, but I think it's a girl." Because it took so long to conceive, and we perceived it as being difficult, we assumed that only the stronger fishy could swim all the way up to the waiting egg, which meant a girl.

And then Monday, on the ultrasound table at the clinic, the young nurse who sometimes goes to Yoga Yoga gave us a guided tour of the fetus's anatomy, asking us if we wanted to know the gender.

We had discussed this.

Wise sages in hippie pregnancy books advised, "There are so few surprises left in life...let it be a mystery!" Glib chick-lit-like authors took it for granted that you'd want to know your baby's sex. That strange species of woman who would want to decorate and color-coordinate a nursery would naturally insist on learning the baby's gender. Knowing, humorous pregnancy tomes say that everyone will be asking you this question as soon as you start showing. Friends who are unbelievably cool kept their baby's gender secret from the rest of the world until delivery. We talked it over. And here at compulsiveselfdisclosure.com the only answer was "Yes, of course we want to know the sex of our baby." And then "Yes, of course we want to tell everyone in the universe."

So when the nurse said "It's a boy." I burst into soft, wet tears. Tears of joy. Now the fetus, "it," could be referred to as "him." Our fetus had a pronoun. A whole host of them, in fact. Andrew got teary. We really just want a healthy baby. Cliched as that always sounds, it is one of the few cliches in American life that really holds true.

But having a boy suddenly changes so much in me. My intense loathing of the patriarchy suddenly softens. Wow, I might even be able to contribute a great man to society! I've always dreamed of the sensitive generation of enlightened men who will someday populate the earth, having been raised by feminist moms. World peace instead of world destruction...equal rights for women without being threatened...an end to rape...respect instead of hatred...true empowerment of all instead of power struggling...


With such a loving, tender-hearted, sensitive yet strong father, our son will have a great male role model. And with such a radically feminist, chick-centric mom, he'll have a great female role model. Those are my hopes, anyway. (I feel doubt in my heart after watching an episode of The Bachelor recently, however.) He could be a little martial artist yogi in waiting. He could be a flaming queen fashion designer, a Rufus Wainwright queer boy. He could be an NBA superstar, a world leader, a sad mechanic, a transformational writer, an entrepeneur. Who knows?

All I know is that I got a boy growing inside me. He's already surprising and delighting me, proving once again, in this process, that I am not the one in control. You read all these articles about today's mom picking and choosing her fertility, pregnancy, and labor and delivery times "for her convenience." I even bought into that for a second. But the truth is, there is no such thing as "designer pregnancies." Even if you have in-vitro fertilization, take all the right fertility drugs, schedule your delivery and c-section, plan your meetings and vacations, the baby comes when it's ready.

And I like it.