A few weeks ago I visited an antenatal physio therapist. I was finding it difficult to walk due to the tension that I was holding in my gluteus and calves. She fit the description of many physios I've met. Let me paint a picture for you. She was about, say, 20 something, thin, attractive, sporty looking and perfect hair. After not having worn make-up or brushed my hair since I started vomiting at week 5, I was looking at her wondering if I would ever go to that kind of effort again. She admitted she didn't have any children of her own, and had never been pregnant.
It was not long until I was on the table, and she had her elbow wedged into my bum somewhere telling me to 'breathe through the pain,' and that 'if I got my husband to to these exercises on me three times a day until I gave birth' that I would feel significantly better. I quietly wondered to myself who 'saw their husband, or anyone for that matter, at three evenly spaced intervals throughout the day?'
Throughout the session, I could hardly even manage a faint squeal of pain. It really hurt. Luckily, she took the opportunity of my limited capacity to converse to share with me her opinions about childbirth and pregnancy. Lucky me. Because she's totally the first person who's offered me advice. And based upon such great life experience...
She started telling me about how excited she is that one day she too will be able to give birth, and that she can't wait to 'embrace the positive pain' of child birth. 'What a transformative experience it will be,' her 'body working in unison to provide the most painful but most rewarding experience.' All of which she will of course be doing without pain relief, because, well, 'the body provides it's own natural pain relief'.
At this point, I'm struggling not to fart. I'm meant to be releasing the tension in my butt every time she releases her elbow from another pressure point, but instead I am continuing to clench. The pair juice has finally taken effect at just the wrong time...
I think my body is speaking on my behalf. A few years earlier, heck probably a few months earlier, I would have had the energy to engage in some kind of debate with this girl. Having said that, a few years earlier, I probably was that girl.
As many of you would know, when you get yourself knocked up, lots of things change. But lots of things change that you don't expect to. I expected to be myself with morning sickness and an increased maternal instinct. While the morning sickness did happen, not much else has gone as I imagined it to.
I have reflected upon the physio visit a lot since it happened, and I have come to the conclusion that 'embracing positive pain' is a really appropriate mantra for me throughout my whole pregnancy and soon to be early motherhood... I'm still struggling to embrace the barrage of well meaning advice poured upon me from everywhere; to embrace to feelings of loss of control of my body; to embrace the feelings of a total identity crisis; to embrace day time television (not sure if that one is possible). At the moment I have no child in front of me to be able to associate the 'positive' side of the pain with. Any day now, I'll let you know if child birth is 'transformative' as the physio said it would be. Cause she totally knows.
