This morning, I woke up to the phone ringing.  It was my mother calling, wanting to know if I had the baby yet or not.  Fortunately, my dd answered the phone because I don’t appreciate calls like this.  I explained to my mother on Friday when she called to check that as my mother, she’ll be the first to know and there’s no benefit to calling to find out.  If I haven’t called, either: 1) I didn’t have the baby and I don’t have any news to share, or 2) I did have the baby, and haven’t called yet because it’s too soon, so her call would be intrusive.  I don’t think she clearly understood my point though, since she called again today – I had to remind myself that she’s doing it to show me that she cares about me, not to be nosy.

It’s a funny thing – until a month ago when I finally asked her if she cared at all about me being pregnant, she hardly mentioned it, and my mother in law hasn’t mentioned anything – literally not a word since we told her and even when we told her – and suddenly I get calls from them.  And fortunately again, my dd answered the call this morning from my mil, because I am feeling hurt about being totally ignored for months and suddenly because the baby is set to arrive, I’m worth noticing.  It reminds me of the feeling in the hospital, that you’re the body that delivers the baby, but not worth much notice as your own self. 🙁  Yes, we all have our issues. 🙂

Lest you think that I’m oversensitive about friends checking in, I don’t mind at all when anyone but our parents call to see where I’m holding.  In fact, I think it’s sweet that people are thinking about me and care, and know that they have no way of finding out in a timely way unless they call us.  Our parents will be notified right away, but for everyone else there naturally is a longer amount of time they have to wait until the news gets around.  When I answer the phone, I just laugh and tell people, “I’m still pregnant!” 

Because almost all of our children were early, I’ve rarely had this experience of being checked up on, and to avoid it from the get go, I used to tell people my due date was a week or two after the actual due date.  But when I was pregnant with my oldest, I was ten days overdue (one other child was born the day after his due date).  My mother woke up to fireworks in the very early hours of the morning (it was the 4th of July), and thought it must mean I was having a baby.  She called me (I was living overseas at the time) at a time when I would have been at work, and when I didn’t answer, panicked and called a friend to find out what was happening.  The friend didn’t know anything, but called the hospital where she knew I was registered, and the nurse tersely picked up the phone, said, “Congratulations, Avivah X had a boy” and hung up.  So the friend called my mother back and told her the message.  I must have literally just delivered, because as soon as possible afterwards, we called our parents to share our surprise.  My mother pretended to be surprised, and asked what we had (as if she didn’t already know!).  There was something disappointing about her response that felt flat to me at the time, but until I found out about what had happened behind the scenes, I didn’t understand why that was.  She just couldn’t fake being totally surprised and excited about her first grandchild, and I’ve always felt it was a loss, that she and this friend took things into their own hands instead of waiting for us to share the news when we were ready to. (I was only at the hospital for 2 hours before I gave birth and we called within a short time of the birth, so it wouldn’t have been a long wait!).

My other memory regarding this wasn’t a child who was late, but actually a little early, maybe 2 or 3 days.  It was my fifth birth, and by far my most difficult labor.  A difficult labor would be putting in mildly, actually.  My inlaws called that morning, and my dh told them I was in labor (which he really shouldn’t have, because I don’t like these details being shared unless I want to).  They called later in the day to find out what was happening because we hadn’t yet called.  It was a very long and intense labor, with ten hours of transition (contractions every 1 – 2 minutes, lasting 60 – 90 seconds each) following eight hours of active labor (I only consider it active labor when contractions are at least 5 minutes apart) because the baby was asynclitic and ‘stuck’ in the birth canal.  As a result, I had a pretty serious hemorrage afterwards (because the uterus was overstimulated by contractions for so long that it couldn’t contract effectively after birth).  My midwife handled things very efficiently and I was fine, though I lost consciousness when they were dealing with the hemorrage (my midwife later said I probably blacked out from the pain more than actual blood loss, because the body shuts down when it experiences more than it can take).  My husband was outside of the room when all of this happened and didn’t know what was taking place inside – the midwife called him in a half hour or so later, when the bleeding was stopped and everything was cleaned up.  He had just come into the room to see how I was – he hadn’t yet spoken to me – when the phone rang.  It was his parents, wanting to get the news.  I still remember hearing him answer them in a cheery voice, that we had a baby girl and “Avivah is doing fine”.  And I was there, feeling like I had walked through the valley of death (the pictures after this birth are probably the only time in my life I’ve looked pale) and it felt all wrong, hearing it like that – yes, I was alive, but I didn’t feel like saying everything was fine was quite accurate, you know?  It was like all that I went through didn’t matter to anyone but me. 

So that’s my history with this issue and our parents, and why calls from them checking in seem invasive.  But for the rest of you, don’t worry – keep calling or checking in here, and it’s just fine!  :))

Avivah

Yesterday at our monthly homeschooling gathering, a friend who is completing her massage training began to massage my neck and shoulders.  After a little while, I crossed my legs, and she looked down over my shoulder and asked me to uncross them.  I did, asking if I was blocking proper energy flow.  She said, no, that’s not why she commented, and then asked me to cross them again, and then uncross them.  After I did that, she told me there’s ‘something going on with your hips’.  I told her she was right, I have tremendous pain in that area that affects my sleeping and walking, but asked what made her say that.  She replied that there was a lot more motion happening in my upper back than there should be whenever I moved my leg, which showed that my upper back muscles were overcompensating for the lower part of my body.

So she did some myofascial massage on my hip/lower back area and that helped loosen things up, but she strongly suggested I get either a chiropractic adjustment or a professional massage right away, as the muscles were so tight that she was concerned it would impede the birth.  Fortunately, I have someone amazing who can help with this who I’ve gone to twice before – once after my last birth when I literally wasn’t able to walk straight (I kept veering to the left), and once a couple of months ago when the sciatica was pretty unbearable.  She’s a very experienced chiropractor who does incredible massage and does energy work.  So I gave her a call and was so grateful that she made time to see me today.

Part of why I so quickly took the suggestion to make this appointment was a nagging feeeling I’ve been having all this week that there’s some kind of subtle issue that might be keeping me from going into labor (even though my due date isn’t until Shabbos, so it’s not like I’m overdue), or drag the labor out once it starts.  It was nothing concrete, just a sense that something was there.  Of course the hip pain was an issue also, so I was happy to deal with all of it right now. 

Being worked on by her is wonderful – she has a true gift for healing.  This time she spent the first half hour of my hour long appointment clearing away varying degrees of emotional and spiritual blockage.  Then she does an intense deep tissue massage (this is seriously not fun – it is quite uncomfortable, but effective), and lastly, she does the chiropractic adjustment when your body is totally relaxed.

As far as the energy work, she starts by identifying and then clearing the surface issues.  Then when those are moved through, she can see what the next level is.  Often one level compensates for a deeper level, and the core issue can’t be dealt with until the more surface levels are cleared -you can’t go right to the deepest level.  I wish I could take notes on all that she told me as she did the emotional clearing; it was a lot of information.  I know this sounds very woo-woo to those who aren’t familiar with it, but it’s very powerful.  You know how you can sense when someone happy or miserable walks into a room without them even saying anything, right?  That’s you picking up their energy.  Someone trained can pick up things that others would never be aware of. 

She told me when I called her about my hip issue to find it would be a surface block, and was surprised to find that my hip pain was connected to a very deep level of energy.  At this level, things that are so hidden that a person isn’t conscious of them – it’s not that a person blocks themselves from awareness, but that it’s beyond their awareness.  And sure enough, one of the main issues was regarding having the baby.  It’s amazing but almost frightening how much a person who is trained can learn by reading your body’s energy, just like reading a book.  Things like your negative emotions, where they are coming from, who is affecting you or who you are being affected by, areas in your marriage that need healing – it’s really fascinating.

As she was working on me, she talked about what was coming up, and I was thinking about how each emotion she mentioned it is manifesting in my life. There were a couple of things, though, that I didn’t related to, and I told her so.  She said that the things she touched on that I wasn’t identifying with are probably energetically coming from the baby, and our energies are crossing/blending. I  never thought about a baby having energy that could be sensed before it was born, but if it has a personality/thoughts/feelings at this age, obviously it can project it’s own energy.  Interesting, hmm?

Everyone has positive and negative manifestations of various character traits, and blocks happen occur you don’t positively channel your potential in a given area.  Our purpose in this world is really to connect to our Creator, and when we use other things to achieve our goals, that’s when stuckness occurs.  So the blocks identify areas that you need to work on.  You might think it would be depressing or at least discouraging to hear all of these negative things about yourself. And it can be, if you look at it like that.  But for every negative way that you’re dealing with something, she tells you the positive balance to that trait and what it could be if used properly, which is empowering.  I’m grateful for the opportunity to learn more about myself and clear energy blocks that I wouldn’t be aware of otherwise.  In any case, once she uncovers the issue, she clears it away, and ‘reprograms’ your brain with a positive way to use your emotions/abilities, so it’s not like you’re stuck with all the negativity inside you.

I felt so relaxed when we finished; it was really wonderful.  She said that it takes time for the released energy to clear the body and how long it takes varies from person to person, but as she was working on me she also said that I have a unusual ability to clear and release emotions very quickly, which tied into another quality she saw in me (currently not being channelled positively) that had a lot of potential for healing and intuitive wisdom – this was the only thing that she commented on more than once.    

So I’m feeling physically good and emotionally more relaxed, like I let go of something heavy I didn’t know I was carrying around.  My kids asked me when I got home if I thought I’d give birth that night, and I said ‘no’, I didn’t feel I’d be ready until Shabbos.  And then last night I started having contractions every ten minutes.  I really wasn’t thinking Thursday night was a good time – if I knew I was having a girl, I would have been fine with it.  But I don’t know what I’m having, and the idea of having a boy and having to rush to prepare the shalom zachor didn’t feel right to me right now, even though I’m pretty good at doing a lot quickly when necessary.  (And I’ve had a boy on Friday morning and we managed just fine for the shalom zachor; it wasn’t even a concern at the time.)  I figured I better accept that life happens when it happens, regardless of your ideas of when it would be best, so I drank my raspberry tea infusion, and decided to lay down to rest so I wouldn’t be worn out.  And I woke up this morning still pregnant, which was very nice!

For those who are wondering, I’ll update you pretty quickly when I have the baby, so you won’t have to hang on and wonder!

Have a great Shabbos!

Avivah