KEEPING IT SIMPLE

I wanted to keep my pregnancy and our daughter’s birth as natural as possible. “Safety first, simplicity second,” my husband and I told anyone who asked. I was comfortable with my ob/gyn, a knowledgable, no-bullshit woman with whom I’d been through an earlier miscarriage. My hope was to avoid a C-section, skip labor-induction drugs like Pitocin, skip the epidural and any other narcotics, but if my safety or the baby’s was at risk we would adapt our plans.

Because of our doctor’s understanding, I never bothered to write up a birth plan, though I’ve heard of some, pages long, that sound more like diva’s concert riders. Mine would have read something like, “Please keep this simple. Try not to cut me open and help us avoid drugs. If I’m out of control, ask John. He knows what I want.”

Healing the Body Begins With Words

Four years ago, I leaned over the bathtub to pick up my then one-year-old son and something in my lower back snapped. It happened so fast: one second I’m bent right- angled at the waist, arms around my wet, slippery, tank of a kid, and the next second—flat on the floor. I couldn’t move.

Even the idea of moving was an impossibility. I lay there for nearly forty-five minutes—never in my life have I been as helpless—until finally, I worked myself into an awkward push-up position and slowly, slowly, military-crawled to the phone in the next room. I remember the pain made me see white, a blizzard on the backs of my eyelids.

Over the years, I’ve told this story to chiropractors, to physical therapists, to yoga instructors. “Do you have injuries I should be aware of?” they ask, and again and again and again, I begin: “I was leaning over the bathtub to pick up my son and something in my lower back…” For every time I’ve told it, every time I’ve relived it as part of understanding my own body, there is one part I always leave out:

I dropped him.

My beautiful, perfect, tank of a little boy.

I dropped him.

Reclaiming My Body After Pregnancy and Breast Feeding

The campfire flames lit the faces of hundreds of singing campers and my head felt light amid the swirling smoke and song. I leaned into my boyfriend as he wrapped his arm around me, waking up some new feeling under my 12-year-old skin. His hand slowly made its way to my breast.

“I’m sorry” I whispered, looking away. I felt awful that I didn’t have more to offer than a small size A.

As the years passed and my bra size remained the same, I worked to accept my body. I reassured myself that at least my breasts wouldn’t sag when I got older.