love and sugar

The highlight of last Friday's Normal Labour and Birth class was the pelvimetry practice session in the afternoon, in which H and I learned the curves and projections and ligaments and musculature of each other's pelvises (technically, pelves), screeching with laughter all the way as she manipulated my coccyx with her gloved finger and all I could feel was a bizarre, enormously ticklish jiggling around in my bottom...

I am pleased to say that I have a "beautiful pelvis for childbirth", according to H's thorough evaluations, even though we all know that the best pelvimeter is actually the baby's head. In other words, there is no way of knowing how 'roomy' a woman's 'outlet' is until she actually gives birth (mostly because of the influence of relaxin, a delightful hormone that softens ligaments in pregnancy and renders the pelvic bones considerably more moveable than they would otherwise be). That is why you will probably never hear a midwife tell a pregnant woman that she looks 'too small' to give birth naturally. A travesty!

On Saturday, I watched W., an Oliver Stone film (peppered with Stone's extraordinary trademark dream sequences) about the life and presidency of George junior, and then headed out at night with some friends to dance and hang out at the White Heart in Portland. On Sunday, I ate otherworldly fries, cooked in duck fat, at the appropriately named Duck Fat restaurant on Middle Street. They were beyond words; defied description. In the evening, I tried to concentrate on my A&P homework (on the immune system). Eventually, I prevailed, and with schoolwork tidily completed, it was time to go home to make tomato-mozzarella pasta and chickpea salad.

Monday brought an interminably long day of A&P class, which had us yawning, dozing, and silently begging for mercy by 4pm. We'd much rather have been in Prenatal class, or Labour and Birth, where things are far juicier and closer to the bone. Having said that, I did make an impassioned speech to the class during tea break on Monday, that we could all perhaps enjoy A&P more if we approached it from the perspective of total awe for the incredible human body that we are studying, whose workings are unfathomable even when they are patently described for us on the page. Of course, they rolled their eyes at me... bloody nerd!

On Tuesday morning, I hung out at a coffee shop with H and C, researching hypothyroidism in pregnancy on the 'net while they did their readings for the next installment of Labour and Birth. We figured we'd motivate each other by studying 'together' (i.e. pursuing our own individual ends, but at the same table). It worked.

By Tuesday evening, the soreness from a heavy session of lifting weights on Monday night had set in, and I had to wuss out of a planned 5-mile run around the Back Cove. Instead? Indiana Jones on DVD. (Don't look at me like that.)

Three of my 'sisters' and I practised pelvic exams on each other yesterday morning at C's place, simply because we need as much practice as we can get, and because we feel so at ease with each other that the whole experience is actually enjoyable, rather than just something that needs to get done. In the afternoon, I was introduced to an amazing little deli by my friend B, who bought me a cappuccino and gave me a tour of the store's remarkable organic chocolate section. We had a much-needed, sweet and intimate catch-up talk, in the true spirit of holding the space for each other through difficult times (hers rather than mine, yesterday at least).

This morning I faced Skills Practice Day with buckwheat-maple pancakes in my belly. We went over counting foetal heart tones, Leopold's manoeuvres, assessing oedema, taking vitals, charting, and the like. Tomorrow heralds a Normal Labour and Birth class.

I went for a scenic run to the lake with K and proceeded to polish off more than a handful of homemade muesli cookies when we returned home (for I am not made of stone...), so with a brain made entirely fuzzy by sugar, I must now attempt to read a couple of chapters of Anne Frye's legendary purple tome, Holistic Midwifery Volume II. Sweet life, no?