This past weekend, my yoga teacher training focused on prenatal yoga. I knew I'd have some feelings as I did modified sun salutations to accommodate my imagined pregnant belly. The teacher kept saying, "Inhale arms up, exhale hands to baby," and all of us in the class would close our eyes and place our hands on our stomachs. My saving grace was glancing over at the one guy in the training who was very comfortably and attentively bringing his hands to his "baby."
Three months ago this would have wrecked me. There is so much in the world that triggers an infertile woman, it's hard to simply leave the house sometimes without some reminder, something upsetting, some lame comment from a person who just doesn't get what we're going through. The thought of spending an entire day in a prenatal yoga training pretending to be pregnant would have been something I would have called in sick for. There were times I needed to protect myself and my feelings more, and that's ok. But this weekend, my eyes teared up a bit at moments, and I moved through it, reminding myself that I'm ok.
"I'm ok. I'm ok." That was my mantra. Not trying to convince myself of something that wasn't true, but something to remind myself and soothe my mind from allowing the phrase "hands to baby" spin me out into some crazy place of fear and panic and pity. "I'm ok." The feelings came up but I didn't try and define them, they were tears. They were sad. They were a little hopeful maybe. I don't know. "I'm ok."
My mantra has changed many times over the course of this process. Sometimes feel like I have retired a specific mantra, like "I hate pregnant people," and sometimes I shelf it and come back to it, like "the baby that's meant to be my baby will be."
Finding a catch phrase as a reminder to breath and focus on what's in front of you can be really helpful and self-supportive. I'm ok. It's going to be ok.
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