Pregnancy Blog 2: Six Weeks Postpartum

The Standing Bow Challenge is back on! 

I figure, to make it more of a challenge this time I have to start it when I’m still building stamina again. It would be too easy to wait until I’m back to feeling good in it. The work is to hold it when I feel like junk body. When you’re pregnant, there’s so much you have to take it easy doing or skip that I feel like my mental stamina needs some work, too. I fell last Thursday, so starting today, not again.

My standing head-to-knee has fallen to pieces. I can barely reach my foot. They say your recovery from subsequent pregnancies is harder each time. When I came back after having Bella, I had my head on my knee in the first class. This time, I can barely get my fingers to touch under my foot and with a hell of a lot of effort lock my knee when I kick out. Oh well. It is what it is. I know I could do it, so my body will remember in time.

I am comfortable this week laying on my belly for Savasana. Six weeks is usually when mommy’s fluids level out anyway and the excess swelling recedes and milk production in her breasts stabilizes. I can definitely feel the difference. My head can touch the ground, even if its not with my ear flat to the towel. Locust is still a lot of effort, but I can feel my legs are at least no longer only an inch off the floor.

I feel so lucky this time that I have a baby who can go 2-3 hours without nursing and will happily stay with Daddy or Grammy or whoever. The hardest part with Bella about practicing was that she nursed every hour or two for the first 5 months and she only wanted to be with her mama. Already at six weeks, I’m able to practice a good three times a week without question.

Pregnancy Blog 2: Welcome Back Kotter!

When we were in teacher training, Bikram used to say to us, “Every once in a while, I take a month off, so when I come back, I know what you’re going through.”  I know what he means.  Coming back this time has really reminded me of what my body used to feel like when I first started Bikram.

It’s crazy how much my body has tightened up in only 4 weeks.  Both with this pregnancy and the last, it seemed that my hamstrings and hips just got tighter and tighter as the pregnancy progressed.  I am sure it was to accommodate the changes in my body, but YOW! it kills to get them back open again.  You are doing forward bends in the pregnancy series, but there’s nothing like a forward bend with your feet together.  It just gets so deep in whole hamstrings group and your hips right under your buttocks.  My shoulders, too, are ridiculously tight from spending all day hunched over a nursing newborn.

The cobra series felt GREAT, other than laying on my E-cups.  E.  The letter E.  Hop right over D and her sister DD, E.  It’s like doing the series with a pillow under my chest. My head doesn’t even touch the floor.  It has to be because I am nursing two.  Outrageous.  I felt like I was smothering in rabbit.

And hey! Who stole my abdominal muscles?  I know, I know, they’re returning to their normal length.  Separate-leg forehead-to-knee I got the most intense muscle cramps in my abs.  They’re just not used to working that deeply.  Hurts so good.

The funniest posture of all was locust.  You don’t really realize how much you use your abdominals for stabilization in that posture until you don’t have any.  I was working my tail off, lifting as HARD as I could, straining with my belly, legs, back and arms.  I was starting to get tired and could feel my legs starting to drop.  They came down about an inch and I felt my toenails touch the floor.  I almost burst out laughing.  All that effort for an inch of height.

It’s great to be back. Great. How many times can I say it? It’s also so fun to come back after a break because you get that yoga high again and can really appreciate it.  Yesterday, I was feeling really overwhelmed.  Today, I’m on top of the world!