Friday, March 30, 2012

Learning to be hypnotised

So I could pretend that my life isn't revolving around this Little Bean inside me at the moment, but... well, I'd be pretending. It is consuming almost my every thought, to the point where, if I manage to think about something else for a reasonably extended period of time (say... 10 minutes), I feel quite self-righteous. This scares me... I am arrogant enough to think that, for the majority of the time, I am a reasonably interesting person, but at the moment I am just in my own little bubble of Beanieness and, to be honest, am happy to stick around there for a while. And really hope that sometime I'll come out of my bubble...

I blame hypnobirthing. Each day I either listen to, read or recite my positive birth affirmations, I practice my breathing techniques (calm breathing for the times between contractions, surge breathing for use during contractions, and birth breathing for the time at the end where everyone is usually yelling awful things like 'push!'), my relaxation techniques, my visualisation techniques and attempt to bring myself into a state of self-hypnosis. I try to read a positive birth story every day or every second day. Each night, Dunc practices working with me through these, using certain scripts and skills to help me become comfortable with this process. So... it's no wonder that I'm feeling a bit of a 'birthing aura' around me at the moment. I choose not to believe that being easily hypnotised (or 'brought into a state of deep relaxation') is the equivalent of being gullible...

The best bit about hypnobirthing is the science behind it. For someone like me, who is split pretty equally between the left and right brains (find me anyone else who started out studying biomedical science and then finished up being an English teacher), it is perfect. It uses my creativity and my ability to imagine, while also grounding it in science and logic. For instance, if you analyse the formation of the three muscle layers of the uterus, it makes complete sense that 'pushing' at the end is counter-productive. The release of adrenalin and the redistribution of blood flow during times of fear really help to explain why the process of deep relaxation is so important. Etc, etc, etc.

I still struggle with certain aspects of it -- not the approach and the philosophy, but the practice. There was a time a while ago where we were following instructions to a tee, but I found myself an anxiety-ridden, crying mess at the end of each session, which was obviously not the intention. We've had to ditch some things and adjust others so that it works for us, and just during the past week have I really felt that we have gotten into the groove of it. Yay!

Very excited to meet this little creature inside of me that has just discovered the true power of its knees in the last 24 hours. :)

Tuesday, March 20, 2012

Rambles of a Beanie Nature

My last baby-related post focused on the things that I am afraid of. I realised, though, that I was yet to write a blog post regarding how I feel the vast majority of the time... 'And how DO you feel the vast majority of the time, Johanna?' I hear you all ask with baited breath. Finding one word to describe such complex emotions is... difficult.

But, I'm going to go with: EXCITED!

There is a person growing inside of me, which is truly just mind-boggling. And it's not like I've actively done anything to make it grow there (besides the obvious *cough cough*), and yet there it is, having grown from pretty much nothing to the size of a pumpkin, to something – no, someONE - who has the hiccups multiple times throughout the day, who stretches its legs out so that a foot is pushing on one side of my belly and a bum on the other, who flinches when the train squeals loudly as it passes, who reacts to my husbands touch and who had little dance parties at 5am, 10am, 4pm and 11pm, on the dot. I mean really, how mind-boggling is this.

I am 32 weeks preggers right now, though I am emotionally feeling like I am full term. I am ready. And not in that 'ugh, being pregnant is a pain in the bum, get it over with already' kind of way, but in a 'what do you look like? What will you smell like? How heavy will you be in my arms? Do you have hair? I want to touch your little button nose! I want to meet you!' kind of way. Apparently my body is ready too. My pelvis has been open and pretty much ready for the big event from four-and-a-half months (insert a few sentences about pelvic pain and walking problems), and now Beanie is head down and shoving itself as hard against my hoohoo as possible, trying to get it all happening a little too early. Here's a picture of mah belleh today.

Feelings regarding birth:

The thing that really shocks me is how excited I am about the actual birth. I wonder if perhaps it is all the hypnobirthing practice I have been doing, but I am just feeling so positive about it (the vast majority of the time). The scariest thing about it is the unknown, and yet I feel as though I have been preparing myself to deal with that for a while now. And having Duncan there to deal with all the bits besides the physical aspect of it gives me a lot of calm. The main thing that I have realised is that although, of course, I want to have a perfect birth where everything goes calmly, naturally and according to plan, if things go awry, I know that Beanie and I will be okay. So no matter what happens, it will probably be the most amazing experience of my life. And at the end of it all, we get to meet our little Bean!

The house isn't quite ready, though. I mean, if Beanie popped out today, we'd be set, but it's just not at that point where I'm happy – we still have boxes around the place, we still need to fix the changing table, we still need to buy a bunch of little things (though the big purchases are finally out of the way) and I'm still waiting for my elusive sewing machine pedal to reveal itself somewhere in the shambles of The Spare Bedroom.


A few difficulties to overcome:

There have been quite a few personal difficulties I've had to attempt to overcome that go hand in hand with having a bubba in a country where I don't (comfortably, or with much proficiency) speak the language. I'm really glad that I have pushed myself to learn the amount of German that I currently know, so that hopefully I'm not feeling too helpless or lost. It also comes in handy in situations like this morning, where a lovely old lady sat next to me on the train and started speaking to me about my belly and the weather (two topics I am comfortable with! If only she also started speaking about food... then I'd be in top form!).

Another big personal issue I have had to confront is that of my body image, which is just so nauseatingly predictable. I've never been little, and being a six-foot-tall not-little person often makes me feel... well... I don't have to say it. Standing in one of the busiest squares in Zurich, waiting for a tram, and realising that I am a solid head and shoulders taller than everyone around me makes me feel very conspicuous. Which, of course, I am. Now throw an enormous belly and an every expanding bum into the mix, and it takes a bit of effort for me to try to feel comfortable. I wish it wasn't an issue at all, but perhaps being this height at 14 years of age, surrounded by boys who barely reached my belly button, affected me more than I realise. And perhaps being reasonably sleep deprived doesn't help this situation... check out the number of extra pillows I had to order when we were on our babymoon last week (plus a wedge I created out of towels to prop up my back when sleeping on my side)!


A kinder surprise!

Now for the issue of Beanie being a boy or a girl. I was so completely sure it was a boy up until about 6 months. I'm not sure why, I just knew. And then one day I woke up and instead of thinking about the boy in my belly, I suddenly was hit with this feeling that I now had absolutely no idea. None. No feeling one way or the other. My 'boy' feeling had gone. And from then on, I began having dreams about Beanie being a girl, and gradually I've turned to feel as though it's a little girl in there. Dunc thinks it is a boy still, and we often speak with each other along the lines of 'How's he doing in there?', 'Oh, she's doing great!'. And so we've made a bet. If it's a boy, then Dunc gets to choose the first take-away pizza; if it's a girl, then I get to choose (and by god, it will have lots of gorgonzola!). Meanwhile, every single silly gender-prediction test we have done says it is a boy, so... we'll see. :)

Alright, time to end this ramble and put on my 'Affirmations for an Easy and Comfortable Birth' CD. I'll leave you with a picture of the very excited parents-to-be on our little mountain get-away last week.

Monday, March 19, 2012

I'm so postmodern

I'm currently reading Jeffrey Eugenides's Middlesex and am having some major breakthroughs with my writing. Not with the actual words on paper business of writing, but of the sitting and thinking hard aspect -- the 'composting' (incidentally, I think that the amount of composting time required to write a novel that is as complex and interwoven as mine was vastly underestimated...).

Oh! Disclaimer! Please don't think I am comparing my writing to that of Jeffrey Eugenides, Pulitzer Prize winner and one of America's greatest writers of contemporary literary fiction... okay, so that is a lie. I am comparing, albeit a little shamefully. Though (she says, stamping her foot), there can be nothing wrong with aiming high and using successful, admirable writing as a model for my own. Now if only he could create a couple of worksheets for me, I'd be set.

Here in Zurich, I am a member of two writing groups, each with three other wonderful writers. One group meets each month religiously, the other meets a little more sporadically, though usually every two or three months. The week before our meets, we email each other our submission, usually of around ten pages, and then we edit, respond, critique and praise each other's work in preparation for our meeting. When we meet, the three readers, often in conflict with each other, discuss problem areas as well as sections that they particularly enjoyed. The writer of the piece isn't 'allowed' to speak (theoretically) until after all feedback is given, removing the opportunity to explain yourself and justify any potential problems.

Every time I submit my writing, I am riddled with nerves. I assume people won't like it, will find inherent problems with any number of things (continuity of tense, embarrassing spelling or grammatical errors, flaws in characterisation, and - the worst - just 'not getting it') and will be secretly scoffing behind my back... how can I possibly think I have the ability to complete this mammoth task? And yet, every time, I am astonished that people seem to genuinely enjoy my writing. Yes, there are problems (such as 'I really sympathised with this character up until now, but what they just said just doesn't fit with my idea of who they are', or 'this sentence starts in past tense, moves into present, then ends back in past again'), but on the whole, I always leave our sessions feeling as though I actually can do this.

Back to Eugenides.

Some feedback that I continually receive is in reference to my use of point-of-view. I have chosen a very complex structure for my novel, and in order to tie all the flailing bits together, I have employed a grumpy old man to tell the story (I hate having to summarise complex areas of my narrative... just know that it is a whole lot more complicated than that). He makes appearances at the beginning and the end, but also continuously pops in throughout in order to provide comment to his own ability to tell the story, in the style of a metanarrative. Now, the critique that I often receive from my fellow writers goes along the lines of 'How would he know that? How could he know that X feels this way, or that Y is hiding there, or that Z wants this more than anything in the world?'. And so, despite my refutations that he is telling a story and therefore needs to invent the emotions and justify the actions of his fellow characters, I often find myself censoring my old man.

Eugenides doesn't. He has his narrator providing us with an intimate portrayal of his grandparents' first sexual encounter, of the complexities of his parents' relationship, of the events that occurred in the house down the street from his Grandmother... and I never found myself wondering 'how would he know this?'.

I have been reading a lot of interviews with Jeffrey Eugenides to try to uncover some of the challenges he found in writing this novel (which took nine years... *sigh*), and I found this segment, taken from www.3ammagazine.com, particularly interesting and relevant:

Eugenides: I've blended postmodern and traditional I think. My narrator in Middlesex is not entirely reliable; he's inventing the past as much as he is telling it. "You can't really know much about what you really know" is the bottom line, which is an old postmodern strategy. There's a lot of self conscious narration in the book, which is an issue in a lot of postmodern literature as well. Along with that, there are very old-fashioned narrative techniques in it, of telling about wars and the burning of Smyrna. But postmodernism is always recuperating old styles of narration. The one thing that I definitely believe is that strict postmodernists don't all believe that I believe in this power of story-telling. I think that people are still interested in this old-fashioned goals or traits of novels. Something that seizes you, that grabs your attention and gives you a ride through a book. So, I don't want to constantly frustrate the reader by taking him down on dead ends, at the dead end of literature or something -- that doesn't interest me. I want, in a way, a Classical shape to my books and a pleasing and elegant form to them, which is old-fashioned. But within that, I still have a lot of postmodern play without the continuing sense of relativism that… I got so tired of.


So that's it -- I've decided that I'm postmodern. And, apparently, a bit of a fan of writing magical realism. And I'm totally cool with that.

From now on, I'm not going to sensor my storyteller. He is going to be as verbose, arrogant and cumbersome as he likes, popping in and out of my story where he decides is right (yes, I know claims such as these, where the character has control and not the writer, are a little wanky... but they are true!), and screwing with everyone's idea of what is the 'correct' way to write a certain point of view. Iida, Stacy, Kristen, Jill, Libby, Daryl - you are all just going to have to deal with it.

Tuesday, March 6, 2012

Excitement!

After my last somewhat negative post, I thought I had better fill you all in on my current state of being - which is not at all like it was one month ago. I am EXCITED! I'm not sure if it's just the hypnobirthing techniques I've been practicing, but something in me has changed. I am feeling really in control of my pregnancy and imminent birth (okay, so not really in control - I mean, I am an Australian woman giving birth in a foreign country where I don't speak the language comfortably, and where I'm almost as far away from my Mum as I could possibly be), and I am pleasantly surprised by the way that all my research and study seems to be staying in my otherwise mooshy brain. Yes, occasionally I have a little private meltdown when hubby is here to give me a cuddle, usually over the language issue, but on the whole I am really excited. I mean, this little bean is going to be here soon! I'm gonna be a mummy, and Dunc's going to be a daddy. This is just plain awesome.

The thing that surprises me is that I am very excited about the actual birth. I know, right? How many people go around saying that? This is where I'm a little curious as to the effect that the hypnobirthing is having on my brain...