Attitude Adjustment

photo credit: christyscherrer

Remember: if something is hard to do, then it’s not worth doing.

— Homer J. Simpson

I have often laughed about this quote partly because it’s true for me in some ways, and partly because I know to laugh at myself. I have never thought of myself as strong. I’ve hovered around 110 Lbs since my mid-teens. I wasn’t on the basketball team in high school. I’m not athletic. I get winded running around the block. And sometimes taking the stairs at work (though I still do it). I’ve never thought of myself as someone you’d ask to carry heavy boxes when you move. Or as someone who just keeps at it no matter how tired. That’s more like my husband. And that’s why I married him.

When I was pregnant with my son, back in 2005, I took a Birthing From Within childbirth prep class and we spent one beautiful, sunny, Sunday morning in August talking about and crying about our worst fears about labour. Mine was pretty much that I just don’t have it in me to do something that physical for that long, that I would give up. I was afraid not only that I wasn’t strong enough but also that I just didn’t have the attitude to get me through. I had heard that quote about “having a baby is hard work. That’s why they call it labour” and while I appreciate it, it kind of scared me more than all the media hype about pain.

But you know what? Guess what I’ve done in the last five years?

I’ve made and grown another human being inside my body. Twice. I’ve pushed a baby out of my body without any pain relief medication or extraction methods. Twice. I’ve fed and kept a child alive and thriving for six months with my body alone. Twice.

It turns out that my body is pretty damn strong and amazing.

I did all this without training. Without special exercise or diet for the most part. I mostly ate the way I always eat. I took prenatal vitamins regularly the first time and when I remembered the second time. I did some prenatal yoga during my first pregnancy. I had awesome fans and a couple of great coaches which helped a lot of course. But I didn’t practice pregnancy or labour or birth or breastfeeding. I just did it. Because my body is made to do it.

It turns out that I wasn’t just wrong about having a strong body. I was also dead wrong about my mind and my attitude. Or rather, by the time it really mattered I found out that I was wrong about my attitude. Before the contractions hit and around transition when I was telling myself to go to the hospital for an epidural, I still had some serious Homer attitude. But somehow I didn’t quit. What made the difference? When I look back, I realise that I was training and practicing and working hard getting ready to have a baby, breastfeed a baby and become a parent. I was preparing my mind for a mental marathon and I was adjusting my attitude. The yoga, the childbirth class, journaling, reading, learning: all of those were my training, my practice. It turns out that all of those are what helped me do what I needed to do. And for the rest, my body just did it’s thing because that’s what it is meant to do.

Turns out that I’m more Winnie the Pooh than Homer Simpson:

There is something you must always remember. You are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think.

— Winnie the Pooh

**photo: The hard work of labor, Flickr, christyscherrer