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What My Baby Can Teach Me, If I Will Slow Down and Learn From Her

Originally published via The Huffington Post:

During my yoga class today my attempt at mindfulness went something like this:

Ouch! I can’t do this pose anymore. I used to be able to do this pose, before the baby. I used to be able to do it easily. Will I ever be able to do this pose again? 

Baby touching mother's hand

Yeah, if I get better about getting back into yoga. Ugh, I really should be better about getting here to the gym, to yoga. Except, wait, I hope to have more babies. What if as soon as I’m able to do these challenging poses again it’s time to try and get pregnant again, and then I won’t be able to do—OK, stop, bring it back to the present. Focus. I won’t let my thoughts high-jack this yoga class. Ohmmmm. Inhale. Exhale. Hand on the belly, big breath in—jeez, my belly is soft. I didn’t used to have this belly. It used to be toned. The baby is almost seven months, I should have lost this belly by now. Everyone tells me it only gets harder to lose the baby weight as we get older and go through subsequent pregnancies. They tell me that after baby number one it’s way easier to lose the baby weight. I should have toned this by now. Maybe it’s all the ice cream. STOP! Ohmmmm. Inhale, exhale. Inhale. I can hear the person next to me breathing. It’s really quiet in here; I silenced my phone, right? I should check my phone, make sure the babysitter didn’t call with some crisis. No, that’s silly. She’s a great sitter; she has four kids and two grandkids of her own. The baby is in great hands. Besides, it’s a good thing for the baby to have some other socialization other than Mom and Dad. She’s with a great sitter. Shoot, I should really not use this precious sitter time to be at yoga. I should be working. Or sleeping. Really, when you think about it, this $15 yoga class is costing me more than $15 because I’m not only paying for the class, but I’m paying for parking, and the sitter, too. Should I have used that money for something else? Should I spend the extra money on organic groceries? Or should I not waste money on organic? Is the whole organic thing kind of a racket? I saw that email about how with some foods it’s matters, but with others it really doesn’t. Berries was one of the categories for which it mattered. I love berries—those blackberries this morning were really good. They really added to the flavor of the oatmeal. I definitely prefer blackberries to blueberries. Were they organic? No, I don’t think they were. If I don’t buy organic berries, am I ingesting too many toxins? Am I going to get cancer and leave my child without her mother? Am I passing the toxins through the breast milk? Breast-feeding. I wonder if I should wean her soon, or if I should keep going. Oh, shoot, the rest of the class has moved on to a totally new pose!

As you can see, my attempts at mindfulness were not entirely successful.

Here’s the thing, in spite of the…click here for the full article on The Huffington Post.

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