03/04/2022
I often say to my clients to book nice things in for near the end of their pregnancy, for example a pregnancy massage or reflexology after 40 weeks because we definitely don’t talk about how much this stage of pregnancy can test your patience!
Some people call this stage the ‘time of Zwischen’ and there’s a great description of it in one of my favourite articles:
“She's curled up on the couch, waiting, a ball of baby and emotions. A scrambled pile of books on pregnancy, labor, baby names, breastfeeding; not one more word can be absorbed. The birth supplies are loaded in a laundry basket, ready for action. The freezer is filled with meals, the car seat installed, the camera charged. It's time to hurry up and wait. Not a comfortable place to be, but wholly necessary.
The last days of pregnancy - sometimes stretching to agonizing weeks - are a distinct place, time, event, stage. It is a time of in between. Neither here nor there. Your old self and your new self, balanced on the edge of a pregnancy. One foot in your old world, one foot in a new world.
…
I tell these beautiful, round, swollen, weepy women to go with it and be okay there. Feel it, think it, don't push it away. Write it down, sing really loudly when no one else is home, go commune with nature, or crawl into your own mama's lap so she can rub your head until you feel better. I tell their men to let go of their worry; this is an early sign of labor. I encourage them to sequester themselves if they need space, to go out if they need distraction, to enjoy the last hours of this life-as-they-now-know-it. I try to give them permission to follow the instinctual gravitational pulls that are at work within them, just as real and necessary as labor”
- Jana Studelska
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P.S if you’re in Bucks, I recommend Jules Doran Reflexology for some pregnancy reflexology and MamaBabyBliss or Greene Wellbeing for a well deserved pregnancy massage!
