Tuesday, September 3, 2013

why childbirth is not like hot yoga

We had a tour of the birth center at the hospital where Baby Wang II will be delivered during which the tour guide compared giving birth to hot yoga and said that she would gladly do it (and by "it" she's referring to childbirth, people!) every day of the week. As you can probably imagine, I pretty much wanted to punch her in the face. It could have been because it was early evening and I was tired from work and it was rather hot in the room with 16+ other expecting mamas, but probably not.

So here you are folks, the top 5 reasons that I could come up with as to why childbirth is actually not at all like hot yoga -

#1 First and foremost, because it just isn't. Labor and delivery is not hot yoga.

#2 If while doing hot yoga, one should become so unbearably uncomfortable that one thinks they simply can't go on ... the option exists for one to just STOP. Unfortunately, when one's baby decides it is going to come out one has little choice but to keep going until he/she is out. Like there's no crying in baseball, there's no stopping in childbirth.

#3 And really, if one needed some time to recover, one could take as much (or as little time) as one chooses. Unlike laboring mamas, who have very little time to recover and as discussed in #2 must keep at it until baby is out. As much as some of us would like for that little bundle of joy to just stay in there or maybe even crawl back up and hang out for a little while longer so we could take a nap,  it's simply not an option.

#4 Presumably, this woman wasn't referring to some unending hot yoga marathon. In which case, one probably knows how long their yoga class is going to last. So even if one had to hold the same awful position for the entire class period, one knows there is a definite end in sight. Had I known that I would only have to feel the worst pain in my entire life for a finite period of time, I think I would fared a bit better. It was the not having any idea how long I had to endure that pain (which ended up being hours ... many many hours) that left me panic stricken.
#5 At the culmination of a yoga class, I'm going to have to assume that one doesn't leave feeling like a mack truck just drove out of one's crotch and in need of stitches to repair it. Because really, if one needs stitches in their lady parts after doing hot yoga, I firmly believe that one is doing something wrong  ... very very wrong - or is a masochist.

But of course, what do I know? I don't even do hot yoga. I just make babies, but I can tell you if hot yoga feels anything like birthing a kid I have absolutely no desire to start doing it.

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