Wednesday, February 13, 2008

Ommmm

While I am on maternity leave I am trying to do as much as I can with Eve, mindful that too soon I will be back at work full time and not able to join her in her activities. In addition to the lifeline that is the mother and baby group and the friends I have made there, yesterday I decided to take Eve to mother and baby yoga.

I have been going to yoga for a few years now, and loved my antenatal yoga classes. When I was excercising lots pre pregnancy, I would find that one session of yoga a week would realign my body and soothe my mind. I want to get back to it, but also want to spend as much time as I can with Eve. Mother and baby yoga seemed like the ideal solution.

Prior to attending I had images of a nice calming environment, babies asleep or smiling happily while their mothers did yoga and integrated their babies into their postures. It sounded perfect.

For 10 out of the 11 people at the class yesterday this was the case.

Eve, however, decided that 5 minutes into the class she was going to scream. She would only be quiet if I fed her, cue naked boob and very loud baby starling impressions from Eve. But she wasn't really hungry so this provided only temporary reprieve until she started screaming again. The instructor kept on saying that it didn't matter if babies cried in class, but when she started having to shout it over Eve's banshee wailing she didn't have quite the same conviction in her voice. After 40 minutes Eve did an enormous poo so I went outside to change her. She was quiet the whole time we were outside in the hustle and bustle of the reception, but the moment I stepped back into the calming environment of the yoga studio she started screaming again.

As further testimony to how far I have come with this motherhood thing, I didn't really care. At the end of the class (Eve stopped screaming 5 minutes before the end and fell, predictably, into a cute and snuffly sleep) I merely went to the instructor and apologised saying "babies just cry" and signed up for the remaining 9 weeks of the course.

Eve, having already been thrown out of a pub, may yet be thrown out of her first yoga classes too!

4 comments:

London City (mum) said...

Fabulous to see that you are already subscribing to the 'payback time' parenthood club. Wait until you get on an airplane and Eve screams the place down, people look at you with murderous intent, you smile sweetly and reply that if they don't like it they can always 'get off' (especially funny when flying at 30,000 feet).
It is a great antidote to the British notion of apologising for everything :)

Unknown said...

ha ha - if the others in the yoga class are properly into it then they should be so into it that the small matter of baby yowling should be neither here nor there.... I like Eve. She's gutsy!

Mummy said...

We are coming back to the UK in the summer for the Christening (Sabina - I will let you know the date asap) and not only do we plan to take Eve on a plane but in business class too. Now that will be amusing - I have noise cancelling headphones, but I doubt everyone else does...

LottieP said...

As you know I love you and Eve, but I hope I'm not on the same flight because I don't think my earplugs are up to it...