Back in the game.

I'm not sure it's the same game, though. 

 I made it to the gym tonight with the rest of my family.  The last time I was there was two weeks ago, vigorously stepping on the stairclimber, trying to turn the baby and maybe go into labor.  This plan, you may remember, succeeded (I gave birth eight hours later).  But not before I got a LOT of attention from other YMCA-goers.  A nine-months-pregnant woman sweating on a stairclimber, particularly one who's really throwing her weight into her hips for effective fetal rotation, is a conversation starter to say the least.   

(All of the conversations went like this:

"When are you due?"

"Today."

"!!!!")

Anyway, that was two weeks ago.  Today we bundled everyone up right after dinner, got to the Y in time to get Milo in to his swim lesson, and got the other kids down to the child care.  

I nursed Leo in the child care and then took him with me up to the track that runs around the top of the basketball gym — seventeen laps to the mile.  There I looped around and around in a brisker walk than I'd managed since he was born.  I had Best of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers on my iPod and Leo in my Maya Wrap, and it felt really good.  My back started to hurt after a while, probably due to atrophied baby-slinging muscles, but I was delighted to be moving again.   I watched Mark pass me and pass me and pass me again at a run, and wondered when I'd be running too.  I watched the older children down in the gym, including Oscar, playing badminton (or at least playing with badminton gear), and thought how strange it is that I already have a nine-year-old running around in a gymnasium with other kids his age.

I can't do much more than walk now.  It's hard not to feel out of shape and grumpy.  When I was hugely pregnant I felt like a very fit, strong, and healthy pregnant woman, because — in fact — I was.  If I was a very fit and healthy pregnant woman two weeks ago, then logically I must be a very fit and healthy postpartum woman right now, however unfit and weak I may feel in the absolute.  I must try to keep that in mind (while at the same time not pushing myself so hard I get hurt).

Before we left I had to nurse him some more, of course.  Then carry him to the pool to show him off to the lifeguards and swim instructors who'd been marveling at my girth for the last several months, and back down to the child care to show him off to the staffers who care for my other kids.  The rituals of reappearing from one's, er, confinement.  And then home for a snack.  And some ibuprofen. And a lot of rest.

Coming up, a stab at Leo's birth story.   And Sunday, Leo's baptism.  I'll try to get the birth story out in parts over the weekend.