(I came home from my regular check-up today, crying. I am not even one-centimeter dilated.
I know you don’t need to read another post about how much I hate being pregnant.
I had left for the doctor’s while the girls were still asleep and Az had explained to them where I went. JellyBean knows that I will go to the doctor when it is time for the baby to be born, so when she heard the front door open, she came racing down the steps, calling, “Where’s the new baby, Mama? Mama! Where’s the new baby?”
We explained that the new baby wasn’t ready to come out yet. She took it all in stride.)
The girls have spent the morning dancing and singing. They each like to sing “Joy to the World” while they spin in circles, waving their arms and hands. “Let eeeeearth resweeeeeeve her Kiiiiing!” Pure toddler joy.
I am not a dancer. I remember dancing when I was young, and I remember loving the silly dance movies of the eighties: Footloose (though even then I thought Kevin Bacon couldn’t dance), Girls Just Wanna Have Fun — I even watched Body Rock. And then there was a certain R-rated movie which I wasn’t supposed to see, but did anyway. Just to seer it into your brain in an uncomfortable new way:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ayb8HoKSrH8">
But by the time I was 16, I was at a Christian college that forbade dancing, and it gradually killed the impulse.
Az and I took a few ballroom dancing lessons with friends when we were first married, and it was the only time we had ever cursed at each other. Two bad dancers should not try learning to dance together. He could never learn to hold me firmly, and I never learned to feel anything but awkward and stupid. I know what I look like dancing and it ain’t cool.
It was not a bonding time for us.
So dancing fell by the wayside, one of the enjoyments of adolescence that didn’t make the passage to adulthood. I don’t think I even missed it.
I don’t think I danced again until I was pregnant with JellyBean. Something about that big round belly made me want to cradle my arms around it and bounce around to whatever was on the radio. Since the girls have been born, I can put aside all my self-consciousness about looking silly in my own home, and hop and step to music for their enjoyment. They love to dance.
We turn the radio on in the kitchen, I hold one girl in my arms while the other prances around us, and we bounce and spin to the beat till they giggle themselves out of breath. I don’t think either of them will remember how clumsy I looked, but they’ll remember what it’s like to be spun around the floor in Mama’s arms.
They will remember this sweet memory. Maybe some more dancing with your girls will help things along….
What a warm, sweet image of you and your girls, all three of them!
The baby will come, in her own time. It sucks being pregnant, especially at the end, but it’s not a permanent condition, fortunately. Keep dancing. I hope her time comes soon!
“It’s called gettin’ down.” That clip is priceless.
I love how having little ones forces us to loosen up a bit. Keep dancing!
Reading about your dancing with your little ones made me tear up and I am not even pregnant. Keep Dancing..
Boogie, boogie, boogie V! Boogie until you just can’t boogie no more.
(The clips are killing me. Craig Ferguson is too much and Buck Rogers! Oh I was in looooove with Buck Rogers.)
Groovy.
Isn’t late pregnancy just the worst, this feeling that you’ve managed to carry the one baby who will never, ever come out? But your baby will, very soon.
I can’t dance but I LOVE to dance. It’s a very scary combination.
Doctors don’t let babies go more than two weeks over their due date, so keep the faith. This little girl doesn’t want to come out until she is assured that warm weather is really here. Keep dancing with the girls; they will truly remember Mama of the rotund torso bouncing about in the kitchen with them.
I also have a one and three year-old and dancing is one of our favorite things to do. My kids especially like “Step in Time” from Mary Poppins. It’s great to see them spin, stomp, and giggle. Have fun!
Don’t sweat your lack of dilation! That doesn’t mean anything; especially in women who have had more than one baby! Second babies and beyond will often not descend until JUST before labor begins and it is the pressure of the baby’s head on your cervix that causes you to dilate (as I’m sure you well know!)
All that dancing and reckless abandon is just what you and that baby needs. Keep that up and you’ll shake her out of there in no time! Hang in there, Mama!
That second video is hilarious! Both of them are pretty good, actually, but the second one… wow.
I never saw Flashdance until way past its heyday and like most movies that you don’t see in its prime, I was like, “why was this movie so popular?” My husband really liked it though. Gee, imagine that.