Our First a Slow Dance

Last night, Mark and I attended our second prenatal class. The teacher had the perimeter of the room set up with different stations based on coping and relaxation techniques for labor. Some of the stations had prompts for discussion or visualization. My second favorite was one where I was on my knees leaning over an exercise ball while Mark massaged my lower back with a little wooden massage piece. My very favorite was the station titled "slow dance". 

The slow dance technique is pretty close to your classic middle school slow dance position. With this labor coping technique, the man makes his legs a sturdy base by spreading his feet apart. He places his hands on his wife's hips as she leans forward against him with her arms supported on his shoulders or behind his neck. The woman sways her hips to help with labor pain and to encourage the baby to shift into the right position. 

If you know my husband well, you will know that he hates PDA. He does not hold hands, kiss willingly in public or even accept public hugs without a groan or exclamation of "something is touching me!". At our wedding reception, we planned to avoid any of the classic first dance situations and warned people that if they banged silverware on glasses, he would not kiss me. Though this sounds a little extreme, it is not the way he is or how he loves best and throughout our relationship, I have learned to see his love in his acts of service, his sense of humor and pet names for me, and his deep care and gentleness for all living things (you should see him with my cats). 

As we went through the stations, he did participate, some times begrudgingly but he did his best. We came around to the slow dance station and though he rolled his eyes a little and had a "this is weird" quip, when I settled my head on his chest and we swayed a bit, it felt so very nice. Afterwards, he was the one that pointed out that it had been our very first dance together after dating 3.5 years and being married almost 6 years. He didn't hate it! 

It is his birthday soon and one tradition I have to help celebrate is to make a poster and put it up while he is sleeping so he sees it the next morning.  This year's poster features balloon versions of the cats and myself. It goes along with one of his endearments for my current look : My Little Marshmallow Puff. Hehe:)