Motherhood Reimagined by Sarah Kowalski

Author:Sarah Kowalski
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: She Writes Press
Published: 2017-04-10T04:00:00+00:00

ending self-hatred: doing the best i can

In early July, before I left for England, I had finally scheduled an appointment with a reproductive endocrinolo-gist to run some more tests and get her opinion about my chances of getting pregnant. She’d run my AMH (anti-mullerian hormone) and resting follicle count, as well as rerunning my FSH. She explained that the three measures taken together were predictive of egg quality and quantity. As it turned out, my FSH had gone up slightly to 25.4, I had only one resting follicle on each ovary (a woman in the peak of her fertility might have up to twenty per ovary), and my AMH was undetectable. With these numbers, not only did she not recommend IVF, but said she would refuse to treat me with IVF even if I wanted to try it. At the time, I had brushed these numbers out of my psyche, not wanting to allow them to deter my confidence. But now, a month after the third failed insemination attempt and with ever more erratic periods, the reality of those numbers hit me. Luckily, around this same time, Chris was offering a Qigong retreat. A chance to get away from my life to do Qigong practice all day long? I took it.

The retreat center was in Calistoga, just north of the Bay Area, with stunning views of the surrounding wine country and mountains, with acres of walking trails to explore. As soon as I arrived at the center, I stopped to take in nature’s beauty. In an effort to arrive more fully, I took a deep breath, linking to nature and welcoming the influence of the qualities present. My body opened to the expansiveness of the view. I carried this feeling into the practice hall, joining about twenty other students in a circle. I sat on my chair, my back was easily upright, my feet on the floor shoulder-width apart, my hands gently clasped in my lap. The sun streamed through the French doors lining the wall, drenching my body in its warmth. I glanced out the windows into the garden teeming with vegetables and fruits ready for harvest.

Chris wasn’t a big fan of long, drawn out check-ins or introductions, so with this retreat he had decided to jump right in. “Let’s start by paying attention to the breathing,” he began. “Try not to concoct the breath in any way, but instead just listen. Simply notice all the places that the body moves with the breath.” I followed his instruction, melting into the peace of the practice. As I’d been trained, I turned my attention to noticing how the pressure of the breath affected every part of the body. I scanned the body, looking for new and interesting places that my breath was moving my body: the small of my low back, my shoulder blades moving in and out across my ribs, my arms lifting up and down. As my mind slowed down, and I became more and more present to my current experience.

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