Top 5 differences between 1st and 3rd pregnancy...

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Fear…

During the first pregnancy, fear of all sorts was at the top of the list. I was very worried that my poor vagina would explode as the baby entered the world. I sat in almond oil baths for hours and spent loads of time on Google making sure that I was doing everything I could to prevent my womanhood being ruined.

I was scared what birth would do to me, and so unsure I would manage without all the drugs in the world. I spent hours reading about birthing while biting my fingernails. 

2nd birth home birth, I loved it. Very detailed planning and wanting. 

This time is a planned home birth and we are yet to have the plan made… Everyone keeps asking, so are you ready? Yeah sure, we still have a few days until it all goes down.

Poop and scars…

When going through birth prep classes one woman mentioned that you can poop as the baby pushes down and that an enema was an option to avoid this. Ew gross, I spent a lot of time wondering how our sex life would ever survive a situation like that. Wouldn’t you know, I didn’t give a shit (haha) during the actual pushing phase. Don’t even know if anything like that happened. 

Stretch marks: I did not want a roadmap of scars shattering my bikini bod… that was until I remembered that I have rarely put a bikini on. Also I kind of like how they tell the story of pregnancy and giving birth to, so far, 2 children. 3rd child, well it’s already stretched eh. 

Impatience…

1st time around I was ready to give birth after 6 months, come on already… This time not so much. I have things to do and sleep to be had. All is well and she can arrive 2 weeks late if she wants. I just would like to demand the right to not get up the last 3-4 weeks. 

I am so lucky that my kids and man are totally on board with that… not. 

Equipment…

I downloaded lists, and spent money on so many “essentials” during the first pregnancy. What!? How can you be a good parent without this plastic thing I don’t know how to use? The mag clearly said it WASN’T an add, and that you couldn’t get by without it. Well, wouldn’t you know, the best toy in the world was a cardboard box, and the baby grew out of all of it in a day or two anyway. 

This time… “babe, can you get the pram out of the shed”, “sure”… cool, done. 

Documentation…

I looked through old scrapbooks, and smiled at the photos of my baby bump and how it grew hour by hour for 9 months the 1st time around, and how we made sure to have me smiling like a loon at the camera, so we wouldn’t ever forget this awesome time. We had the test and everything there. 

This time I had to get the camera out in a panic, “shit, 8 months pregnant already, I don’t have a single picture of me or the belly”. Sorry little new baby girl, we love you just as much. But the dog ate the external hard drive with ALL of the photos from the pregnancy and your childhood…

Things that are the same. 

The man… 

I, just as I did the first time, wake up in the middle of the night (for hours). With struggle, I roll over to look at the dad, who is snoring. Sip a little water to control the heartburn, frown and think to myself - asshole, you did this to me, how can you just sleep through the night like nothing and here I am in bits from no sleep, kicks to the bladder and a throat on fire. 

Next morning, I look at him and think wow, what a miracle we are having another baby, and how lucky are we, I love him… #hormones

Excitement…

I cannot wait to meet her, to sniff her head and welcome her into our family with all that, that is. With everything said, I do have a tingle in my body, as I did with the oldest and a growing love for this little being. I however am a little older, a little more experienced, and a little more aware of the fact that I know nothing about how this birth will change our life. 

When you are ready, so are we.  

xo Mom

What to do when you wake up and the dog shits on your mood…

This morning I woke up, the birds were singing, the kids were quiet, my man was snoring a little less than earlier that night, and the sun peeked through the trees outside my window.

All in all, pure bliss, until my pregnant super sonic sense of smell picked up on something odd and I remembered all the to do’s, and what happened at 3am…

Cut to the night before…

We had given the dog a proper bone. Norma was busy for 3 hours with the thing, and we had the couch to ourselves - bonus. But as a parent staying up passed 9.30pm it too hard, I was tired and kissed my man goodnight and went to bed to read “The Alchemist”. 

I started to nod off after 2 pages (I am thinking that maybe the life changing experience of reading the book, will never happen at that pace). I gave in and went to sleep. 

3am I wake up because the two year old was screaming 2 inches from my face, that she couldn't find her teddy. It took me about 15 minutes on all 4's, naked, in the dark, without my glasses on, to find her teddy. Emergency over. Goodnight. 

4am; elbowed the man as the snoring was out of this world - don’t lie on your BAAAAAAAACK. 

Cut back to this morning… 

So the dog and the bone!

Super sonic pregoo nose. 

Something is wrong. In all the beauty of this morning glory, the oder of dog shit was outrages. Please no. I am not cleaning it up - I can’t. I feel sick. I woke him up, begging him to take care of it only to get a super annoyed reply “It will be there in 30 minutes, now go back to sleep”. 

For the next 30 minutes I breathed through my mouth. Shifting between gagging and drifting off.

Luckily he was my hero and cleaned, what turned out to cover most of the living room floor, up - so gross. Note to self, don’t buy that kind of bone again. 

But the shit stuck to my mood and I spent an hour staring angry at the wall. 

My medicine for starting the day like this is to make a nice cup of tea, and take a moment to do nothing. If I wasn’t pregnant maybe it would be a morning mojito. 

Before I go outside with my cup of tea, I wish you a jolly good day.

Oh, glory the times you only crack yourself up

So recently (yesterday) I was interviewing a woman I really admire. It was late at night, full moon, Mercury in Retrograde (what else are we blaming at the moment??) oh yeah, I’m pregnant and had just watched a show about antiques that was an hour long, but could have been a 15 minute ride if they had left out the 13 duuh duuuuhmmmm’s. So clearly, in retrospective I hadn't set myself up for a wam bam of an interview.

We got on the call and I went blank. Oh oh… then I messed up the introduction. You know the feeling when, as you are talking, your brain is going “Noooooo wrap it up”, but your mouth continues?

Getting past it, with somehow evolving my dialect into a thick accent of some kind, I started to warm up a little. I decided to half ass a joke about me messing up the intro and then nothing… only me laughing hard about my own fuck up. My upper lip started to sweat and I am sure I saw someone sneaking around outside the window, the dog farted and I went back into blank mode.

Disaster. 

Most of which is going on in my head. I am sure she sensed something a little off, but nothing compared to the titanic of a melt down going on across cyberspace. 

Picking up today I have contemplated quite a few excuses as to why the interview won’t go live. But why? Too shameful to show the imperfect nature, that is me? Scared she thinks I am a total loon. Scared that you can hear the dog farting in the interview and that people will think it was me? 

Knowing, as there always is, someone will send me an email about how I could really bring it to the next level with 1 of 15 proven steps to being more professional, controlled, closer to 6 figures or what have we. 

Moving past that, it will be going live. It was real and I am making a commitment to not polishing off the sides of life that happen to all of us, just because they are horrifically unsexy. 

I am ordinary and owning it…

Morning walks...

Since we got Norma in the beginning of February I have gone for morning walks with her. It has become my morning ritual, which I stick to most mornings. It is also the first ritual that I really really enjoy without force. 

There is something a little magical about being in slow pace, when the rest of the world is hurrying to get places. And I have become friends with a lot of the old people around here. 

It has made a big difference in how I function the rest of the day and I really feel it when I don’t get out for that walk. 

We live in this amazing place where the beach is 5 minutes away, our house is in the woods, a cozy little town close by and many places to go exploring with a dog. 

Even though (ew) with all the wild life around there are so many gross things for the dog to eat. Being pregnant and finding your dog munching away on a dead bird/horse shit/rotten fish and other goodies, isn’t such a great combo… 

Usually I bring my phone to take pictures (not of the dogs feast mind you), as the sky, the sea and life around here looks different every morning. 

These are from our walk this morning. 

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Come join us in Instagram for a little photo challenge. We start May 15th

6 prompts, 6 days, 6 scholarship spots for "Awake in the Ordinary"

The Ordinary Woman Series: Aurora Lagattuta

I have invited women, ordinary, amazing women to share their story. I love listening to stories about life. And we all have an extraordinary, ordinary story to share. Today a dear sister shares her stories. Please meet Aurora... <3

Aurora Lagattuta, 29 San Diego. Engaged. I am a dance and yoga teacher and creator of BodyBoca. 

Heal: my confidence in myself as a dancer.

The Ordinary body holds expression.

I am a dancer, a choreographer, a teacher and a healer. Although, I can say that now with ease, it took me a long time to honor these gifts. As a child, I was so easily identifiable as a performer, a lover of play and an open channel to the unseen. Like so many, I had to think that I loss that part of myself to realize who I truly am and always have been, the extraordinary, ordinary me. 

When I was fourteen, my parents hit some hard financial times. I grew up in a big Italian Irish family in inner-city Chicago. As second born of four children, I learned to eat fast so I could get seconds, how to live jammed into one room with two siblings and mostly how to not ask for too much. I loved to dance, loved, loved, loved it. And I excelled at it. By fourteen, I was asked to be in a professional training company, it was a dream come true. However, it was also very expensive and my parents where balancing tuition so we could go to private school as the inner city public school system in Chicago at that time was pretty rough and dangerous. We couldn't afford it. I quit. I auditioned for theatre shows at my show instead and was met with huge success, leads in various plays, theatre award and acceptance to a very prestigious theater university in New York City.

My university in New York had many opportunities for me move and I grabbed them all. I discovered yoga and Butoh and feel in love. I found safe places where I could express my body. All my work continued to revolve around the body and dance. I graduated only to teach yoga and find more places to study dance. I self taught myself most things and this got me surprisingly far, I danced for a few small companies in Portland, OR. Yet, I wasn't satisfied. I wanted to prove that I was indeed a dancer. I wanted a degree, a piece of paper, something to stop the insecure feelings from coming. Because for me, I still was just not quite good enough.

I applied for grad school to get an MFA in dance. Again, the financial situation of my family inhibited the credit on my school's account. I was unable to get a diploma or transcript released. No school. At this point in my life, really a lot of things were going well.  I was working and living in Hawaii, I was dancing, I had great friends, but I wasn't satisfied. I was pissed at my family. At a lack, I starting performing my dancing live at open mics and although I was insecure about it, I was met with such positive feedback. I moved people. I did not have the best technique but I had a lot of heart.

This started to open me. Maybe my lack of training was actually a gift. Maybe a part of me chose this situation with my family, chose not to have degrees. Maybe I was enough, just my honest authentic moving self. I made a solo about this new found acceptance called Inside the Whale. I had a successful kickstarter campaign that funded me to dance in Europe. I toured the show throughout Europe and the USA, from Berlin to Barcelona to Chicago to Broadway in NYC. In fact, the show was just awarded a performance in Warsaw in June. 

Now, let me tell you, Inside the Whale isn't your typical dance movement, it is raw, honest and from my heart and it has been accepted and loved by many! It's authenticity has moved people. Just me. My ordinary self and body! This whole process of surrendering to myself and honoring the ordinary body led me to make BodyBoca, my dance company that works with dancers of any age and ability. I realized that the part of me that needed healing, that anyone can dance and express themselves in performance regardless of their body type or background, I could share with others. 

In BodyBoca I work with groups of diverse dancers for 6 months at a time, in classes and workshops, to empower dancers to honor that beautiful expression that their natural ordinary body holds. It's magical work and I see huge changes in people. Ex-dancers, people who have always wanted to move, people with body image concerns, dance lovers, all kinds of people step into their natural ability to move their body, to dance! As we build connection to our body, we also build a performance. The performance is an incredible opportunity for the dancers to step into owning just how beautiful, powerful and profound their bodies are as they allow themselves to be seen. It's an incredible journey that I have had and it's a joy and gift to now facilitate that for others.

I want to be clear that I'm not bashing trainings or schooling at all.  Its all useful tools, but rather I'm promoting expressing your natural body freely, without a desired physical form and seeing what you discovery. Our bodies hold our pain, pleasures, fears, desires, sadness, joy, dreams and powers. A practice I truly love to do daily is to put on some music, breathe deep and listen in to how my body wants to move. And then I just move for sometime. What wants to be released? What insights does my body want to share with me? What does it want me to express? It's a playful moving meditation. 

I have a wild big dream that one day people of all ages will gather together and dance for one another. Move their natural body freely and express what they need to. I desire to see more performances that include diversity of backgrounds and ages. I desire to see performance and the act of moving to be used as a healing ritual and rite of passage to help us along the path. Dance your day, dance your love for someone, dance for your ancestors, dance for peace. I want to see a world in which our ordinary body is empowered and seen for its sheer extraordinariness. 

Bio
Aurora Lagattuta laughs loudly, dreams wildly and waves her hands rapidly when she excited.  A choreographer, performer, teacher and creator of dances, interdisciplinary performances and films. She has created works ranging from community projects to ensemble and solo performances for site-specific and theatre venues across U.S.A., Europe and Asia.

She has found a multidisciplinary style that blurs the lines between theatre, dance and post-dance. Her highly embodied pieces often use multiple lanuages, poetry, song, abstract narratives, video and live scuplture with dance and theatrical movement. Her work has been described as being, “bizarre and beautiful” as well as “transformational” and “otherwordly.”

She has been awarded residencies at Bali Purnati in Bali, Indonesia; La Caldera in Barcelona, Spain; Palacio de Festivales and Espacio Espiral in Santander, Spain; and Forn de La Calc in Catalunya, Spain. She was a P.O.R.C.H. recipient at Ponderosa in Germany and achieved a successful Kickstarter campaign in 2012 for her solo, Inside the Whale. Most recently, she was awarded the United Solo Europe Award and is being flown to Warsaw, Poland to perform her solo, Inside the Whale. 

My business 
BodyBoca: Body + Boca (Spanish for mouth) is about honoring the creative expression that every body holds. BodyBoca was created by Aurora in 2013 in Santander, Spain at Espacio Espiral Movement Laboratory with a bunch of free spirited Spaniards making dance performance and video, and has since travelled here to San Diego with Aurora. BodyBoca's mission is to empower participants to listen to their natural body through the creation of authentic community-inclusive dance. 

Links:

Website: http://auroralag.com

Facebook:https://www.facebook.com/BodyBoca

Upcoming show stand tall event page: 

https://www.facebook.com/events/1596792080552035/