When you tell your husband about his uterus…

About 3 years ago, when I was pregnant with BB, we went to a Hypnobirthing class. You know, one of those “breathe, relax…you’re floating on a calm, soothing, cloud” sort of things. We had a CD that came with it that had relaxing music and some “meditations” to listen to. Most of the meditations were the standard “floating on a cloud” stuff, but some of them were pregnancy/birth related…like – your baby is just the right size for your body, your baby will come when the time is right for your baby and your body…and my favorite: Envision your cervix opening like a flower… there were some uterus related ones too…

Ok, so last night, J is in the ER…for various reasons (all will be fine, thanks for caring), and he has to get an arterial blood gas taken. This is a new one for us, and he had already been poked about 10 times trying to get the IV in and various other taking bloods… So the respiratory specialist comes in to take blood out of his artery for the arterial blood gas test. (Which, by the way, she totally lied to us about – she said it was just like taking blood from a vain, which apparently, taking blood from an artery is harder and more painful…) So she’s getting ready to take it, and she tells him to relax because it will be easier. Unlike taking blood from a vain, it took her about 10 minutes to prep him for taking the blood. So he’s sitting there…trying so hard to relax…thinking he’s going to get poked at any second…and we just keep waiting. So I think…I’ll try to help keep him relaxed, so I start telling him to breathe in, breathe out…relax your toes, relax your feet…relax your whole body…just relax…and my brain says to me, “Envision your uterus…opening like a flower” (*note: I realize that it’s really your cervix that opens, but for whatever reason, it was uterus in my head last night). I decided to leave that one out for the time being because I didn’t think it would help much in relaxing him.

Just as the respiratory therapist was about to poke him, her phone rang! Argh…and yes, then we had to start over with the relaxing and her tapping his artery, etc…

After the evil poking lady left (stealthily, by the way…we didn’t even see her go…), I told J to relax…and that his uterus was opening like a flower…he laughed out loud…and then coughed, because he was having trouble breathing anyway…

For the rest of the evening in the ER…every time I wanted to lighten his spirits, I told him his uterus was opening like a flower… it’s one of those things that is probably much funnier if you were there (sometimes stress of the ER added to not eating all day makes things a bit funnier…), but I thought I’d share anyway.

So…next time you need your husband to relax, tell him his uterus is opening like a flower…and let me know how that works out for you…