Excerpt from Yoga Goosing, published by Feathertale 2010.

The yoga instructor put her fingers in my bottom; I didn’t know what to think. She was older, with grey hair that was too long and she should not have been wearing the turquoise tights. But at first she seemed so calm and understanding, her head tilted to one side when she smiled at us, like she was thinking ‘I will help you, lovely fat women.  Together we can learn how to breathe and become proud to wear Lycra.’ At the beginning of the class I felt almost uplifted.

I was four months pregnant and reluctant to do anything that involved moving faster than a slow walk. Nausea and fatigue combined was not very motivating. My husband informed me that a girl at his work was also a lazy pregnant and had been attending a pre-natal yoga class in the local community centre. I had always been a little skeptical of paying good money to sit around breathing in and out with my legs crossed, but the first ‘trial’ class was free and I dragged myself there one day after work. There was no harm in trying, I naively told myself.

We sat in a large circle on green mats, legs crossed of course. The room smelled faintly of teenage boys; I believe there was a karate class held there in the mornings. I could see a leftover white toweling sock dangling on a table behind the instructor. After she had reminded us again to breathe, she did the head tilting thing and asked if we could introduce ourselves in turn, saying our name, how far pregnant we were, what kind of birth we wanted, who would attend and if it was our first born.

First up was a woman who looked like she was about to explode or give birth right there. For the first time in four months I felt small. Her belly was hanging down from her oversized men’s t-shirt, blue veins for the world to see. She was nine months pregnant and was going to have a caesarian section, I didn’t blame her either, not with that whopper in there. It took some time for everyone to impart all the unnecessary information before the class started, but once we were off we were positively flying. We did some shallow breathing, then moved quickly on to some deep breathing then we had to bend forward and hold onto our knees whilst breathing again. It was surprisingly hard work.

 ‘Put your hands on your bellies and feel your baby,’ the instructor gushed, with her own hands on her sagging stomach.

The thought of her with child I found a little nauseating. She began to look rather like an old witch, heavy with the spawn of Satan. She would have benefited from a black cloak to cover the tights. I had a feeling of impending doom; call it pre-mother’s intuition.

 ‘Just remember, you are beautiful.’

I vowed inwardly that I would try, in between feeling irritable and sick and a little bit like a whale.


The rest of this story can be read at Feathertale here.