Malo's Marathon

I know, I have been a bit silent lately. But, as I said in my previous post, I have an excuse (hey, hey, never come unprepared). I gave birth to a tiny, wonderful, über-cute (add any over the- top adjective you may think of here, and there is 99% chance it will describe spot-on how I feel about him) baby-boy, Malo.

We have now been home for three weeks or so, but before that, I had to give birth in style. And, knowing me, you should know what "style" means. It had to be a marathon birth. Although, if, when it comes to running marathon, I am a true believer in the saying "it does not have to be fun to be fun", in the particular instance of Malo's birth, I would not have minded being spared, not so much the pain, but a bit of the drama.

I started feeling the contractions at 7pm on the 25th of August. On a side note, may I say here, pregnant-women-to-be, that you should NOT believe anything you hear about how you will just know when the "real " contractions start: this is just a whole bunch of rubbish.

As far as I was concerned, it was not painful, it was no different than any contractions I had felt for the last three months, and so I had no idea whether I was about to give birth, or not. So, just in case that was it, knowing that walking is what you should do when labour starts, and because I felt like running (surprise), Martin and I went for a two-hour walk by the lake. This did not speed up anything, so by 2am on the 26th, we were back at it. This time, it worked a bit better (sort of), and at 4am my waters broke. And it still did not feel painful at all. No drama, nothing... As a result, by 5am, Martin and I were still joking along in our living room, with me doing a bit of yoga in case things were getting tougher. By 6am, we went for yet another walk, (amazing how empty Annecy can be at night) hoping this would help speeding things up, but clearly Malo-to-be was in no rush.

By 7am, I thought it was about time to go to the hospital, so off we went.

We had time for one happy photo, before it all started to go wrong. Very wrong. To make a long story short, or rather a very long delivery very short, Malo's heart did not deal very well with the contractions, and as a result, the natural birth I wanted, without peridural, or inducement, or, obviously, caesarian, ended up being all of the above. Even more traumatic was the fact we thought for hours, hearing Malo's heart fainting on the monitoring device, that our little boy would not make it.

So an eventful birth it was, a fulfilling experience it was not. But in the end, after 16 hours of labour, Malo was born, and in good health. I just wonder if the length, if not the drama, was Malo's attempt at pleasing his mum by showing he was keen on endurance sports... in which case my son has clearly still one thing or two to learn about women, because this one is a marathon I may as well have liked to avoid...

Gear Freak Heaven

Martin is definitely no gear freak. He kept his old raod bike for the best part of 20 years, and does not even buy that much climbing gear, since there are that many times you can joke about buying new nuts anyway. I would not be able to say the same about me. Truth be told, I just love my gear.

And pregnancy has one great advantage: if you are into new kit, it provides you with one big excuse to indulge.

I did not discover this straight away. In fact, I first started pretty frustrated. We found out I was pregnant a few days before Christmas, and I had been hinting (OK, let's be frank here: lobbying like mad and with no subtility whatsoever) that I was dreaming about that great Polar watch which would give me not only the time of day, but, more importantly (why would you want a watch to give you time?) run distance, maximum and average speed, altitude gain, etc, etc... In a nutshell, the perfect toy for a running addict.

And there I was, discovering I was pregnant, and realising that my mileage would have to drop. Right, that did not mean the new toy I eventually got (I am a great lobbyist) would not be used, but it would start its life being under-used, which sounded almost as bad. And that was just the beginning, was I telling myself with dread. No more excuses for a new climbing helmet I had been coveting (I have one of course, and it does the job perfectly. Except it is white, while Martin's is orange, therefore much more funky, and I am not sure how much longer I can handle the frustration). No more excuses for new bike tires (and worst: my road bike is baby-blue, and for as long as I would still be cycling during pregnancy, people would think the choice of colour had been an early sign of repressed clock-ticking issues). No more excuses for über-light trail running, folding, carbon poles (I knew I would be soon enough considering myself happy to run a few miles on the flat, where, let's face it, poles would just make me look like a pregnant grand-mother). And the list could go on. And on. And on.

But then, little by little, it drew on me that, unless I was about to spend the next 9 months playing the couch potato at home (which was so NOT the intention), pregnancy could just provide an avenue for new gear discovery.

And it has. The kit is just different.

The one piece of gear I am really excited about is the baby carrier we are planning to get. Check this out: not only can it be used as a baby jogger, but it doubles as a bike carrier and can also be used when ski touring. OK, we will have to deal with the issue of petite Boule not freezing to death in this thing, but as soon as I am in working order again, this one fine piece of gear should prove like the perfect let's-keep-Mum-happy tool.

And then there is yoga, meditation and birth classes. Swiss ball (we had two, but you see, we need a different size, for Martin to play an active role during delivery. Now, that's an excuse), wobble cushion, and meditation cushions with funky names like "zafu" have quickly transformed the living room in an annexe of, depending on which corner you happen to look at, my gym or my yoga studio.

As for my turbo trainer, after months of inactivity (given the choice, no way I will get on it while there are so many passes to climb in a 50 km radius), it got a new life when I stopped using my racing bike outside, and now stands proudly, and used, in the middle of our living room.

So, unlike what I initially feared, pregnancy has been so far quite good for my gear addictions. As delivery date is looming, I just now wondered what it will be like after the Petite Boule is born: somehow, I cannot see myself getting over-excited over nappies and baby bottles. I mean, if they were making you fitter or faster, somebody would have already noticed, don't you think?