The May / June Edit
37 weeks pregnant and what's holding me through the last month
Hi friends,
I am 37 weeks pregnant, and everything feels like it is rearranging: my body, my work, my pace, my identity, my idea of what comes next. I am slowing down in a way I haven’t all year. Dance and hard yoga have quietly been replaced by karaoke, park hangs, and ikebana lessons, which honestly feels like a very good end of pregnancy trade.
After nearly eleven years, I finally have my dream team in place at SKY TING, and loosening my grip on work feels like an enormous blessing. It also feels vulnerable. So much of my life has been built on movement, creation, independence, travel, teaching, leading, doing, and now I’m being asked, by my body and by this baby, to soften into a totally different rhythm.
For my whole life, I’ve carried fear around birth. Not fear of pain exactly, but fear of the unknown. What would happen to me? What would my body feel like? Would I be the same person on the other side?
After a three hour in home consultation with my doula, where Michael and I practiced partner techniques and made our birth plan, the unknown started to feel a little more known. Something in me finally unclenched. My plan is a natural, unmedicated birth at Weill Cornell. Wish me luck! I feel like I have the best doula, the best partner, and a hippie OB at a fancy hospital, which feels very me. A friend told me to make it the biggest birthday party and actually have fun. That’s the plan.
I have loved being pregnant. I feel in awe of my body most days. My hair, skin, nails, digestion, all of it feels oddly blessed. This has been one of the most embodied seasons of my life. And also, I am so ready to not be pregnant.
God gave pregnant women the glow, fine, but he also gave us melasma, restless legs, weird symptoms no one warns you about, and a long list of bodily mysteries I will be unpacking. I am completely in awe of what my body is doing, and I also want my old body back so I can do all the things I love.
The deeper fear I’m sitting with is not really about birth or my body. It’s about losing myself.
I’ve watched women I love slowly and subtly disappear into motherhood. The mother takes over, and the woman gets dimmer. I don’t want that. I want to be devoted, present, changed, cracked open, but not erased. I love the woman I am now and the woman I was before pregnancy. I don’t want to lose her in the becoming.
My acupuncturist shared this idea that in an ideal world, a mother doesn’t leave her baby for the first two years so the child’s channels can form properly. Something in me panicked. I want to be the best mom, but I am also a world traveler. I go to Pantelleria and Greece and Japan. I move, I teach, I work, I go on girls’ trips. The idea of giving that up confronted something very deep in me.
But what I keep coming back to is my baby is better served by a mother who is fully alive than by a mother who is physically present but quietly disappearing. And I know I can also take my baby with me on my adventures.
What I want to give my son is not a perfect performance of motherhood. I want to give him my essence: a house of love, joy, beauty, devotion, humor, aliveness, and truth. I want him to know a mother who has not abandoned herself.
So this last month has become less about preparing perfectly and more about staying whole. Letting myself be changed without letting myself vanish.
Which brings me to what I’m up to this last month!
On My Cal
Sound Bath with NTM Sound at SKY TING NOHO. June 20th, 1:30–2:45pm. Nate Martinez has been doing sound baths at SKY TING for years and his work is the real thing — frequency, vibration, deep rest. At 38 weeks, lying down in a room and letting sound move through me feels like the only kind of “going out” I want to do.
Summer Solstice with Mona Esser at SKY TING. Mona runs the most spiritually rigorous classes I’ve ever taken — astrology, numerology, face reading, intuitive channeling, the whole esoteric toolkit. Her solstice class is about marking the turn of the year and dialing into what wants to come forth in the next season. Given I’m due to give birth right around the solstice, this one feels especially aligned.
Rosalía at MSG. June 18th. I have tickets. Whether I make it depends entirely on how much energy I have that day. If I don’t, they’re going to someone who will appreciate them as much as I would have, perhaps in this group!
Dinner at Penny. The raw bar upstairs from Claud in the East Village. New York Times called it one of their 50 favorite American restaurants. I’ve been hearing about the brioche, the ice boxes, the lobster in brown butter vinegar. A reservation is a tough get, but I’m determined to go before the baby comes.
In My Fridge
Michael has been making me gorgeous meals my whole pregnancy, but his breakfast game in particular is magic. I started documenting our breakfasts and posting them on my IG and the series is popping off. Michael rocks.
The big change this month is Organised Beef Organ Blend in my morning smoothie. Prenatal vitamins make me really sick, and I’m low in iron, so I get my nutrients from real organ meat instead and this blend has been the easiest way in. I do strawberries, banana, almond butter, dates, and cashew milk, but before I blend, I pour hot water over the strawberries because I don’t do anything cold (acupuncture rule).
Also on rotation: toasted waffles with cottage cheese, fruit, and honey. Greek yogurt with berries. I get all of my groceries from Farm to People because I am not interested in the grocery store or farmers market in my third trimester.
Practices on Repeat
Oiling my belly with Pratima Vata Rejuvenating Body Oil. Every night.
Doula prep with Michael. Partner techniques for contractions, breath, pressure points. Practicing has done more for my fear than anything else.
Acupuncture, reflexology, craniosacral, prenatal massage. I’ve leaned into body work all pregnancy and especially in the last month. Standouts: Sarah Clark for craniosacral, Elinor for prenatal massage, and the best uptown nail salon massage (ask me in the DMs).
Daily meditation and ritualizing my alone time.
Wavelengths
Obsessed with the new Ariana Grande song, and still have Drake’s 3 new albums on repeat.
Journey FINAL — my birth playlist, made by Michael. It’s long! It moves from healing frequencies (528 Hz) into ambient and world music and out the other side. The whole thing feels like a slow, ceremonial arc, which is exactly what I want in the room when this baby comes. Great for any journey really :)
Objects of Devotion
The LIÉ STUDIO x LESSE lip balm case pendant. Beautiful, practical, slightly unnecessary. My lips are dry, my belly is enormous, and walking through New York with chapstick around my neck somehow feels like the perfect summary of where I am.
Hair mask by Santa Maria Novella. My favorite smell.
Lyma Laser with a beautiful face oil. I use it on myself and Michael nightly. I feel like it’s working?
Uniform of the Week
I’ve been moving away from anything synthetic. Only cotton, silk, linen for me!
Cotton robe — for slow mornings
This shirt — button-downs with my bump out
New SKY TING cotton shorts — in collab with Raf from R. Swiader! In red, black, and white. They’re soooo good.
Live the Process raw cotton top — finally activewear that is good for you and chic. Watch out for our Fall collab
Tank — on repeat in every color, under everything
Pants — the most comfortable thing I own that i’ll be wearing post pregnancy too
Sandals — for morning park walks where I kick them off and ground my feet in the grass
What I’m Reading
I’m a reader who needs a time and place. My favorite books are The Alexandria Quartet by Lawrence Durrell and The Leopard by Lampedusa. I read books that drop you inside a vanished world and let you live there. I just finished Cleopatra, and now I’m deep in India and Florence.
The Enchantress of Florence by Salman Rushdie. Mughal India, Renaissance Florence, enchantment, power, beauty. Exactly the slow, mythic register I want to be reading in at 38 weeks.
The Contented Little Baby Book by Gina Ford. Helping me think about the shape of the first few weeks without pretending I know what it will be like once he’s here.
All my book recs are here
At SKY TING
Ally Bogard’s course on SKY TING TV. My favorite teacher and friend, beyond wise. Talking about intimacy, money, everything juicy that we care about. Gifting you all - Use code 10MEMBER for 1 month free SKY TING TV!
Prenatal classes with Sophie, every Wednesday at 12pm. This class is lit! It’s such a good flow, and so cute to meet other pregnant people.
Teacher training starts in the fall. I’m especially excited for this year because I’m redoing our manual, Nevine will pop in, and we already have such a special group signed up.
New schedule: earlier 6:30am classes and later 7:30pm classes for our worker bee community. Plus no one has to clean their own mat anymore!! Upgrades.
My classes are in GREAT hands while I’m away:
Charlotte → Wednesdays 7:45am
Zaina → Fridays 12:30pm
Christopher, Ally, and Eliana → rotating roster on Sundays 11am and Mondays 4:30pm
