As you can tell by the sound of the title, it was a blissful day. 🙂
With my scoliosis and back problems, I have always been addicted to massages. Luckily in Manila, the cost of a “more-than-decent” home massage (they come to you with oil and massage you in your bed, so at the end of the session all you have to do is roll over and go to sleep. Oh, and pay them of course…) is about $12 -$15, with gratuity. How can you beat that? Not even the supposedly affordable $60 here can compare. Which is why I used to get one every week if I could.
Needless to say since we’ve lived here in Chapel Hill, massages have turned from a weekly commodity into a once-in-a-blue-moon kind of luxury. My husband gifted me with a 90-minute postpartum massage after I had Sam three years ago, and I think the last decent 15-minute massage I had here was a few months back after Dr. Chas‘ back adjustments.
This week the child-carrying took its toll on my already aching back, as Jamie was down for three days with a low-grade fever (a reaction to her 6-month immunization and flu shots). It was our first true experience with her sick and she did not take it sitting down, literally speaking. For three consecutive nights I had to rock her to sleep standing up for half the morning. How she’d know when I’d plop into a chair exhausted was really quite a surprise, but she did, and she’d wake up in protest.
And then the miracle of miracles: My husband gets a $25 massage gift coupon in the mail from Massage Envy, a massage spa chain that normally charges $70 for an hour’s massage (gratuity included). Naturally he offers it to me and without any hesitation, I take it.
I scheduled it for this weekend simultaneous to Sam’s ballet class (more on this in an upcoming post), so my husband would only have Jamie to look after for most of the hour. Jamie of course had to be fed and changed and ready to sleep, and I dutifully made sure that was all done right before my appointment. I didn’t want to have to come out of a relaxing massage session to a screaming child and a stressed out husband. That happened once before right after my gift massage. Sam was 8-weeks old and according to my husband she cried the whole 2-hours that I was gone. I had left a bottle, but she didn’t want it and nothing he did made her stop. All the relaxed feelings left my body the minute he called (I had just gotten up off the table) because she had never cried that much for that long, and at that time the new mom in me panicked like nothing you’d ever seen. Sam stopped and collapsed into my arms asleep the minute I picked her up from her bouncy chair. Now as for Jamie, I’ve taught her to take a bottle but because she’s always with me she chooses not to, and she has done that to him already (cry non-stop until he gives her to me). So I knew that the minute she screamed for me, my husband would “make the call” and that would be the end of my massage.
Thankfully everything went smoothly and my hour was a blissful blur (did I not just use that adjective earlier?!) from the minute my head hit the massage chair and the lights in the private room dimmed. I woke up briefly to be flipped over, and went right back to sleep again. It was the most relaxing hour I’ve had in a long long time, and it felt gooood! Come to think of it, apart from the spin classes at the gym, that was the first time in approximately two years when I was “free” for a whole hour without having to worry about the girls. Oh my, that is a LONG time!
It was definitely a good break to have and a great way to re-charge. Even if right after that session I had to carry both girls out of a drizzle, my body (and mind!) felt much more relaxed and able to take on the rest of the day. I slept better that night too! It just goes to show that even the smallest amounts of quality “me-time” (no matter how far apart they are), really do help carry you through! Hopefully the next installment of said “me-time” will not take another two years! Until the next massage coupon then… 🙂
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