My brother’s not ready for childbirth.
The other night A and I decided we wanted to make pizza for dinner. We decided this, however, once we were already hungry; we didn’t have the forethought to thaw the frozen dough.
I don’t have a microwave, but we were committed to pizza. So, we had to figure out ways to thaw the pale, oblong block faster. The best we could come up with was to hold the mass of frozen dough (in a plastic bag) against something warm — our bellies. We took turns, passing it on as soon as one of us couldn’t stand the cold any more. Despite noticeable fluctuations in my heart rate, our technique was working. Then A noticed that I was placing the bag directly against my skin to maximize heat transfer; he cringed. He had been keeping a T-shirt between his stomach and the dough, so I wondered why his turns weren’t any longer than mine.
Our experiment in conduction led us to talk about pain and tolerance for pain; this reminded me of my friend’s pain-training exercises. She’s about to have a baby, and she wants to have as natural a childbirth experience as she can. One thing this means for her is that she doesn’t want to use any anesthetic during the procedure. Her doctor prescribed pain-training exercises — little things she can do around the house to prepare psychologically for childbirth with no epidural.
In one exercise she holds an ice cube between her wrists for 5 minutes at a time. It’s supposed to teach you that no matter how intense the pain, it will come to an end. Perspective.
I told A about the ice-cube-on-the-wrists exercise, and he was curious what could be so painful about a little ice cube. He tried it out, and after a few minutes he gladly put the ice cube away and went back to warming the dough.
We had pizza in record time, considering no microwave.
