#jukeboxx

I have fallen pretty far behind in recording my pregnancy journey, but I’m finally coming up for a bit of air!  I don’t have tons of spare time now with a baby on my hands, but my brain feels far less foggy than it did while I was still pregnant. Anyways, I digress. The next topic is one that I found extremely valuable in my pregnancy and in birth, and that is Hypnobirthing. Don’t let the name throw you off, it’s not all about hypnosis or some hokey stuff. The basis of hypnobirthing is understanding more about the natural process of birth, and how we can help eliminate fear and empower our bodies to do what they were designed to do. I got into it because a friend, Kitty, mentioned how much it had helped her. Kitty had gone through hypnobirthing with our friend from Southern Coed Roller Derby, Heisenbird. HB used to own a company and has since retired, but helps out pregnant couples here and there. Kitty spoke so highly of her birth experience and the process with HB, that Balls and I were definitely interested. Honestly, before going through those classes with HB, I was definitely intimidated about giving birth. No matter how I shook it, it seemed like something that was extremely painful, and downright terrifying. I never felt too massively anxious about the ability to care for a kid after the birth, since I have 13 nieces and nephews. But the birth part.. that was always a bit of a dark spot in the back of my brain ever since we even talked about trying for a baby. It was new and unknown, and we felt a bit over our heads about the big day ahead of us. (by the end the photo below is how I felt, so totally 180d the feelings I had above. PS MAKE CHEESY IMAGES OF YOURSELF TO PUMP LOOK AT OFTEN AND BUILD UP CONFIDENCE )

Now in general, I am pretty into homeopathic ideas, especially when it comes to the brain.. so for me, the ideology of hypnobirthing was not a hard sell, but for others I can see how you might need to take some time to really buy into the whole concept. You need to let go of all the things society has taught you about birth because a lot of it is downright wrong and fear mongering! It can be really difficult to let go of all those imprints you have in your brain of media portrayals and horror stories from people you know. Letting go of that was part of the hypnobirthing process. I’ll briefly summarize some of what I learned and found super interesting, but if you’re pregnant definitely experience it for yourself! We did it in a series of 3 classes, in conjunction with reading the book - Hypnobirthing by Katharine Graves. In Session 1 we learned more about the history of birth, and the anatomy of it, and common misconceptions. Summarized History - Many of the specific reasons of why we give birth the way we do in modern society and are so godamn afraid of it comes down to simply trends through history set by the royal families. Here is the gist - One of the Kings wanted to see his wife give birth, so they had her lay on her back so he could watch the baby emerge... this resulted in a much more painful birth for the mother. But since the royals were doing it, everyone started doing it! So now birth is associated with extreme pain. Later, one of the queens decided that she didn’t want to have pain during birth so they gave her CHLOROFORM. Obviously when this became common practice people started dying when giving birth... and now death is heavily associated with birth. Fast forward to modern day and we have insurance companies and hospital rooms that need to be cleared and we can’t seem to just let the body do it’s thing.  Anatomy of birth - I couldn’t believe that as an adult woman I was unaware of how my uterus actually worked for giving birth. Seriously I’m 31, how did I not know that. If you don’t, here is a really great example explaining contractions! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=URyEZusnjBI  We also learned about the hormones that get released during childbirth are our natural painkillers (good ol’ oxytocin). We also learned about how our bodies can’t do this effectively if we go into a fight of flight response. BOOM ANXIETY STRIKES IT’S UGLY HEAD AGAIN. Not only does stress affect our ability to deal with pain, it also affects our ability to progress in labor. If something seems scary or off, your body will naturally not progress with contractions. Evolutionarywise this is smart though - if you were giving birth out in nature, and your body sensed danger, well having a baby would be a pretty bad idea so it would stall the process. Modern birth settings doesn’t really help this very much though... “Hey let’s take you to a place you don’t really know well and you associate with sickness... THEN let’s have different people stick their fingers up your vagina to check your arbitrary progress and let you know if we think you’re going quickly enough... oh and THEN lets have machines all around that you have no idea what really do.” All of this monitoring leads to very common cascade of interventions. (Which also happened to a certain extent in my birth story, see Blog part 5, coming soon). 

Long story short, I learned that birth isn’t something I needed to be saved from as a default. My body was designed to do this.  

Breaking free of our common misconceptions - The other thing we did at the first session was to privately write down all the things we thought birth was. Both balls and I came up with our lists and then we shared. It was really interesting to see the similarities and differences of our lists. There was a large chunk of the list that was all revolved around fear and HB went through all of it with us - the good and the bad. It was really therapeutic and even with just that first session my ideas of birth had started to change. I was starting to look forward to that day, instead of dreading it. 

In Session 2 we worked on relaxation techniques and more on the mental side of things. Basically thinking about how to get in the zone. This.. this I could instantly relate to. Felt so similar to the focus needed in sports. You have to relax but be sharp, and most of all you have to pay attention to your body. That was my job. Ball’s job is basically to be my bench coach, hilariously. His role was to shield me from things that might make me anxious, to be my advocate to the refs (medical ppl), and cheer me on while I got in the zone. 

HB described the upcoming day like my own “birth champs”. That really resonated with me obviously. It was something I had to prepare for, just like I would a big game. I would need to practice, but most importantly if I wanted to perform I would have to be able to relax. Being afraid and anxious would actively work against my birth going smoothly, so it was something I needed to commit to. We went over some ways of releasing oxytocin,  different breathing techniques, and ways to get into your reptilian brain so you don’t get anxious. This is where the “hypno” part comes in. Some of the specific scripts for relaxation were not so much my cup of tea, so I took from it what I wanted. I ended up getting a meditation app called HEADSPACE to help me with that aspect because I found it more digestable than the scripts from the book. https://www.headspace.com/headspace-meditation-app They have very short scripts that helped me to work on not being to distracted. I worked up to meditating longer and longer, and the app even has sequences for pain management and pregnancy specifically. I listened to it daily in the leadup to the birth, (with a side track of the beach going) and I practiced my breathing often. I ended up listening to it in the car on the way to the hospital. 

In session 3 we worked on birth plans. We basically went through all the things you might include. And while most births don’t go exactly to plan, it was really good to talk about all the possible outcomes, and in which situations we might seek certain interventions. I was really glad Balls and I had gone through those pro/ con conversations prior to the big day.

Being pregnant this season was obviously a shock to my normal role in roller derby, but it has not stopped me! I’m feeling really fulfilled in stepping into other roles within the team. While nothing quite beats getting to smash people on track, it means so much to still contribute and be valued within the team. It’s a big part of why I’m involved in roller derby in the first place, so getting to continue on being part of the team is pretty rad. LRG has a policy for pregnant or long term injured skaters which works out really well if you’re looking to stay involved. Basically our team selections happen 2x a year. If your injury/pregnancy is going to put you out for longer than one selection, you can ask to be considered as skater 21 (or 22,23, and so on). If they select you in this role, it means that you still continue to function as a member of the team, you’re just not on the charter. If you return in the middle of a selection period, you are still considered for the roster, you just won’t be added to the charter unless you actually make a game roster. It’s a really nice system- very understanding of real life happening. It means a lot to continue to be on my team’s forums, fb chats, and so on... it’ keeps me in the loop as well as having my support network easily accessible.  I coach within LRG and on the international team, have bench coached SDRD, and was captain the past 2 years on Brawling, so it was a natural transition for me to help out in these areas while pregnant. Luckily enough,  in the past year the WFTDA has allowed more people to be present on the bench, which means that I can actually assist in these roles despite the fact that we already have staff in those areas. 

Obviously that won’t be true for everyone so it’s not so easy to just “make up” your own role. You have to look at what the team needs, what your skill set is, and try to help out and stay involved. I’m lucky that I have experience in those areas of the game already, but if I didn’t I certainly wouldn’t force it upon the team to use me in that way. There has to be a lot of give an take when it comes to finding out how to work with the team. Being part of the bench requires a certain skillset and it’s important to recognize that the team’s needs trump your own need to feel involved. It’s important, that with any role you make take on within the team, that there is trust and need there, otherwise you might just end up stepping on toes. That being said, there are a million sort of support roles you can try to learn that won’t need the same sort of trust and experience - footage watching, stats analysis, being sunshiney cheerleader, filming at training, travel arrangements, or any sort of general support you can give so that teammates can focus on skating. 

Anywho, my role has evolved over the course of the season, so I think the easiest way will be to talk about it chronologically. 

Anarchy in the UK  These were the some of the first games since I’d been on Brawling that I wasn’t getting to play in (I did have to sit out of one champs game due to a separated shoulder). But this was different, this was the start of a long term thing. We had games against a number of European opponents for Anarchy and I wondered how I would do mentally with having to sit on the sidelines. Some of my teammates made sure I was out on the track with them <3 which certainly helped. 

As for the not skating part, I did surprisingly well. I really only found it frustrating to not skate when we didn’t play so well, or when the pace got quick. I LOVE to skate fast and do crazy stuff on my wheels, so when that happened, I had big pangs of missing being out there. Luckily, Esther Arocha has stepped it up a notch and started to play ALOT like I did (but in her totally own bitching way). Totally pulling of high speed stuff, and jamming like a blocker when she needed to, and then of course putting her shoulder into people’s hearts. It was a joy to watch her not have to bridge other people and be the one making plays. She made it easier on me not being out there for the time being. Getting to watch all my teammates kick some ass from the best seat in the house was really cool. 

As for being on the bench, my role at Anarchy was slightly tricky. This was the first trial run, and so I was to have no interaction with the players, only other bench staff. I can be longwinded at times, and so we were super cautious to have me jump in and give feedback to players. I def know this about myself, so it has always been in the back of my head when stepping into this role - it made it difficult to feel like I was being useful. I SEE SO MUCH I HAVE SO MUCH TO SAY. While I felt at times I was full of information, this was a really good exercise for me. I was useful at passing along info at halftime and between games, but left it up to Balls and Kev to interact with the players and pass along info that I had given that was actually relevant. What I learned during this tourney, was I noticed EVERYTHING. Not just the stuff we could fix in this moment and adapt to, but the stuff we needed to train. Having to wait to talk to players was really good until I learned that lesson more thoroughly. Some stuff just isn’t useful to relay because it has to get trained. Walking away from that weekend I had a much better understanding of which type of info was good to pass along on the bench. I also came away having been a part of the experience, while looking so fancy with Lexi on the bench. Both newly preggo :) and supporting the team...  that was pretty special. 

Brawling Tour in Portland Fast forward to June... by this point we had a few things shake up on the team. Balls was out for champs because of my due date and decided it was time to step down from leadership. Kev stepped into the bench role and Freya came on as our lineup staff. We also had some other inquiries to join our team, and so we brought on Coach Lime from Canada for a trial run on tour. With so many new faces in leadership, and on the team, we all had to adapt quickly. Leadership used their support staff quite smartly, and opened up the forum for ideas from the skaters as well. This was a transformative tour for Brawling, and it was incredible to see the growth from everyone on the team, skating or not. It’s one of those moments and situations that can really break your season, and I’m happy to say that we have only become a better version of the team we were months prior. 

I went home to WI first before coming out to the west coast, so I missed the Rat city weekend. We had lost, we had plenty of moments where we didn’t play very well that first game. But...we learned, and we did what Brawling does best - we were problem solvers. This very much tied into my role on the bench. My role for this tour was to give all the info that would be useful to the players. Basically, passing along things as I see trends, just like I typically did when I was playing. The big change now, was that I was very fluidly passing along that info to relevant parties in time for them to use it. My goal was not to do the thinking for the newer bench staff, but for them to learn the type of things to look for and to know the details that I knew about the players. I think we managed to do just that. It was a pretty seamless transition taking this new role where I was unrestricted. I was able to drop off info I noticed to kev and freya, let them use that info as they see fit... and then making the choice myself if there was a tactical/strategy change to pass it along to the players directly. Often times it’s really easy to see what you’re doing well when playing, but it’s harder to see what the opposition is doing or changing. I was able to facilitate other people to do their jobs more easily by offering consulting if they needed it. The other thing that was really great, was just being there... with my team, in the mix. We all felt all of the game. We were a part of prep and each play and the strategy. It felt so great and gratifying to give any sort of extra useful info to the team, especially in real time. 

Hey all, if you haven’t heard by now I’m pregnant! My name is Juke Boxx (Lynn Klas) and  I have been playing roller derby at a high level since 2008. I have been on USA roller derby since it started, I compete and coach internationally and played at wftda champs every year since I have started, except for one.