I’ve had a couple requests to write about being pregnant and playing the horn (simultaneously), so I thought I’d go ahead and share my experience of it, though it’s important to note that every woman’s experience is different and even every pregnancy is different. So let this serve as one horn-playing woman’s experience of one particular pregnancy!
First of all, I should say that pregnancy agreed with me on many levels. Though not every moment of it was pleasant, in general I really enjoyed it. I loved learning about where the baby was in his stage of development and planning for his arrival. I thought the changes to the body (not so much the obvious changes, but the little quirky, unexpected changes) were just so crazy and interesting. Once I was to the stage where you could tell I was pregnant, and especially towards the very end, I thought it was downright hilarious and entertaining to be pregnant just because of the funny comments people would say. At one point a man on the street (nicely dressed, in a fancy car) said to me, “It’s an Aloysius baby! Just remember, there was a strange man on the street that said to name that baby Aloysius!” I’m still scratching my head and laughing about that one! Also, I went to the gym regularly during my pregnancy and tried to keep up some semblance of my weight-lifting routine. At one point an elderly man said to me, “Every time I see you in here I think you could go anytime!” and he asked when my due date was. He then assured me that I was in good hands if I went into labor in the next hour because he had delivered a baby back when he was in the Peace Corps. Another woman in the beginning of her 2nd trimester working with a personal trainer for the first time saw me working out and said, “See, I want to be like her when I’m about to pop!” Thank goodness she didn’t see that I was lifting almost NO weight (and still breathless…).
Strangers would see me in the store and initiate conversation, asking if I was having a boy or girl, saying I looked like I was carrying a boy, saying how much I would love having a boy, asking when I was due, sharing with me their own stories, and wishing me well. It was heart-warming and sweet to have such spontaneous and kind interactions with people.
As far as being a horn player goes, I perhaps had it easy because of my work situation. Since I’m a freelancer, there are times that are busy, but there are times that are free, and those busy times tend to come in clumps. It just so happened that my busy times came in the easiest part of my pregnancy. I only had a little bit to play during that sick-o, yucky first trimester. Even during those weeks, I usually wouldn’t actually throw up (though it happened once or twice) — I just felt as if I could at any moment. There was one instance when I couldn’t make it to a job in New York. Fortunately, it was a concert for kids at Carnegie that was all readable and my part was very under-the-radar and low-profile, and there was someone who lived a few blocks away to cover for me. Thank you, Nancy Billman!
I was able to do the rest of my jobs during the first trimester without a problem. I just had to move slowly and eat bland little snacks all the time – I couldn’t get too hungry or too full.
After about week 16, I stopped feeling sick. How many times did I hear how great the second trimester was? So many times! Many women say they feel better then than their non-pregnant selves. Not me. I didn’t feel terrible, but compared to my non-pregnant self, I still had to take things slowly and not demand too much of myself.
Now the good news about playing the horn, especially in an orchestral situation, is that you can usually sit down and you usually have measures of rest. Unlike being a singer. Being a volunteer member of the St. Mark’s choir showed me just how lucky I was to play the horn for a living. For some reason, I couldn’t tolerate, at any point in my pregnancy, the intense Sunday morning schedule at St. Marks, combined with the hot robes (as in temperature – not in appearance!), the amount of standing required over the course of the morning, and the incense. It did me in almost every time! That woman looking faint during the Nicene Creed and fleeing the choir stalls during the Prayers of the People? – that would be Angela.
The major discomforts I had playing the horn while pregnant had to do with a heart rate that would spike up sporadically every so often, breathlessness, and providing a sustained level of energy. Short spurts – no problem! But I felt like I had to turn down a couple brass quintet jobs in the third trimester just because I knew that I was not likely to be able to provide that kind of sustained, high-energy output without the risk of keeling over. But that’s just me – I know other women that have had no problem with it.
The last few weeks of my pregnancy, I didn’t take out-of-town or higher-demand jobs just to be on the safe side. Who wants to worry about getting to your job in Friday rush-hour holiday traffic, wondering if you’re going to go into labor and be stuck on I-95 or the turnpike? I was grateful to be asked to do the work, and, honestly, if I’d known I was going to be a week late and not early, I might have gone for it. But I still think I made the right decision for myself at the time.
I did practice daily right up until my due date. I had to use the nursing stool I had in the nursery to prop up my right leg (I most often play on-the-leg) in order to be comfortable (by the way, those nursing stools work well for nursing too!), and I could only practice for short periods of time. I was lucky if I got in my warm up and another short session. The hardest part was just concentrating and not jumping up to do some of that infamous nesting. It was a challenge to keep my mind from wandering and wondering about all the unknowns! And that’s alright, I think. I just needed some “face time” to maintain my strength so that I wouldn’t be adding an additional month off to my postpartum time off. I’m not sure how much of a difference it made to have that practice time before Andreas’ birth, but it made me feel like I was doing a little something to care for that part of my life. The truth is, when I finally picked up the horn four weeks after delivery it felt like a beast in my hands – and a beast I’d never held before! I can’t imagine it would have felt more familiar after seven or eight weeks off instead of four, but maybe it did help. Like I said, it made me feel better anyway. However, postpartum/new-mommy playing is something I’m still smack in the middle of living…. and a different blog post!
One of the things I’ll remember most about playing the horn during pregnancy is sitting on stage wondering what my baby was hearing, feeling him kick around – sometimes so much he’d make my horn bounce off my belly when I was holding it during rests – and wondering, does he like the sound of the flute and clarinet and violins? Or is he just kicking just because he wants me to start playing again? Or is he happy that I’m NOT playing? Or is he just kicking because he likes to kick? I’ll never know, but I loved thinking about the world from the perspective of the womb, and feeling him growing and moving around and perhaps responding to what he heard and felt.
Now if I could only brag that he totally digs the horn. Though he has excellent ears, I’m afraid he’s not yet a fan seeing as how I made him cry the other day with my buzzing on the mouthpiece. Oh well! He does like listening to short amounts of very, VERY chill music. Natalie Merchant and Norah Jones are good bets. And he’s enjoyed listening to some choral music as well. In the meantime, I’ll be practicing in a distant room while he sleeps!
