Belly Dancing for Birthing

(Melanie, the instructor is in the bottom right hand of this photo. She is from Southeast Iowa and teaches belly dancing as well as being a midwife and mom. Her website is www.tribeunda.net. She was not decked out like this tonight.)
I had the BEST day today.
After a panic attack about being late and not being able to find the F-ing road because map quest left out one turn, I finally made it to Liz Rog's home. The house was a really awesome home in the woods, looked a lot like a commune home. The home belonged to Liz Rog who is a super cool lady who I first heard about in a "Save Liz Rog" campaign earlier this year when she was let go from the Oneata Co-Op which she had been at for 15 years and was instrumental in it's becoming what it is today. (Sound familiar?) Liz and I had a lot of the same energies of work happening and we both seem to have a positive outlook on the transitions happening. Later as I was looking at a family photo I saw Liz was the mother of Ida, one of my midwife apprentices. Later on that night Ida joined us and then hung out with one of the belly dancers sons, Rowen. "I think they are the same age" said the belly dance instructor and I disagreed. I was for sure that Ida was in her 20s. Nope, she is newly 16. Holy crap! She is a very mature and old soul, yet beautiful and young looking, as she is young. I am pretty sure the family is somewhat off the grid, although I couldn't be sure as there was electricity and running water but there were also lots of solar paneling, large buckets of water, and mentions of conservative use. As you can see I was enthralled with the family, but on to the belly dancing.
Melanie our instructor was so fun and beautiful. She is also a midwife and also pregnant. I pegged her as being about 30 years old, but she has a 20 year old so I must be wrong. She also have 6 other children from 2-20 years in age. Melanie was awesome and taught some super great moves. Belly Dancing for Birthing was the name of the class and she had us all practicing dancing in birthing positions as well. Besides Melanie, Sadie, and I no one else was pregnant, but we all had a great time. Mellisa joined us because she loved belly dancing and wanted to learn more. She is thinking about having a baby though so she said ti was very timely. Melissa had seen all of us at the co-op prior to the dancing, all at different times. She was doing massage there. I think we were all attracted to her with her kick ass boots and her cool bang cut hair. She was very cool.

We also learned moves to bring our babies into the correct positions, watched some more birth videos (a women giving birth to twins unassisted), learned about vaginal massage, and all that stuff. Also along with Rowen, Melanie had brought her 2 year old Wolfe who was very entertaining. Melanie's tips for belly dancing were to alwys use your hands to emphasize what body part you are moving saying "Hey, did you see this" and the more seductive the move the more angelic the face should be.
After dancing we ate the most AMAZING food. Brenda made pesto bruchetta that i think I ate 9 slices of. There was also amazing pasta, greens, oranges, and tiramisu. Saide had brought along her mother-in-law, Becky, who I know from reporting (she works for the Guttenberg Press). It was Becky's 60th birthday and they were taking her all over that day to experience new stuff. She was thrilled to do belly dancing. She said she wanted to be born again so she could experience birth again in a totally new way.
Melanie gave me a henna tattoo on my belly which I will post pictures of soon. We were all having fun with baby as she is very reactive to all touch. Baby followed the henna wherever it went and even threw in some big kicks to make me belly dance without even trying. I didn't want to leave, but I am home now, so eventually I did.
On of my favorite parts of the day was talking about Elkader. Brenda, my midwife, said the sweetest thing to me. "Shannon, I know Elkader needs you, but Decorah really wants you." It is nice to be wanted.
Having your belly henna-ed is a great thing as it makes you less body conscious about the stretch marks and the flabby skin and the hairy. When I got home I went straight to Schera's to show off my tummy to the whole place.