Preggers Massages

One of the great joys of living here in Beijing are the massages. (This has ever so briefly been mentioned here, here, and here.) Unfortunately for me, they are somewhat off limits to pregnant women. There are some pretty strong feelings about messing with pressure points, chi, or preggers in general and possibly causing bad things to happen to the baby. At one point I was thinking about visiting a friend's Chinese doctor and acupressurist to see if he could help with my 1st trimester nausea. (He had done AMAZING things for her.) My friend told the doc the situation and asked if he could help. His response was. "I can see her after the baby is born." Not so helpful.

So, while I am still feeling pretty darn good, a nice, deep back, foot, and leg massage would be wonderful. I tried about a month ago and the masseur asked me if I was pregnant. After I said 'yup' he told me the foot massage would then need to be "light light". sigh.

Then, a funny thing happened. When I was out earlier this week I met a Chinese woman at the hospital and she didn't realize I was pregnant. Admittedly I was wearing some baggy clothes but still. I was short of shocked... and then I had a brilliant idea :)

After being joined by a friend, we made our way to my favorite massage place and, being careful to never do anything really tell tale, like rubbing the belly, asked for 2 foot massages. 90 minutes later the world was a much more relaxed place. Ahhh - it felt so nice.

Last note -I did check with various massage experts from other cultures and other than 2 specific pressure points, they all said it was safe and not to worry. But I am looking forward to being able to go with no subterfuge.