iNurse, iFly

My husband is not the physical one in the family. If a choice needed to be made between arts vs. sports, he’d always take the arts. Not that I’m a sports gal. But in this family, I’m the one riding the runaway mule. I’m the one throwing the roundhouse kick to your head. I’m the one dancing solo.

For my birthday, he took me indoor skydiving. A very physical experience. I've been nursing our daughter 2+ months now and interrupted sleep has begun to give my imagination a surreal quality.

I'm convinced that every time we walk out of the room our daughter is more than able to jump down off the changing table. Behind our backs, she’s ruffling through papers or getting herself a glass of water. When she hears us coming back, she jumps back up and resumes her chirping, fussing or staring interestedly at her mobile – making SURE we believe she’s still not able to roll over, stand or walk. The more intently she listens when I talk, make sounds or sing, the more convinced I am that we have an extraordinary being on our hands. And she likes it when we sing the "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" notes very well, thank you.

In this frame of mind I watched as we waited our turn to be in the wind tunnel with wind blowing at speeds up to 120 mph. Bodies were getting blown 5, 10, and 15 up feet. Inside the tunnel an experienced guide helps you position your body correctly and adjusts you as you are flying to help guide your flight. For an extra fee, they photograph you during your flight. It seemed to require a strong core. Given the slight backward arched position, I wished I could manage more frequent shalabhasana than my pregnancy and nursing appendages allowed. I was nervous and a little scared.

I couldn't help but notice how all but one of the staff members were cute twentysomething guys. I wondered how they'd react if I asked them point blank if they would care if the wind pressure resulted in the inside of their flight suits getting coated in breast milk or perhaps mysteriously shooting up through the flight suit's V-neck and splattering the entire inside of the wind tunnel and its entire ceiling surface. Definitely surreal and definitely not restrained by those boring laws of physics. I decided to reconvene on the question here instead rocking their mental boats.

With male to female customer ratios of 5:1, it’s clear that indoor skydiving is a guy thing. That probably ends up being somewhat of catch-22 for this business and likely the real thing that happens outdoors. With more women guides, they might have even more customers. But because it's a guy thing, I bet there just aren't many female skydivers. The Web seems to indicate women have sought to change this perception over the years.

I found holding my core very firmly very helpful and the force against your arms is intense. The wind also ruffles your cheeks if you aren't smiling. I was able to relax and hold my chin up, but I wasn't as good at holding my arms as far forward as they wanted me to until just about the end of a two minute run. I pulled myself through the exit doorway and a brief windburned sensation on my face kicked in.

Despite the helmet, my hair has never been windblown quite like that- tangle city! I politely declined my chance at a second turn despite the bummed look on our guide Jason's face. All I could think was that my body is doing more than enough right now growing Chloe and I didn't want to push it. I can now say I've done it once, though I do think it is an ironic thing to have done while breastfeeding.

David took my second turn. Here's a picture of his experience.