Massages should be relaxing

So I went for my hour long massage last week at the Ella Centre. I had been looking forward to it all week. However, the experience started with me being 15 minutes late because of lane construction on Bayview north of Eglinton. Thank goodness that I had their number on my cell phone to alert them.

The centre is geared towards women who are pregnant or have children. They have classes on everything from pregnancy yoga to transitioning back to work. They also have childcare while you take their classes or in my case, a massage. Since Jonathan is now back at work, this was the only place I knew where I can get my massage and have Bella looked after.

Because I was late, I literally dropped Bella off with the daycare ladies without telling them much more than her name and giving them her favourite toy. I didn't even tell them when I would be back or how old she was. I was in a rush to relax!

Ah, I was finally on the massage table, with the scent of rosemary and spearmint in the air, the able and soothing hands of my massage therapist and...the sound of screaming and crying kids? yikes. I love how they decided to put the massage room almost next to the daycare room. Yes, that was good planning. Bravo.

All the time I kept thinking, "is that Bella crying?" But since I now can recognize her cries, I was pretty much secure in knowing that those cries weren't coming from her. And I was right. When I picked her up after the massage, the daycare lady said that she was very quiet and content observing the other kids. Only in the last 5 minutes did she start "sympathy crying" because two other kids were crying, too.

So not only did I get a somewhat "relaxing" massage that day, I also gave Bella a chance to be in a strange environment without her mommy and daddy for an hour. And she did well!