At least my bellybutton stopped hurting...

Yeah, you read that right. My bellybutton was hurting last night. Here's the deal:

I was a flute major in college, but I don't play professionally because, frankly, I don't want to practice that much! So, I have a day job and my flute has become my hobby. My church has a Concert Band (it used to be an orchestra but we were losing string players left and right...and when you only start out with 5, that can be a problem). We also have a Jazz Band and I've taught myself how to play the Tenor Saxophone because they needed one more in the group. I'm so helpful!

We started Concert Band rehearsals last week. I played my flute for an hour and a half and besides having a small backache when I was done, no problems. Last night, however, due to a last minute request from the pastor, we had a short (30 minutes!) Jazz Band rehearsal. So I fluted for 1.5 hours and then saxed for another half hour. Oh, and I haven't played my sax since I've gotten pregnant. There is a point to this story.

If you know anything about the physics of either instrument, you know that the flute causes absolutely no back pressure when playing. The air just comes out of the mouth across the tone hole and there you go. Now with the sax (and I think just about every other wind instrument), when you blow into the mouthpiece, there is some back pressure. This can make your neck veins pop out (as is the case when I try to play the oboe), make your face bright red (you've seen those trumpet guys trying to blast their brains out?) and can generally cause some abs tightening.

So, I get done with Jazz Band and my bellybutton hurts. My bellybutton!!! What is up with that? Now, I'm pretty sure that it's not actually my bellybutton, but the muscles, and more specifically, my abs in there, but it is such a weird feeling! I'm not worried that I've hurt anything, but still. Strange.

The pain has gone away this morning. It'll be interesting to see how much longer I can do the sax thing.