Child Birth Class: Relaxation

Husband and I had our first child birthing class last week.

It started with us each drawing a picture, I thought "Oh geez, I have lost him already." Husband comes from a medical family, and although he supports me in my decision to strive for a natural child birth, sometimes this "natural" way of life can be a little much for him.

Drawing the picture was a great ice breaker though. You had scenarios to choose from, I chose what being pregnant has done for me, or my pregnant image. Most of the other women choose the same thing and ALL the men choose "which animal do you associate with an easy birth?"

Husband choose Dot.

After that we discussed why we were there, and why we wanted a natural child birth. My reasons are easy, 1. I was made to do this without drugs, a fact so much so that all drug companies are doing are synthetically making more concentrated versions of what your body produces.
2. I don't want myself and Sarah to be so drugged out that we can't initiate breastfeeding immediately after she is born
and 3. if you start interfering with a situation that doesn't need to be interfered with you create a new situation. And in this case, the new situation could be medical interventions that lead to a c-section.

There are 5 couples and there is one other couple that will be birthing in the hospital. I was surprised there was someone else and it made me feel better about being there, some of the literature they show and discuss can be a little preachy about how terrible hospitals are.  I agree with most of it and that is where I get caught up and have a mini freak out about not giving birth at home. But then I remember my list of pros about giving birth at the hospital and calm my ass down.

Things Tanya (class instructor) talked about that was like...duh, why didn't I already know that:

You need a care team A and a care team B: She said that your care team A will more than likely be your husband and maybe one other person. These are the people that will be there from "I think I am in labor" to "one more push." Why you need a care team B is because your A team is going to need rest too, and the good news is there are going to be a plethora of people with idle hands just wanting to help out.

Sleep/rest as much as possible during early labor: she told the story of a lady that decided to use her time in early labor to clean, organize and just piddle around the house in general and finally started active labor around 12:30 at night, she didn't give birth until late afternoon the next day. She was going on 36 hours of no sleep. I know how I function on no sleep and that is not at all.

You know how to handle pain/take care of yourself, identify how you do this now: Tanya basically said that because we are first time moms anyway, there is going to be some trial and error because some things that I thought would work don't and somethings that I found incredibly soothing pre-labor could  be like nails on a chalkboard. But if I have more of a direction, or an idea, husband can move to the next thing instead of having to ask me and possibly pull me out of the ZONE.

Then we did a guided meditation that husband said was....ok. I told him he didn't have to like it he just needs to know that I do and it actually helps me focus, which can be an issue sometimes.

Over all I liked the class, I like that Tanya references other births because I retain a lot more if it is in story form.


The next class is on labor, the stages and phases.