Birthing Class

I've already posted these pictures on facebook, but I'm extremely proud of them so I'll repost them here:

This is Josh wearing the Empathy Belly at our birthing class today. All the partners took turns wearing it, but Josh volunteered first. He looked great.

We wanted to sign up for a six-week birthing class but it clashed with our institute class, so we switched it for the "weekend intensive" course. We braved the terrible snowstorm last night to make it to St. Mark's Hospital and met up with the rest of the weekend warriors at 7 last night. For a couple of hours we talked about breathing, practiced some calming techniques, discussed contractions, and made lists of pros and cons related to childbirth. It was fun, but we ran a little long and we didn't even have time to watch a birthing video. Our instructor invited us to come to class half an hour early today to catch the video. Class started at nine, so Josh and I planned on leaving at 8:15 to make it for the video.

Due to today's inclement weather, and the fact that we learned we needed to get gas, and the realization that we had forgotten our pillows back at the apartment, we made it to class around 8:50. The last ten minutes of the video were totally fascinating.

Today's class lasted almost all day, starting at 9 and ending at 4, and again we ran overlong. There wasn't even time to discuss breastfeeding because it's such an intensive course (being condensed to one Friday night and one Saturday), so we can sign up for an individual class to cover that topic. We watched a couple more short videos of live births featuring a natural birth, an epidural birth, and an emergency c-section. When we covered pain management options, there seemed to be so many cons and side effects to the baby, that I really hope I don't cave in and take medication during the whole thing. We practiced more breathing and toured the labor and delivery rooms of the hospital. Then we discussed pediatricians, the stages of labor, what to pack in your hospital bag, what happens to the baby just after birth, the recovery stage, car seat safety, and a million other things.

I'm really glad I got to take this class because I'm one of those people that hates the unknown, so I have to ask a million questions. The instructor seemed to get tired of me asking so many questions, and especially when I came up to her after our class finally ended with my notebook full of more questions. But she answered them all and I feel far more prepared about hospital policy. I was really curious about what they allow during the early stages of labor in the hospital, since my experience with childbirth is really more my sisters' experiences with home births. There are rules in the hospital that don't exist when you're having a baby in your bedroom at home, so I needed to find out what those differences are. I asked whether I needed to have an IV placed, whether I would hold the baby before she gets checked out and measured, whether I could walk around the hospital to endure the contractions, whether the baby could stay with me instead of in the nursery, and a bunch of other things that weren't considered routine discussion material within the class. I'm really pleased with the answers I got. I definitely have more control over the situation than I first anticipated and that calms all my concerns about having a hospital birth for this first baby. I also want to try out a home birth and compare the two experiences, but that's years away from now.

And as a side note, those birthing videos? Not appropriate for all ages. Holy cow, I saw a lot of body holes. And it wasn't beautiful in any way--it was natural, but also gross and real and practical. I couldn't eat my snacks during the videos because the sweating and the moaning and the stretching was just way too off-putting. It's going to be a miracle when Scarlet comes out, let me tell you. Just five more weeks...