Birth Class, prt I

After reading a number of books, half a dozen websites every day, and a brief foray into monthly pregnancy magazines, we didn’t expect too much in the way of new information this weekend. But this is what people do, so we went. Two full Saturdays seems a small price to pay for a degree of confidence in what will likely be a scary (lets say, emotional) day in late February.

They don’t do Lamaze anymore. This is no longer your father’s birth class. If you want to breath, breath, and onto the next section. What we have been learning however is the passion underlying the debate over natural childbirth and better living through chemistry. Our Natural childbirth class was solidly in the former camp, but not militantly so.

For the most part, the message this weekend was, you will be in labor for a long time before you should go to the hospital, and these are ways to deal. Doctors have expectations of how quickly the labor should progress, and if it doesn’t follow that timeline, they tend to recommend inducing. Inducing means more pain, means more likelihood for the epidural, means higher chance of a C-section. There are a number of assumptions built into that formula, but the general premise seems to be, most people go the hospital too early.

So after the LONG long road we have traveled to get to this point, when Corrie feels her first contractions, here are ways we can handle it:

Take a nap. (Could you?)

Watch a movie. (They need to come out with another season of the OC before February)

Take a walk. (Nothing like chasing a hound with a dead rat in his mouth through a dark snowy park at 3 in the morning to take your mind of the labor pains)

Bake bread. (The idea being, it takes a long time, but I tend to do the baking in our house, which means she’ll just get pissed at how long I take and probably leave without me)

That being said, I’m sure we’ll find a way to kill some time. Sudoku so far has been a great procrastination tool, as long as they aren’t too hard.

Long story short, the class was not terribly enlightening. We did meet other pregnant couples that live in our neighborhood, so there’s that at least. Next week we see if they’re interested in putting money down on their supposed due date.