Tuesday, December 06, 2005

Birthing Class Part II

At the end of the class last week, the nurse asked us to read some pages in the book they gave us. TC and I read them. Not too terrible...except for maybe that giant 10 cm circle!

Anyway, the section for "homework" talked about the stages of labor and the physical and emotional changes of the mom as well as what the dad can do and how he can help. The nurse in class tonight basically went over all of this again. TC particularly like one of the suggestions for him during early labor..."suggest she take a shower."

Well, I know that this is a relaxation method and in the early stages, a shower might feel nice! TC, always the clown, took that to mean, "She stinks...tell her to take a shower." Nice. This boy's going to have me laughing the entire labor process, I just know it!

After the powerpoint (that only went up to pushing/delivery...that's going to be covered next week), we watched a quick video about the stages of labor that essentially went over the same thing the nurse just went over. However, there was one quite graphic picture (how can you not be a bit graphic in this class!) of a baby's head coming out of its mamma. TC said he could have gone his whole life without seeing that. Ummm...did you think they were going to blur it out?

We watched a second video that followed a woman through the labor process. Let me tell you, this was one composed chick. I know most of it was due to editing, but she seemed to not ever break a sweat and even during the pushing and the baby was coming out (we got a view from the mamma's angle...not head on...so to speak) she still seemed pretty calm. A few times she said that she was so tired and couldn't do it anymore and didn't have anymore strength. Oh, and she had a natural delivery. I know that everyone's delivery is different...I hope I can stay that composed. Especially with still being a bit skeptical of the epidural (we'll cover that in class IV). I haven't completely ruled it out, but I need to know a bit more about it to make myself more comfortable with the proceedure.

After the videos, we took a break and headed to the back of the room for some relaxation exercises. That was interesting. The nurse walked us through the different kinds of breathing...basically deep, low breaths and high, shallow breaths. I could whip just about anyone in that room with my deep breaths. I know how to do that...breath from way down to get a good lung-full of air. Heck. I'm a flutist! I have excellent lung capacity (and I'm not just saying that...I took an asthma test once...only to learn that I had acid-reflux-induced asthma).

The one that I found hard was the high, quick, shallow breathing. That is just not in my nature! It's hard work to breath against what you do naturally. I'll have to work on that a bit.

So, after learning these two different breathing styles and when to use them, the nurse had our partners essentially "tell" us how strong the contraction was by using pressure on some body part. And we were to breathe according to the pressure. The nurse suggested the partner squeeze our leg or arm. TC asked me what I'd like him to use, "You want me to use your arm, leg...or maybe your nose?" What did I tell you about making me laugh? He's such a goober.

Oh, and I remembered what the nurse called the cross-legged sitting postion...Tailor Sitting.

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