We had our Labor and Delivery class today. It was long (9am-3pm), but good. I was a little worried when we walked in and saw the ditzy nurse from the first aid class, but it turns out she was teaching Infant Care down the hall (we've got our fingers crossed that she's not leading our class, which we have in two weeks). Our teacher was a college English professor who moonlights as a childbirth educator and doula.
There were 12 pregnant ladies and their coaches in the class. Most of the coaches were spouses; there was one fiance, two young baby daddies, and a cousin who was a nurse. Most pregnant was the girl who was due ON THURSDAY. I think the least pregnant one there was due in the first week of November. Most interesting was the girl who's due date got changed to a month earlier than her first due date. Um, yeah. Okay. And then there was the weird backwoods girl who had very strange ideas about labor -- when asked about her due date, she only said that she was "already in labor" (the educator figured out that she was likely talking about having Braxton-Hicks contractions); I caught a later interchange between her and the educator, and she's actually due sometime in October.
Oh, and the vast majority of the class was having girls. Like 10 out of 12. It sort of balanced out the mostly-boy first aid class.
We watched three videos: a vaginal delivery with half-dose meds; a vaginal delivery with epidural; and a cesarean section. I was kind of surprised by how tame they were. I've seen more graphic deliveries on those Learning Channel shows (like "Birth Day"). All of the videos were circa 1989, so there were some big glasses, feathered hair, and short gym shorts and mustaches on the guys.
The first video (featuring strong Boston accents) showed a lot of the active phase of labor. The mom was moving around a lot, changing position, and, at one point is feeling nauseous. Her husband says, "well, maybe you shouldn't have had that steak and cheese sub." (Pat and I started giggling uncontrollably at this.) Then, she decides to labor in the shower, and the husband is holding the sprayer for her, when he BREAKS OUT INTO SONG. What song, you ask, might he be inspired to sing at this moment? "She'll be Comin' 'Round the Mountain"
That guy was wicked awesome.
We had lunch in the hospital cafeteria. Food options were pretty decent, if not entirely healthy. They had a grill section (hotdogs, hamburgers, veggie burgers, grilled cheese, french fries); the entree area (meat-lovers pizza, and some sort of chicken thing); a make-your-own sandwich station; soups; salad bar; and pre-packaged snacks. They also carry Green Mountain coffee, so Pat was excited about that.
I went into the class with pretty good attitude about the whole birthing process. I started losing some confidence during the c-section video; while I'm okay with the concept of delivering that way, the idea of major surgery (and recovering from it) doesn't appeal to me. And the diagrams of the epidural just make me nervous in general about the procedure: a needle/catheter in the spine doesn't seem particularly comfortable. That said, by the end of class, I was pretty much back to my "I can do this" mindset. I'm still planning on going in with an open mind. We'll do what we need to do to get the baby out safely, and we'll see how I handle the pain. If I need something, I'll be asking for it.
Next doctor's appointment is tomorrow morning.
1 comment:
Yeah...I'm in labor now. But I didn't go to class, so the doctor kicked me out and said I had to graduate from birthing class first.
Oh, and epidural is your BFF. Though I didn't quite want it initially, I didn't have much of a choice in the specific. But yay! Aside from the anesthesiologist asking, "Does this feel like it's going into the middle of your back?", it made surgery (and, more importantly, recovery) a very happy time.
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