Lamaze Continued

K and I had our second Lamaze class yesterday, and I felt much better about it than I did the first week. I was a little more relaxed (although more exhausted) and the general energy in the room was a little more upbeat. We came in (a little late AGAIN) during an exercise in which we all had stickers put on our backs with a pregnancy related word, and our partner was allowed to see the word, and then we had to figure out what the word was by asking our partner questions about the word. I couldn't guess my word until K told me to think about birds ("nesting"). K was a wonderful partner again as we breathed through exercises and learned different relaxation positions. We had to bring a focal point for concentration during breathing and I brought one of the 4D ultrasounds of the baby, which made me very excited. And there was a cool exercise where our partner had to simulate the pain of a contraction by grabbing our thigh right above our knee as hard as he/she could while we were doing our breathing and exhalations. Once we finished that simulation exercise, the teacher asked our partners to squeeze our thighs as hard as he/she was during the simulation, and it was amazing how much more it hurt after the exercise, when we weren't concentrating on breathing, than it did during the simulation. It was her way of showing us how focused breathing and relaxation lessens the pain. I was sold. I've started reading The Official Lamaze Guide, which so far is really interesting. The intro tells of how pregnancy shifted from the home to hospitals, and how midwives (many of whom were ethnic minorities) and home births were demonized and how the more wealthy went to hospitals dominated mostly by males. That's about as far as I got. More to come...