La Fin de Lamaze

Last night was our final Lamaze class. It was a fun vibe, we started by watching a short movie featuring several vignettes of women breathing through labor pains over a new-age soundtrack laced with narration by a jovial female. Then we practiced pushing, which I am sad to say I was horrible at - I couldn't locate the correct muscles to push, particularly with so much baby in the way. We were to engage our stomach muscles, but I haven't been in touch with those since the baby took up residence in there, it was just really confusing and disappointing. Then we learned the pushing breathing pattern, which involves making a buzzing noise through almost closed lips as you exhale; again complete failure. I couldn't make the noise to save my life. So there I am, hunched over trying to locate the muscles to push down, floundering with my buzz-less exhalations which are making me feel like I'm going to pass out, and trying to focus on the inhalation and exhalation pattern as K is coaching me to relax and I just felt completely overwhelmed and incompetent, not such a good feeling to have so close to delivery. I tried not to let it get me down, and K knows me so well, he came right in with encouragement and told me that he thinks my labor is going to go quickly, detecting the wheels of defeat starting to spin in my head. We then continued a full review of the entire stages of labor and correct breathing responses. I redeemed myself by answering the most questions about transitional labor to the class' amazement (the most painful part of labor, right before you are fully dilated and ready to push), so I felt a little bit better - but then again, they aren't going to be conducting a quiz in the labor room. I just hope that once I am in labor, it will be obvious and natural what muscles I need to push, because the need to push will be there. And as for the buzz breathing, I've never seen anyone do it in any of the footage I've seen of labor, so maybe it's okay that I can't buzz (although the instructor did say that if you don't make the buzzing noise when you exhale, you can develop broken capillaries in the face and hemorrhoids). But in all honesty, I left the class feeling like natural childbirth may be beyond me (this is just how I felt) - I hate failing and I hate feeling incompetent, always have, and maybe I should just grab the epidural and cut down the odds of beating myself up, which can't be helpful when delivering. Or maybe I should just buck up and practice more - I tend to think, erroneously, that I should be able to get everything right on the first try! I guess the consolation is that in a little over 5 weeks, I'll be in labor and the anticipation, the guessing, the unknown will be over.

La More Lamaze

K and I finished our third class of Lamaze - one more to go. We practiced different breathing techniques, different positions to combat back pain during labor, and learned more about what we may encounter from labor to delivery and beyond. It is a little hard to keep my head and attention about me, I am just so excited, and there is just so much information to absorb. Especially after taking so many classes back to back. There is some crossover of information, which helps to reinforce some points, but still, it is a lot. And I don't know how much I'll remember when the time comes; I don't think I'll be pulling out my notes during contractions! I am sure that natural instinct will kick in and my memory will squeeze out facts that I didn't realize I had retained. I just get nervous that once I am labor and I am trying to breathe and remember the patterns, that it will be too overwhelming and I'll throw it all out the window and not be able to focus, what with both the pain and excitement. I hope I can keep my wits about me to just stay in control and concentrate.

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...

Breathe And Relax

Yesterday, K and I took a marathon, 8-hour class entitled Prepared Childbirth. The instructor was great, upbeat, funny, honest, which helped because about 2 hours in, K and I were both ready to take a nap. It was truly a struggle to keep my eyes open during the afternoon portion, after lunch. The class took us through labor step-by-step from the house to the hospital and all the way to purchasing car seats. We also did some breathing and relaxation exercises. I see a theme developing among all these classes: BREATHE AND RELAX. I guess that's the key.

You Make Me Feel Like A Natural Woman

So, this evening, I ventured alone (because K had to work) to a Natural Childbirth class. I wanted to go specifically to arm myself with as many birthing options as possible, to learn about the full spectrum of pain management, so that I can feel as prepared as I possibly can be going into the unknown of labor. I had to take a highway that I don't often take, let alone by myself, and get off in an area of town that I was completely unfamiliar with, and I DID IT!!! What a difference from when I first moved out here. But I digress...

So, the class was designed by and scheduled to be taught by a doula who, unfortunately for us, was called to a birth. So we had a substitute teacher, another certified doula, although she doesn't practice anymore, who also is a lactation specialist. And she was pleasant enough, even humorously entertaining at times, and pretty sweet. However, it was clear that she was filling in, as she was zipping through the slides and reading from a syllabus. At one point she even exclaimed as she was looking at a slide, "I don't know what that is! Oh, maybe it is this in here," which is fine, and even endearing, but it made me wonder if we were getting the full deal that we had registered and paid for. And it bothered me that she preferred to use the words "poopy" and "potty" in a squeaky voice, rather than using adult words in adult tones. I'm thinking, here we are talking about pushing a human baby through our body, no need to airbrush anything. There was one point in the class when I got really anxious and really antsy, a little like at the Lamaze class, and I'm not sure if it was an internal emotional reaction, or completely external on account of the room being too toasty and me being really tired. But I caught a second wind. Since I was alone, she pulled me up out of my seat during the physical exercise demonstration portion of class and told me that she was going to be my partner. And we went through some of the exercises designed to help one relax as much as one can during labor. She even asked if I meditate regularly because I was so concentrated on my breathing - that made me feel better (I guess I am a glutton for praise - maybe I'm feeling vulnerable). And I have to say that after the class, the pain of labor and the concept of managing it without medication doesn't seem as foreign and devastating as it did to me before the class. But, as I've said before, I am going to just stay open and see how it all goes, try to stay in the moment, and just go from there.

Baby Breaths

Over the weekend, K and I officially began our pregnancy instruction with a two-hour class on Infant CPR, which was so informative. It took us forever to find the correct building - since the pregnancy, my attention to detail, particularly when traveling, has been slightly impaired, and all I had was an address for the building but no name of the building and no number to call. We wandered around the hospital halls for at least 10 minutes before being redirected to a building across the street. Once we parked at the correct building, we couldn't find the correct entrance to the building!! YIKES! Finally, we arrived in the classroom 15 minutes late, with about 7 other couples and a friendly, white-haired female instructor greeting us.

The instructor was 79 year-old nurse, Shirley. She was a wonderful instructor. I took great comfort in her no-nonsense approach and her candid recollections of motherhood over the course of almost 60 years. There was something reassuring about getting motherhood tips and anecdotes from an older woman, a great-grandmother at that. She talked about things that she did with her children that aren't done today anymore, because in her days of parenting, less was known - sleeping the babies on their stomachs, how her kids fell out of the cribs, etc. And yet, her children are all fine. That calmed me down some, because I tell you, first-time pregnancy comes with so many rules about what not to do, what not to eat, it just gets me so razzled sometimes. It takes me so long to prepare a meal because I am not sure if I can eat something, not to mention how badly my OCD has kicked in.

The class was great at giving us an increased sense of having some control in a bad situation. It was also a little scary, because you don't want to be in a situation where you need to use CPR on ANYONE, really. But still, having the basic know-how of what to do is reassuring. We had the fake babies (they should make them multi-racial!) with plastic wrap around their mouths, so as not to spread germs among the hundreds of parents-to-be who've rescued the little plastic victims. We had to learn compression points, how to compress the chest properly so that the heart squeezes against the spine, forcing oxygenated blood to the brain and back to the heart, we learned how to give the baby rescue breaths. We learned what to do when the baby is choking (the CPR is if the baby is unconscious). Shirley choked when she was 7 years old, and 72 years later, the event still traumatizes her. This is also why when she was a new mother, she never put her babies on their back, because she was afraid of them choking. She admits that experts still don't know exactly what causes SIDS, but that when studies were conducted among countries where it is customary for babies to sleep on their backs, the incidences of SIDS were much less than they are in the US. They also can tell now, by looking at the brain post-mortum, if an infant death is caused by suffocation or by SIDS; apparently the effect on the brain is different. However, more than that is unknown.

We snacked on chocolate cookies with bright orange filling, to bring in the Halloween spirit, in between rounds of practice resuscitation. It was a great class and the two hours (well more like 90 minutes since we arrived late and class ended a little early) went by very quickly. I would recommend CPR class for everyone, pregnant or not, and all types of CPR: Infant, Children, and Adult (apparently, the infant CPR techinique is only for babies up to 1 year old).