Week 28: Birthing Class: An Introduction
The baby moves around pretty much like clockwork. They apparently have thirty minute sleep cycles, so every hour, they will be awake and moving about. Quite honestly, don’t feel her moving every hour, though periodically throughout the day, I will feel her moving, she is, again, most active in the evening and I can feel her rolling over, readjusting her position and kicking! At some point, she will be rolling around a lot less mostly because there won’t be any room left in the belly and all I will feel are jabs and kicks. She’s strong enough now to knocks things off my belly if I rest things on it….like the ipad. Guess she doesn’t like me using the belly like a table.
Yesterday, Hubs and I went to our first birthing class. The doctor had mentioned that we needed to go before the baby is born and since she was bringing it up now, I figured that I’d sign up for them. It turns out that they nag because most everyone waits a few more weeks before they get their act together. Almost everyone in class was due in November, except this one couple who was basically due in two weeks.
It turned out that everyone in our class was having a girl. The conspiracy theorist in me thinks there is something in the water killing all the male sperm cells leaving us with a planet full of girls. But on the other hand, the O’Malligans are having a boy and so are The Burdies, so it’s just a coincidence. I’ve probably been reading too many conspiracy novels.
The class I went to was called NewMom2b and I recommend it, especially if you have fears about birthing. They talk about what happens to your body when you go into labor, what your baby is doing, epidurals, when you should go into the hospital and a couple of breathing exercises. The class is from 9am to 3pm and lunch is included. It was Toojay’s sandwiches and wraps, so be aware of that if you’re avoiding mayonnaise or deli meats. They did have a veggie wrap, but it didn’t look good. I’d give them a call if you have special dietary needs, they seem willing to work with you. I ate the chicken wrap, which had some mayo in it, but I know that Toojay’s mayo comes out of a jar and it’s not housemade with raw eggs like some of the fancier restaurants. I realized after seeing the lunch spread that I actually eat fairly healthy at home (except for the fatty sugary desserts). Hubs makes some pretty good low-fat meals and that’s probably helped me with not gaining a massive amount of pregnancy weight.
One of the things that the nurses asked us was what we were afraid of. I said that I was afraid of having a ginormous baby since people seem to think that we’re going to have an eight pound baby. The average is only about six pounds. The nurses said that it’s not going to be a problem, you can birth an eight pound baby. But if you have a preference of birthing a healthy six pound baby as opposed to an eight pound baby, which would you prefer to do?
Some people mentioned that they were afraid of the boys that their daughters would have to deal with and I thought that if there were more boys that were taught well, we wouldn’t have to worry about this stuff. But then if there were less assholes of both genders, we wouldn’t have to worry about our children so much. Having watched too many shows on the Investigative Discovery channel, I can say there are crazy, sadistic, sociopathic people of both genders. But my hope is that I teach my daughter to be strong and smart enough not to get involved with terrible boys or be in situations where they may get into trouble, and find someone who will cherish and love them.
It seems like people are more full of hate in general than they used to be whether it be racism, ageism, genderism, homophobia or classism. It seems to me there are people who want to either segregate or outright kill those who don’t agree with them and that’s a scary place to be. Maybe the internet has allowed for them to congregate anonymously and realize there are more of them than they thought. They no longer have to hide in their mother’s basement, hiding their hate. I’m hoping that more of us are more accepting and we’re only hearing about the squeaky wheels. I’m hoping that we’re all trying to make the world a better place than we left it. But I’m getting a little bit side tracked here.
A couple of the new moms were teachers and we discussed that in most of these classes, we only retained about 10% of the information from class. I though that was funny since I had a weeklong training session for work and I was required to remember all of it. But then again, I did take copious notes that I could refer to later, which I didn’t do in the birthing class. So it’s not surprising that I don’t remember what the majority of the class was about, but I do remember important stuff.
But I think this post has gotten a little bit long, so I’ll split it up a little bit. Next post, breathing excercises!
Originally published at Samantha Ling. You can comment here or there.