After a week that’s been the most stressful of my pregnancy, work-wise, Tom and I went to our first of two “intensive” birthing classes today. This class is taught from the book Birthing From Within, a classic of the homebirth/low-intervention childbirthing genre, and both Tom and I were worried about how foofy (read: crazy New-Age woo-woo weird) it would be, but our midwife recommended it and other mothers I had spoken with a while ago said they took it and got something out of it.
It was a really good class in that it was great to talk to other couples about their pregnancies and births and also because Lanell Coultas, the instructor, had some great advice about letting go of expectations and also on how to cope with the pain of childbirth.
One of the things I hear a lot when I tell people I am going to birth at home is, “Wow, you’re brave.” And I don’t really see the bravery of homebirth as I’ve mentioned before – it’s simply the way that works best for me as I face the issue of labor. That being said, I’m aware that it’ll hurt, and that there are ways to make it hurt less if I were birthing in a hospital, and so I suppose there is a bravery component in the decision to eschew epidurals and drugs and just take the pain head-on. (Head-on! Apply directly to forehead!)
We learned some pain-coping techniques that actually worked really well, insofar as helping us handle the pain of holding ice cubes in our hands for a minute at a time, and I just need to mention how cold-sensitive my hands are, so this exercise seemed particularly apropos to me. Without the techniques, I was really suffering with the pain of the cold in my hands, and really ANGRY at the ice and the exercise, and with the techniques it felt that the minute went by very quickly and that the pain was substantially less intense. So that was heartening.
I am drained after this class, though, I must say – it was really emotional for me to hear other people’s experiences and hear Lanell talk about certain things, especially mother stuff. I teared up multiple times and actually completely lost it when one woman talked about her first birth, which was one of those nightmare Pitocin-epidural-C section whirlwinds that is so common in hospitals for unwary parents. I’m trying not to be so scared of having to go to the hospital that I actually call it down on myself, and I really can’t visualize it at all, but it was such a sad story and SO what I don’t want for me that I was really moved by it.
Saw the midwife this last week, BTW, and everything’s great with the baby: she’s head-down and moving reliably and her heartbeat is strong. I’m growing just as I should, though I lost 4 pounds at some point in the last couple of weeks, but she’s not concerned. Any swelling I’m having is fairly intermittent, BP is good and I have no protein in my urine, so many 3rd trimester ailments seem to be holding at bay. She did say that in the next month or so, Amelia will be DOUBLING in size, so to work extra-special hard to eat as much protein and as little sugar and fat as I can, which seems quite daunting as I’ve been so careful about that for so long, but it’s worth it to keep me and the boo healthy. Wish me luck in staying on the straight and narrow. Most protein seems really disgusting and unappetizing to me right now, and all I really want is sugar and carbs, but I’m exercising my willpower as much as I can.
It’s starting to be real to me that we’ll have this real whole person in our lives soon, breathing air and peeing and eating and cooing and crying, and that’s still very “WHOA,” but it’s also pretty “Yay!”
