Thursday, June 11, 2009

Childbirth class III: It Cuts Both Ways

Eric eyed the rising slopes of Mount Baby the other day. "You're playing Risk with L.E.O.," he said. "And L.E.O. is winning."

Jackie appears to think so too. "Hi! How are you?" she said this evening when I arrived for class. I said, "Fine, how are you?" but she didn't hear me because she was saying "Oh, look at you, you're so cute with your bump!"

Tonight's childbirth class was mainly on C-sections. "Don't zone out!" Jackie told us. "I know you're all thinking you're going to have vaginal births, but three out of ten couples have c-sections these days." She described legitimate indications for C-sections, and indirectly described what she considered illegitimate ones--convenience, extreme caution due to fear of malpractice lawsuits, media influence. We watched a video on C-sections, planned and unplanned. She discussed inductions, and how they work, and potential natural alternatives. She passed out a handout on eating well, saying "Is eating junk all the time bad for the baby? Well, no, it probably isn't, but the mothers who say 'I feel terrible' are always the ones who say 'Oh, I had some doughnuts for breakfast...and a Code Red Mountain Dew and a bag of chips for lunch...'" And we did a relaxation/visualization exercise. Our snarkiness during this last got a little much for me, but otherwise it really was relaxing. The session went pretty quickly overall, despite my being hungry. One more to go, and then we'll be ready to be parents! Ha!

No comments: