Thursday, September 11, 2008

Childbirth Class

Last night we went to our first childbirth class. It was really interesting, and I like the teacher (Mary Burgess) and the rest of the group. There are 6 other couples in the class, two due in october, two in november, and two (besides me) in early december. All of us are first time parents. One of the interesting things we learned last night is that there is only a 4% chance that you will have your baby on your due date! I knew it was a small chance, but I thought it was higher than that! Really, there's a four-week window, two weeks before and two weeks after the due date. So I could end up having little Conan pretty much any time between Thanksgiving and Christmas...

We talked about labor pain & intensity, and did an interesting excercise where we held a handful of ice cubes for 60 and 90 seconds to experience "prolonged intense sensation". Wow - all I can say is try it. It really, really burns after about 8 seconds, and a minute seems like a REALLY long time, 90 seconds is excruciating. We did a few breathing excercises to help train the mind not to focus on the pain of holding the ice, and then once we had practiced that a couple times moved on to putting the ice on our bare feet. YEEEEOOOOW! You may be thinking I'm an extreme wuss, and it may be true - why don't you go get a handful of ice, put it on a towel on the floor, and stand on it barefoot while someone times a minute for you? Then you can post in comments about how much tougher than me you are. :)

1 comment:

Laura said...

That sounds like a really interesting exercise--I should have my husband try it. I went into my labor and delivery wanting to leave the option of an epidural open, but that I wanted to try without it. Man, all I can say is that I have a renewed respect for people who do natural childbirth--I don't think I could have made it through without the Numorphan and an epidural (and the 2 hours I spent in a warm tub)!