First Class

We went to our first "Childbirth Education" class tonight. They are from 6:30pm-9:30pm once per week for 5 weeks. Don't they know that I am ready for bed at 8:30pm? Especially after a full day at work?

The class was informative and the instructor nice, but I am a little disappointed because I think it will have more of a Lamaze spin to it than they advertise. I had thought it would be more technical/clinical, going through the stages of birth, hospital tour, pain management options etc. Maybe we will get more into it later.

I am probably a strange type of student to have in your class. There are two extremes of people, and I am somewhere in the middle. There are those that swear they will go natural, no matter what. They want no intervention. There is the other end of the spectrum where people want to start the pain drip with the first blip of pain amd are very fearful of labor.

I would "like" to go natural, but since I have never done this before, who knows if I will accomplish this. I am reading up and learning various techniques to try to make this possible. I don't have a lot of fear or anxiety about the process. I figure if other people can do it, so can I. I am a pretty calm person in general, and have a high pain tolerance. I trust my OB and those in his practice, because I have no other choice. I have to believe that they are not hell bent on doing a C-Section, inducing me for convenience, giving me an unnecessary episiotomy, or trying to hinder my "freedom" by putting monitoring devices on me or the baby. My goal in the process is to deliver a healthy baby, and not do anything to endanger either myself or the baby. It is not to have a "birth experience." If I have a positive birth experience in addition to a healthy baby, then that is just icing on the cake.

So, the point of this little soapbox rant is that I get annoyed when instructors try to make pregnant women think their doctors are out to get them and do procedures just to get insurance money or keep their scheduled golf game. I am sure there are doctors that do this, but I have to trust my OB or I shouldn't be going to him. I also don't like when they tell pregnant women that the process is almost completely without risk. I know it is a natural process that has been going on without medical intervention for thousands of years. However, women and babies used to die during childbirth. Medical technology and monitoring have lowered the incidence of this considerably. I have to think that modern technology can be used as a complement to a natural childbirth, and that they are not mutually exclusive. Anyway, off to bed because I am obviously very tired and cranky!