Childbirth class

In the last few weeks Steve and I have been taking baby classes through the UCSF Women's Health Resource Center. This week we took a class on breastfeeding and the second in the series of 4 childbirth classes. All the classes are pretty hippy dippy, obviously geared towards bay area parents, but also quite helpful and informative.

At our first childbirth class, we did an ice-breaker activity where the mothers and fathers were split up, and each group was to come up with a list of things that have changed since becoming pregnant. I felt a little bad because I didn't contribute much to the conversation, but it seemed like the experiences of the other women were in many cases quite opposite to mine. As is the case for many first-time mothers at UCSF and the bay-area in general, the women in the class are on average about 10 years older than me. Much of the conversation centered around physical discomforts and issues with not being able to do a lot of the day-to-day activities they used to do before pregnancy. Some of the women just looked really physically encumbered, and they spoke of problems such as shortness of breath, heartburn, not getting any sleep, and total lack of energy. One of the women was literally falling asleep during the conversation. Any complaints that I have about being pregnant really seemed trivial compared to the others, and up to now, I'm still pretty much doing all the day-to-day things I did before pregnancy.

One of the other complaints of many of the women was how often they had to see the doctor and how many medical tests they had to take. One of the women in the class is 42 and has high blood pressure, so she has to see the doctor 2-3 times a week! For us, Steve and I have been surprised at how little contact we've had with doctors. We usually have our routine appointments with a midwife who spends about 10 minutes with us (sometimes after an hour in the waiting room). For my last appointment there were no midwives available, so I saw an attending doctor, and she was in and out of there in 3 minutes flat. I've never seen a person move and talk so fast before. Ultimately I feel like all of our appointments can pretty much be whittled down to the exchange of a cup of pee.

I guess the whole exercise made me appreciate more how differently your body responds to pregnancy when you're younger, but at the same time how it would be nice if I had more peers in the same life situation. When the men were called back to share their list of issues with the wives, it turned out that the one that had come up the most was sex during pregnancy. Interestingly, that issue did not even come close to being brought up by the women.

During the class this week we discussed how to prepare for labor and techniques to help the mother be more relaxed and comfortable. It turns out the labor can be broken down into 4 stages: early labor, active labor, transition, and pushing. Early labor is by far the longest stage and is meant to occur at home. The hospital will generally not admit you until you are a couple of hours into active labor, when the contractions are stronger and closer together. The class instructor, who is exactly how one would picture a hippy Berkeley doula to be, was making a list of good foods to eat during early labor. She was listing pasta, and steamed veggies, and toast, and then she looked at me and Steve and said, "Oh, and rice porridge!"

At the end of the class, we did a relaxation exercise where the women were lying on the floor, and the partners were instructed to touch our leg or arm or etc. so that we could relax that part of our body. Unfortunately, Steve has problems with following simple instructions because he says he tends to "space out." So when the partners were instructed to gently caress their wives' cheek, Steve started to caress my chin because he thought that she had said chin. This gave me a case of the giggles, which was very embarrassing because everyone else was quietly caressing each others' cheeks. However, as always, the more inappropriate the situation, the more I couldn't stop. Why would anyone tell you to caress someone else's chin??