First Birth Class

Last night, we went to our first birthing class. It's an early bird class, but the overall philosophy seemed to be the right one for us. It's Bradley Method(R), which I think ends up putting a large emphasis on nutrition (80-100 g of protein a day? Really?) and exercise but is mainly a class for People Who Don't Want an Epidural. In our class, it seems to be people who want to avoid the typical hospital birth and, more specifically, episiotomy. Three out of four couples there were planning on going to the same warm-n-fuzzy free standing birth center we're planning on popping in and the other couple's going to the warm-n-fuzzy midwife floor of UCSD, so it was relaxing to be with people who didn't give me the cautious and concerned "what do you mean you're not going to a hospital?" look. I think it was a little much for our instructor to discover we were already converted, but she tried gently and respectfully to get us to articulate what was bothering us about standard births in this country so we could get on with the lesson.

And we had to watch what I can't think of as anything besides "horror porn" after I heard the phrase coined on Coupling, a birth video. I think the instructor was hoping we'd all see it as an intense (but not painful) and beautiful thing, but nobody really said anything. Finally, the one person in the class who's given birth before said, "That video is just as scary as it was last time," which made everyone feel better that we all weren't swooning with the love and power of the woman giving birth without drugs. To me, it looked painful. She looked happy with the kid at the end, but I'm not a crazy person and that looked very much like it hurt before then. If the instructor calls contractions "lovehugs" or some of the other stupid crap I've seen in some of the fascist natural birth literature, I may have to roll my eyes.

But honestly, the worst part of the class was when we had to lie down on the floor with our two pillows as if we were settling in for the night. Well, see, I don't like my face being on the floor of an office. It's just distasteful to me in a very deep-seated way. It's visceral. I got up as soon as I could and kept popping up for the period we were showing our sleep postures because I couldn't believe everyone wanted to be on the ground that long. I must have looked like a groundhog. The pillows I had brought with me were my leg and body pillows, not ones I actually planned to put my face on.

So now I'm trying to figure out how to take a blanket with me next time so I don't have to put my face near the filthy floor again without saying to the very kindly instructor, "Putting my face that near this floor is like asking me to put my face in a toilet. " Oh, maybe I'll take my yoga mat. Hmmm.

We have an ultrasound tomorrow, so hopefully we'll get a picture and the midwife will have some reassuring words as to why I have the smallest belly out of all the people in the birth class when I'm not the last one due.