Birthing Class

Six hours of birthing class and I learned a few helpful things, but really I walked away with some concern for the leaders of Louisiana. Our teacher was a nurse who loves teaching, is very enthusiastic, and leads about 3 different classes every week. So, she obviously has her verbiage down, right?

Mark & I knew we had a great teacher when she was giving us details on the cerbix (aka cervix), explaining the ministral cycle (aka menstrual), and notified us that we will excretiate the mucus plug (aka excrete). I was also a little concerned when words were written in big letters across the screen and she still had trouble with them, such as L-A-N-U-G-O, which was "lango" in the lecture.

If I wanted to be mean I'd linger on some interesting turns of phrase such as those that came up when discussing medication during the birthing process - such as the two basic options of having a epidural or non-medication free, also known as medicated or non-medicated; or just having medication that allows you to feel the contractions, just not that vagina part. She also went into great detail about making a nice environment in the delivery room through aroma but explained why candles, lotions and sprays are a bad idea - instead you need one of those vile aroma smells. It seems to me that might be a bad idea, but she's the pro. But, I'm not mean so I won't linger on those topics.

In it's own brief realm is the concept of math, of which I just assumed nurses had a basic understanding. When trying to explain the size of an epidural bag she wasn't sure how big it was, but she did feel very confident it was "half the size of a two-liter bottle of coke, what ever size that is." I guess you can take the girl out of Louisiana education, but you can't take the Louisiana education out of the girl.

Finally, the creme de la creme, what we all think of when we think of birthing class - relaxation & breathing. She had some great tips on exactly how to get yourself in the right mindset. For relaxation she showed us a beach scene from clip art circa 1992 and explained, "This is my peaceful place. I love the beach. Notice there are no people, I don't like people on my beach - they talk too loud, listen to loud music, the kids scream - I want it to be quiet. I also don't want any big waves on my beach, so these waves are small. I hate big waves anyway since they knock you down and that can hurt, and they're too loud. I also don't have to wear sunblock on this beach. I hate sunblock- it's sticky and feels bad on my skin and I hate how it smells. And the sand on my beach is soft. I hate walking on rocky sand, that really hurts my feet." Well you get the idea - relaxation through thinking of all the things that could ruin your relaxation.

The other thing that goes hand-in-hand with relaxing is breathing, she had some great suggestions there too. We concentrated on two kinds of breaths - the cleansing breath and the slow, deep breath. To understand a cleansing breath she painted a great picture (again reflecting the guidelines of visualisation), "For a deep cleansing breath imagine you just screwed up real bad at work and even you can't deny it. And your boss is really ticked off and he's comin for you. He's about to give you a real big chewin'. You're real scared about what he's gonna say and you don't wanna face him but you gotta. So as your walking up to his office, and all you really wanna do is run and hide, and your put your hand on the door, well that's where you're gonna wanna take a cleansing breath."

"For the slow, deep breath that's what you're doin' while you're getting chewed. And you gotta keep that slow, deep breath goin 'cause as you get yelled at all you wanna do is tell him off. You've got all those years of frustration that you're tryin' not to let out but you know he deserves a good tellin' off. But instead you just keep it all inside." Inspiring. Truly inspiring.

Thanks to this class, we've been armed with invaluable information, knowledge and now skill. Our instructor painted such a vivid picture that Mark can help guide me in breathing and I understand exactly where he's trying to take me. Regardless, with all of this, for some reason Mark and I are still strongly considering driving across the state line to deliver these babies.