Here’s what we talked about in Class #4:
- A little nutrition lesson and snacks: Comfort Foods for Oxytocin in pregnancy and more labor snacks
- Quinoa Mac ‘n’ Cheese
- Coconut Chocolate Energy Cookies
- LabOrinth sketching and what it is!
- Complications
- Breech babies
- Big babies
- Overdue babies
- Failure to progress/slow labor
- Fetal distress
- and a few more
- Medical Interventions
- Induction
- Epidural
- Episiotomy
- IV
- Fetal monitoring
- The cascade of interventions and birthing in awareness
- Maternal and Baby Positioning
- How to move/place/stretch your body to help baby get in optimum position for birth
- How to move/place/stretch your body to help you get in optimum position for birth and help avoid some pregnancy discomforts
- Pain coping strategy #4 – Spiraling
- Positive Birth Story – Maintaining awareness through the unexpected
More than anything, creating this class brought up for me the deep need to tell women to MOVE!!! While in labor with my first baby, you could not have paid me to sit down or lie down. It just didn’t feel good. When getting into the car to drive to the birthing center, my husband tried to get me to the front passenger seat of our van. I looked at him like he was crazy. I remember saying something like, “If I sit down in that seat, I will shove the baby back up. THAT HURTS! I am trying to let her come down.”
He kindly removed our back seats to give me space to crawl around on my hands and knees and I had a much more comfortable ride.
I vaguely remember hearing bits in my birthing classes about movement during labor; that it would feel good to walk, rock your hips while on hands and knees, stand, squat, etc. But, it didn’t really sink in completely. Maybe if someone had described to me that sitting on the emerging baby’s head would be excruciating, like shoving the baby back in, I would have absorbed the information a bit better. Well, here it is now for you. Try not to sit on your baby’s head. You are welcome.
To be a little more serious, it might not feel that way for you. Try everything and figure out what feels best for you. You may want to take a seat.
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