Prenatal Class 2

Last night we went through different breathing techniques to help deal with pain. Which simply involved to Breathing in (1, 2, 3) and breathing out (1, 2, 3, 4, 5). Husbands where encouraged to place there hands on their wives rib cage to feel them breathing in deeply. I couldn’t look at Tim properly as I just burst out laughing and honestly I wasn’t comfortable in that position. He was also then encouraged to hold my rib cage from behind.

The massage part was really nice and it was good to have the wives first do the massage on the Husbands, Tim is already quite used to rubbing my back we were just shown some new techniques. Last nights lesson helped prepare me more on some ideas on how to cope. The main message that I got from the class was that my body will instinctively act / go into positions to help deal with pain.

Tim and I had a great discussion afterwards on the management of pain and I believe that we already have a general plan to deal through the pain. I sometimes suffer from bad headache and where I know that this has nothing to do with Labour pain, the pain management that Tim and I have I believe will help. He simply puts pressure on my head to alleviate the pain, or strokes (almost like tickles) my neck and back.

There have been times where I have suffered really bad back pain and the stroking and hand pressure being applied to ‘the’ areas has always helped me through the worst of it.

The new thing that I learnt last night was where to expect the Labour pain, I had never thought of this before. I had heard that labour starts off like Period Pain but obviously gets 20 to 100 times worse. We were told some women suffer labour pains up near their tummies, or below the belly button. Others just have bad back pain, which shocked me as I would never associate Labour pain only being felt in the back. We were also told that others feel it in their legs towards the groin area. All very interesting to me, and it is hard to predict where anyone will feel it.

The Physio did ask if we were expecting pain, I had no illusions of this, I’m expecting so much pain that it sometimes scares me. Tim noticed a frightened, terrified doe eye look and asked me afterwards if I was scared. I’m not scared of the pain, as I’m confident that we together can manage it, I’m scared that I will not be able to cope with a long labour. That I will be hysterically crying for a Caesarean anything to get my baby out, the lack of control and how I may react is what scares me more than anything.
It still amazes me how some first time mums have not attended any type of classes, I can not fathom how they coped or how they prepared. Both of us feel lucky that we are attending these sessions even if it is just to help alleviate panic or build up confidences.