2001-11-01
Last night was our first childbirth preparation class. Early on the teacher asked us to jot down our responses to a few things on index cards--fears about birth, goals for the birth, stuff like that. Then she asked us to share some of them and wrote them on a whiteboard. One guy said his fear was passing out during the birth.
A while later, while we'd moved on to another topic, this guy slumped forward in his chair. "Does he have a seizure disorder?" the teacher said. "No!" said his wife. As it happened, the couple seated next to him were both emergency medical technicians, so they immediately sprang into action. After probably two or three minutes he regained consciousness. The teacher had called 911 and the people came quickly to check him out. He seemed to be fine but he and his wife left and the rest of us were a bit rattled.
I'd learned about this teacher from all the groovy, natural-birth types in my pregnancy group. She's a doula and oriented toward non-interventionist approaches, so I was expecting the class members to be of a similar mindset. As it happens, though, most are working with obstetricians (as opposed to midwives or family practioners) and of the twelve or so couples there, only four of us have the stated goal of a drug-free birth.
And speaking of drug-free births, one of the women in my pregancy group, the one I'd say I feel closest to, had her baby. Early Tuesday morning, at 1:54 am, she sent an email saying the contractions were close and strong and things seemed to be moving quickly. I haven't talked to her but heard from another member of our group that the baby was born at 7 am with no complications and no drugs. I'm so excited. She was at the same hospital and family practice that I'm with so this feels especially encouraging.
The class, overall, was much better than either B or I were expecting. Early on we each introduced ourselves and B, who was one of the first to speak, talked about his reservations about being involved in the birth, his nostalgia for the days when fathers were expected to do little more than buy cigars. The teacher responded in an accepting, non-judgmental fashion, agreeing that throughout history it has been other women that support the one giving birth, that few men have experience or comfort with this stuff, and that we should consider a doula (we already have one). I think this broke the ice for some of the other men. The other couples mostly seemed to be working-class and the teacher was very grounded and full of concrete, scientific information. I think B had been fearing something overwhelmingly touchy-feely; as it happened, he was the only one there wearing Birkenstocks.
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