Silicon Valley Baby

We've begun childbirth classes

Well, we had the first of our series of four childbirth classes this past Thursday night. The first real milestone, perhaps, to indicate that we're entering the home stretch.

The first class was quite interesting, although my ankle was certainly an unwelcome distraction. Hard to sit comfortably on the floor with SiliMommy when doing the breathing exercises, for one thing. I also learned that I can't really tell, from behind, whether she's inhaling or not. The expansion/contraction of her frame isn't terribly conspicuous.

Part of the exercises involved my inducing mild discomfort by squeezing her hand. The idea is for her to start to get used to removing herself from the pain and concentrating on her breathing. (The hand-squeezes are done so as to mimic contractions.) I might have squeezed a little too hard: At the end, she gave me this "you enjoyed that, didn't you" glance. (Normally, she's the one who doles out the physical punishment :-) )

Among the interesting things we learned or saw were: illustrations of the inside of a woman's body when not pregnant vs. when pregnant (I had an idea that the various organs get kind of squashed by the growing fetus, but, damn, they sure get flattened in there!); phases and lengths of labor; that if the mother doesn't husband her strength carefully during labor, she might just run out of energy, necessitating a "suction delivery" because she can't push any more; the "pain-tension-fear" cycle.

We also learned that a scant 4 to 5 percent of first-time babies actually come on or before their due dates. They can be up to two weeks late before it's really considered a problem. This was of some concern to us because Obaa-chan* is slated to arrive from Japan on the scheduled due date, and remain here for about a week. (We've already spent a small fortune--several hundred dollars--to reschedule her flight once, and are loath to do so again.) At any rate, Grandpa** is due to arrive just after my mother-in-law goes back, so we'll still have a grandparent here. Maybe even my mom after that. (She's got her own health issues right now.)

* For ease of differentiation, I refer to my in-laws as o-baa-chan and o-jii-chan: respectively, "Grandma" and "Grandpa" in Japanese. (That's surely what SiliBaby will grow up calling them.)

** I refer to my own parents--the American grandparents--simply as "Grandma" and "Grandpa."

posted by SiliDaddy @ 5:46 PM