Lamazel Tov! Class

Last week was our first "Lamaze" class. We're taking a Lamazel Tov! class at the nearby JCC on Monday evenings (3 hours each for 6 weeks). It's a childbirth education class that also incorporates the Jewish spiritual side of pregnancy and delivery. There are 3 people teaching the class - a Rabbi, a Doula, and a Nurse - they're all very knowledgeable teachers as well as mothers. There are 3 other couples in the class all due around the same time as we are so it's fun to watch the other "mothers" grow and see how I compare to them. Only one couple is having their 2nd child, and they're actually having twins, so the mother is farther along in the growth department. A lot of the info we're learning I previously learned when taking the "Soundbirthing" classes in order to to do Music Therapy with pregnant women but that was about 3 years ago and I wasn't pregnant, so I'm very glad that we're taking this class now.

We started the first class with drawing our versions of what we think the birthing process will be like and then compared it with our partner's drawing. Eric's and my drawings were quite similar, which isn't too surprising since we've talked about the actual delivery before. Everyone got a kick out of my sister's drawing. She drew 5 chairs out in the waiting room (2 sets of parents, and one chair for herself) and on the door of our room it said (something like) "Please take a seat and wait many hours for the doctor to come out."

It's interesting to see how each of the couples react to learning about and seeing videos of the actual birth. So far there's one husband who is very squeamish during the videos and one mother who doesn't care for watching the birthing process.

We've liked everything we've learned in the past 2 classes, but we feel there hasn't been enough discussion regarding how to prep for the delivery, how to breathe through it and how to get through contractions, etc. There are still 4 more classes and I know the next class is supposed to be about comfort measures, so hopefully we'll discuss Lamaze breathing and other ways to get through the contractions so that I don't kill Eric by the time the baby is born. :)

I'll update on anything else interesting that happens or that we learn in the upcoming classes, so stay tuned.