Childbirth Class Humor

Today is Alyssa's first SNOW DAY! :) I thought I'd take the chance to add an update. It has been an eventful week! Last Saturday, we had the first half of our childbirth class. We're now qualified to have half of a baby. After tomorrow, we can have the whole thing. :) It was a fun time, and there are some funny moments that we'll always remember. We watched a video of a woman going through labor drug-free. About 2 minutes into the video, Jeff began looking very concerned and whispered to me, "You're not going to be that whiney, are you?" (To his credit, the woman really was extra-whiney.) I suggested that he share his question with the 15 other women in the room, but for some reason, he didn't want to do that. :)

The first thing we were asked to do was to introduce ourselves and share our biggest fear about childbirth. One mom said that her biggest fear was the poster on the wall with a diagram of a cervix dilated to ten centimeters. Toward the end of the morning, we practiced standing, sitting, kneeling, etc. in different positions to help cope with labor pains. Stations were set up around the room with pictures instructing us on what to do at each station, and we rotated to a new station about every minute. It was nice practice, however we quickly realized the difficulty of getting up and down off the floor with a rapidly-growing little person in our bellies! Every time we got to a new station, there would be quiet groans going up from the ladies looking at the pictures that required sitting on the floor. And a minute later, there would be groans from those same women as their poor husbands tried to pull them up off the floor. :) We must have looked hilarious!!!There are some things (probably most things) about childbirth that just can't be taught or learned in advance. For example, I can only imagine that it's a whole lot easier to exhale gradually for ten seconds while sitting in a comfortable chair perfectly relaxed than it is to hold your breath for ten seconds while trying with all your might to push a human being out of your body! But it was fun and exciting anyway! :)

Monday was our doctor appointment. The first thing the nurse practitioner did was to compliment me on limiting my weight gain, which was a big relief! She said she tells people 5 pounds is the limit, but no one can actually do that, and some women have gained 30 pounds by now. (I cannot imagine how uncomfortable that would be!!!) Alyssa's heart rate and my blood pressure were perfect. Then she measured my uterus...and I'm measuring a MONTH ahead! (My dates are definitely not off.) She said it's much more concerning to measure too small than too big, but it does buy us an ultrasound next Friday. I'm really excited to see Alyssa again!!! Measuring too big could mean too much fluid (which usually means nothing at all, or very rarely can be a sign of a problem with Alyssa), or it could just be because of Alyssa's position (We're pretty sure she is breech right now, but she has another month to turn around before we have to worry about that), or it could mean that Alyssa will be the world's first female sumo wrestler! :) She thought that Alyssa did feel big, although she didn't say she felt big enough to measure a month ahead. So we'll just have to wait for Friday to see what's going on in there. :)