Childbirth Class #1

P and I went to our first childbirth class last night. Let's just say it's a little different than the way it's described on the hospital's website. Sentara has a list of all the pregnancy, childbirth, breastfeeding, etc. classes on their site. In no way does anything indicate that the class at Sentara Williamsburg is contracted out through a private doula service.

Our class instructor is a certified doula and lamaze instructor. That would be the extent of her "medical" training. Her past career was an AT&T saleswoman and she made no bones about the fact that she's teaching these classes in addition to her regular doula services to provide extra income for her family. Her husband is days away from retiring as a Marine Corps Master Chief and hasn't found another job yet.

We started off watching a couple birth videos which she described as "normal births" as opposed to what you might see on TLC's "A Baby Story" and shows of that variety. The first thing Patrick and I notice is that the woman in the video is giving birth standing up in her living room. The room is dark, she's standing on her hardwood floors completely naked, and another woman (doula? midwife? it was unclear) is shining a flashlight at her hoo-hah. We see the baby's head emerge and fluid gush all over the floors. My thought is "Oh my, the clean up!" and P whispers to me "Where is the doctor? Why is that woman giving birth next to a box of copier paper?". Turns out we just watched a scene from "The Business of Being Born." Yup, I like my birthing advice from Ricki Lake just like I like my vaccine advice from Jenny McCarthy. Why show anti-doctor, anti-hospital propaganda during a class being held at a hospital??

The instructor proceeds to go on and on about how hospital births involve terrible things like IVs which require you to be strapped to the bed for the entire labor. Personally, I don't know a single person who has ever been strapped to a bed for any reason! She gives us a handout labeled "Normal Birth" which basically goes over how only births without medical intervention are normal, and there are some sources cited which I will be investigating for my own knowledge. On a side note, I was sure to let me my mom know that my sister and I were apparently born abnormally as C-section babies.

For the rest of the class, we talked about signs of pre-term labor and other things about late pregnancy. So far I haven't learned anything I didn't already know, aside from the whole being strapped to the bed part (ha!).

Perhaps my other favorite part of the evening was in the beginning of the class when we had to pair off with another couple who was due the same week as us to get to know them better. The wife looked at my belly and said something along the lines of "Wow, you're a lot bigger than me. I keep telling my doctor I'm concerned I'm too small. I thought you were supposed to be small with your first pregnancy." She asked a couple dumb questions during the class, so I've written her off as a moron.

I don't have a good vibe yet for the rest of the class. We have a couple "crunchy" couples who are very vocal about the whole natural birth thing. One woman is considering not having the Group B Strep test done because she doesn't want any IVs attached to her at all during labor (you know, because of the whole bed strapping thing). Right.....good luck with that should you be positive for it. (Link to CDC site regarding Group B Strep: http://www.cdc.gov/groupbstrep/general/gen_public_faq.htm. I don't like statements without facts to back them up, so I'm backing up my "good luck" statement.)

Perhaps I'll wear my birkenstocks next week to fit in a little better.