Lamaze Classes

The Lamaze classes offered by the Queen of the Valley Hospital in Napa have been great. We have a lively, and funny teacher who is very experienced. She has some cute "isms" in her teaching methods, like always calling the pregnant ladies "mommies" and always calling the men (or other people there) "support person." So she'll tell a story like "Mommies, you will be tired and you need to tell support person to give you a massage or leave you alone and support person, you need to not take this personally." It is very cute the way she says it.

She also told a great story about what your water might look like when it breaks. She said, "You might be in the grocery store and your water breaks. But sometimes Mommies you have problems with holding in your urine so you might not be sure if it is your water or your urine. If it is colorless and odorless and comes out in a gush, you know it is your water. It isn't harmful to anything and it isn't dirty. And no one needs to know. So just pick up a jar of pickles, throw them to the floor and ask for a clean up in aisle 2. Then walk quickly out and drive yourself to the hospital." Ha! I thought that story was hilarious!

She actually taught us some pain mangagment techniques by having the "mommies" put a plastic clothes pin on the cuticle of one of your fingers for one minute. Then she teaches various techniques to keep your mind of the pain that this clothespin is causing like: 1) visualization of a happy place, 2) partner massage, 3) rocking movements, 4) rhythmic breathing and deep breathing, etc.

Charles has found all of the Lamaze classes to be very useful thus far. And I have found them to be useful too. It is amazing how over time, I had already figured out some of these techniques and had used them to get through some stressful and emotionally painful times. It is amazing how the survival instinct in us works!

Of course, if I end up doing a C-section, this might all be a moot point, but I could have some contractions, and it would be helpful for those times.