Friday, March 19, 2010

Bradley Birthing Class

I am officially 6 months pregnant! It's pretty exciting to almost be in my third and final trimester. Seeing as we are coming in on the final inning, we have started taking our child birthing class. We have done a lot of research and have decided to try and go toward natural childbirth, and have also found that the Bradley Method is the best choice for us.

Our first class was last week and we had so much fun. The Bradley Method is a helpful method to help handle the pain of childbearing...drug free. A lot of people don't realize how unsafe drugs are for both mommy and baby. Giving birth (no matter how painful) is natural and society today treats it more as procedure. I am reading a book called Active Birth by Janet Balaskas. I just read about the different types of drugs that are typically used during labor and the effects they can have on mommy and baby. It's truly shocking.

Here is an excerpt about the side effects of an epidural

" The long term effects on the baby's neurological development are relatively unknown and direly under-researched, despite the widespread use of this form of pain relief worldwide. Side effects for mother, such as severe headaches following the birth, can occasionally occur (these are caused by accidental penetration of the membrane surrounding the spinal cord by the injection needle). And epidural certainly increases the need for obstetric intervention. Labor is often much longer...an epidural can contribute to a lessening of the blood supply to and from the uterus, so fetal distress is far more likely...an epidural can also inhibit the mother's ability to push her baby out spontaneously, and, in one way or another,increase the risk of forceps delivery, a vacuum extraction, or a cesarean. If an epidural is done wrong, the mother can become paralyzed permanently"

One thing I am not going to guarentee that its not going to hurt and that I wont desperately want drugs, but I am going to try my hardest to get this baby out safely as possible. Its not about if I'm in pain or not, its about getting our little girl here. So the Bradley Method teaches techniques on how to maintain control in the delivery room, how to have the best birthing experience possible, and it teaches different positions and breathing techniques to help with chld birth. It's all very empowering, and little by little I am beginning to believe that I can do this.

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