from the birthing class, that is. Last night, Jen & I attended our final birthing class with Mary Alexander. She had invited 3 new moms to come share their homebirth stories with us. However, only one of the dads made it (the others were home babysitting older children), but it was more than worth it to hear the experience from his point of view!
Mother #1 just recently homebirthed her 3rd child (she had homebirthed numbers 1 & 2 as well). This time was her first time doing a waterbirth, and she said it was definitely worth it! Her husband even "caught" the baby, although he wasn't quite prepared to do it. For this mom, her mom had homebirthed all of her children, so to her, it was a very natural and common thing. In fact, she admitted that she didn't even know about hospital births until she was 12 yrs old!
Mother #2 homebirthed her second - and said it was a very empowering feeling giving birth to your child without drugs or intervention. She used a combination of meditative techniques to help her through the pain.
And mother #3 had the best story to tell - she also waterbirthed her baby, but her labor was relatively fast & hard. In fact, she had hard labors for 4 or 5 hours which only got her 3 cm dilated, and then went from a 3 to an 8 in a matter of 45 minutes. Her story was the most hilarious because she talked about how she & her husband sang the baby out. Her focusing technique involved singing a hymn that she knew, but instead of singing the words, she hee'ed & hoo'ed to the tune.
Jen also got her two shipments of newborn cloth diapers yesterday so she brought those to the class for show-and-tell.
One observation/theory we have about why she had so many contractions on Tuesday - Jen remembers drinking some of her herbal tea that night before, which is supposed to induce labor. And she hasn't drank any since then. Maybe that explains why she hasn't had many contractions since then?
Ariel also started up softball again yesterday with her first practice of the season. She'll be playing in the U-12 division this year so all the girls on her team are new to us. On the positive side, she's also no longer the only tall, lanky girl on her team. There are several so she's no longer quite so out of place.
Went to bed last night with anger issues against Ariel's softball coach (from last year), the Ebay scumbag who thinks I'm lying about the fencing foils, and He/She Who Shall Rename Nameless. Grrrr....not getting into all that right now though.
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