If it doesn't stop you from walking and talking, it's not ACTUAL labour

Last Wednesday night, we attended the first of 6 birthing classes at the hospital. Each class is 2.5 hours and we couldn't begin to think how they'd fill all those hours!

Well, to our surprise, the class flew by. We had one of the most experienced birthing coach in the state, Taryn, who has taught over 4500 couples! She was animated, informative and very knowledgeable about anything and everything baby related. Our first topics were 'what is labour' and 'signs of labour'. After reading our Baby Bible, we thought we had a good idea about what labour was but the books never describe things the way Taryn did.

If you divide a typical first time labour of 30 hours into 2 stages, the first 90% is the cramping and stretching of the uterus in preparation for the birth, and the last 10% is the actual pushing of the baby. That means for the first 27 hours, your uterus is vigourously pulling upwards to create a dilation of at least 10 cm in your cervix, so that the baby will actually fit through.

And what do those infamous contractions feel like? Ever had a cramp in your leg from stretching a little too hard while asleep? The sharp pain and helplessness you feel when that happens is what the labour will feel like, every few minutes or so. And the cramp will last from 30 seconds in the beginning (occurring every 10 minutes) to 90 seconds towards birth (occurring every 90 seconds). Wow! How I look forward to the pain!

We were also taught to look out for signs of actual labour (your body will have practice runs leading up to the big day) and Taryn did a very animated imitation of how someone will react to a real contraction – it will take your breath away and stop you from talking and walking. We also learned that only around 25% of women break their waters leading up to labour, and if the liquid is green or brown, your baby is in distress and has done a poo (nice one!). Mostly, one of the first signs of labour is a 'show'. I won't go into details here, you can Google it if you really want to know what that involves (probably not immediate before or after having a meal).

We also had a tour of the delivery suite. 4 weeks ago I wrote about how wonderful the birthing centre rooms were, well, the delivery suite was no different. You have the room to yourself. Besides the few monitoring equipment and the 3-part adjustable bed, it looks like a normal room. Stocked with distractions (one of the dads asked where the plasma TV was – oh, how all the dads laughed to that joke!) like Swiss ball, floor mat, cd player etc to cater to mum's comfort. My favourite was of course the en-suite bathroom, complete with bath and a 2 headed shower (so you can aim at 2 painful areas simultaneously). Dads are encouraged to join in the shower, provided that they wear swim wear (David would rather like to think that the nurses would enjoy seeing him without!).

Overall it was a great night, and we both look forward to the next 5 weeks of classes. Our group of 10 couples all seem very agreeable and I hope to make some friends so we can hang out after our babies are born.

We also had our appointment with midwife Alex. Everything is going really well. I'm growing at about 1 cm a week so that's well on track. And baby's heart was beating beautifully – a sound that always brings a huge smile to our faces.

Well, that's it for another week - week 24. If my labour is on the early side, we can expect a new baby is less than 13 weeks! Now isn't that an exciting thought!?

Love,

Viv