Bradley Method Classes

One of the things I used to help me mentally prepare was the knowledge that women have been giving birth for a very, very long time and medicine used to be nonexistent. So obviously it can be done without it. I hear some women use that "excuse" as a means of saying they don't need to educate themselves about their pregnancy or labor because they assume their bodies will just automatically do what needs to be done. To an extent, this is true. Our bodies innately know what to do to birth a child and our babies innately know what to do to be born. But that doesn't mean that preparation is not important. People have been running marathons for a very, very long time, and my body knows that a marathon means you need to run. But there's no way that I could just wake up one day and run a marathon without preparing myself. It's the same with labor. Preparation is key.

So to help us prepare for labor, we took a course called the "Bradley Method," which is a class that focuses on  having unmedicated, natural labor & delivery. We learned a lot about what the body is doing during labor, relaxation techniques to help cope, along with other practical information that helped me with exercises, diet, nutrition, etc. during pregnancy. We found the course to be very valuable and I used much of what I learned to help me cope during labor. Justin also learned how to be a good birthing partner. And I can tell he paid attention during class because he was so great during labor!

Here we are with our classmates. (Contrary to what it looks like, I did not actually escape from prison right before coming to class. If I had known it was going to be picture day, wide horizontal stripes would not have been my first choice of clothing! :)