Today we had our repeat ultrasound to check the placenta - all is well, it has moved up nicely and I am all set for a normal delivery whenever that should occur. I was a bit worried it might be too low, and I would have to have a C-section, but that is thankfully not a problem now.
Last week we also had our first antenatal class. The woman doing it is a bit more "all natural" than I expected, and I don't think we are going to feel comfortable having her as a doula after all. Still, a lot of useful information and some good ideas there. I was particularly pleased that Dean seems to have changed his mind about the whole giving birth thing, and has stopped saying "why don't you just have a C-section". Now he is on board with the whole idea of "birth as an extreme sport"! He is preparing a bag for me with power drinks, energy intense snacks and some kind of weird gel that you eat - we saw it on the Tour de France.
Actually, I think the idea of Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) is very valid. This is a modern psychological form of "mind over matter" - how you think and speak affects your experience. So the idea with birth in particular is to think and speak positively about it, to experience "pressure" and "contractions" in a positive and progressive way (as opposed to pain to be obliterated with drugs).
Not that I'm particularly aiming for a "drug-free" birth! I think modern medicine is a wonderful thing, and I'm very glad that if a C-section becomes necessary, that I'm booked into a place with all the bells and whistles! But it is also true that women have been birthing babies for a long time without any of that. I'm (relatively) young and healthy, and as fit as I have ever been, so there's no reason at all for me not to have a normal birth. That's what I'm thinking of and preparing for...
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