I’m on a mailing list with people in my neighborhood, mostly mothers (and other aspiring mothers). The mailing list is intended to offer community guidance, share information about local events, and even provide the freebie or two.
There’s a lot of great information about parenting exchanged on the list, such as free advice in lieu of a lactation consultant (but not everybody is so lucky), what to do when your kid is afraid to poop, how to transition toddlers to real beds (and the golden question – “are toddler beds really necessary?”), and more. There was an incredibly heated discussion just a few weeks ago about vaccinations and how some parents, for whatever reason, want to find out what kind of “religious exemptions” they could pull out of a hat in order to actually be admitted into school. (You can imagine how that one went.)
In any event, the latest question is about birthing classes — you know, those classes that are supposed to prepare you for your pregnancy, your labor, and parenthood. Are they necessary? Where should you go? Are they all the same? How can I find a high quality birthing class? The mailing list has one individual who likes to volunteer her feedback on every single email thread. (Kind of annoying, especially given how her comments add no value and she hasn’t understood the few requests to keep her commentary to a minimum.)
Anyway, she made some random comment about how the class was trying to teach her to handle a kid who might be breached. And then I realized something rather funny, though mostly in a coincidental way.
In my birthing class, we watched a lot of videos. In one, the narrator said (unless it was the nurse’s repetition) that toward the end of the pregnancy, you can start to think of the baby’s head sliding out like butter or like a flower blooming, and that your cervix will open in such a way to smoothly let the baby leave your womb. It was added that if you think along these lines, it might be a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Well, for what it’s worth, this statement was made one day before I “officially” went into labor, two days before David was born, and six weeks before he was expected to arrive.