Planning for this time round

All in all, my birth experience with Harris was what I would consider a pretty good one. I have very strong feelings about advocacy and personal decision making around birthing choices and I believe that Women need to empower themselves for their birthing experience through information.
Like anything that you have never done before, it is a learning experience and the ONLY thing that can help you in this particular case is reading and gaining information from LOTS of different sources so that you are as prepared as you can be - whilst realising that in reality, you have absolutely no control of the situation on the day. I am also passionate about women having realistic expectations of their birth experience - but that is a whole other post.

I had very realistic expectations of what would happen during labour and birth last time and I made choices accordingly. However, throughout the process and in my thinking about it afterwards, I realised that i could have done more.

There are lots and lots of different options out there for assistance in preparing for the birth of a baby, Calm Birth courses, Hospital Antenatal classes, Australian Breastfeeding Assiciation Breastfeeding Education Classess are just some of the options available.

However, the two things that I become most interested in after Harris's birth were Active Pain management and Meditation for Pregnancy. So those are the tools I am planning to arm myself with this time around.

Juju Sundin is a well know Australian physiotherapist who specializes in Active pain management in labour and while I would LOVE to be able to get to Sydney to one of her courses, I don't think that I would manage a three hour drive to Sydney when I am in my final trimester - and that's when the courses are held.  So I have gone with purchasing her book as my alternative, and I hope that I am able to gain at least a few new skills to help things along this time around.

I am also very lucky to have met a skilled\ meditation teacher who runs pregnancy specific classes and courses in the ACT, and I am going to try and get along to her meditation for Pregnancy classes.

Let's hope that I can get some benefits from a slightly different approach this time around!

My plans for this coming weekend include hopefully getting to the gym on Saturday morning and going for a walk on Sunday. A walk on monday and Gym again on Tuesday.