Yoga friend was attending the class too.
It started at 13:30 and we got there 15 minutes before time and the place was empty. You know where you get that feeling that you got the date or time or venue wrong? It was a bit like that.
Once it turned 13:25 it was suddenly heaving so I can only assume everyone was hiding in their cars all that time.
I thought I'd better go to loo and when I found it, it was dark inside. Luckily there was a switch right next to the door so I flicked it and the entire hallway was cast into total darkness too!
Turns out the switch for the loo was on the inside of the door.
I returned to James to tell him my funny tale but as I got to the punch line he finished it for me! It must have controlled a hell of a lot of lights...
Eventually my own midwife appeared and we were ushered into a room and it quickly became clear that there was too many couples for the number of chairs. Apparently they are supposed to allow for 10 couples but they had allowed 13 instead.
It was really quite packed in there and it was warm and humid and I don't do well in that kind of environment so I immediately started feeling sick and as the midwife (and her two assistant midwives) started off by introducing themselves and jumped right into talking about the signs of labour, I suddenly felt that it was going to be a very long class indeed.
They talked about contractions, bloody show and waters breaking and it was all pretty text book stuff and I was feeling really bored and uncomfortable. James didn't help because he's got a really bad trapped nerve and he was holding it to show he was in a lot of discomfort too.
I did learn that brown red blood in mucus plug is fine but fresh blood is bad, though. That's something I guess.
A few other girls gave out gasps when they realised that your waters breaking isn't an isolated gush but a constant flow of wetness until the baby arrives. I don't know why they were so disappointed which is how they sounded... No point wearing their new silk knickers for admission maybe? The midwife said to put pads on and wear a dirty one on for when you see the midwife so they can look at it.
It reminded me of when my sister had signs of labour and they were giving her a sweep to get things really moving and she took her knickers off and for reasons I'm going to save you the details of, I thought to myself how minging it was that she hadn't even changed her pad before going in. Turns out that is exactly what they want you to do! (omfg ick ick ick)
I think I might actually have to put a fresh one on and keep the dirty one in a plastic bag or something.
The next thing the midwife did was pass a laminated image of a stage of labour to each pregnant women and ask them to place them on the floor in the correct order. I eye rolled just a little because the effort to get us all up and interacting when we weren't even communicating with each other seemed unnecessary, but once I realised that the differences in each progressing image was really quite subtle I found it a bit more intriguing.
Upon returning to my seat I discovered that they'd handed out laminated words to each partner and they had to place them next to the corresponding image to identify when each word might be experienced, for example "irregular contractions" went at the start along with "TENS". Other words included "swearing", "moaning", "epidural", "vitamin K" etc etc. There was about 30 words in total and many were very ambiguous.
Next the midwife started talking her way around the images and the words that had been placed near to them.
Again, mostly textbook stuff that anyone who'd even attempted to google about what was to come would know.
I did find it interesting to learn about the behaviour links to which stage of labour you might be at.
For example, if you can talk at all through a contraction then you might as well stay at home and your husband will probably know when it's time to go to the hospital because he will noticed that he's being ignored.
Another example was that the compulsion to moan would tend to happen at transition, when your babies head is just about ready to be pushed out.
I also learned that the regularity and duration of established contractions can vary from one person to the next, but once they repeat in a regular pattern and intensity then you should phone the hospital.
Some of the women were particularly interested in what qualifies them for a csection, clearly having a desire to opt for one over a vaginal delivery.
There was one girl there who wasn't native and didn't sound like she'd been here long due to the strength of her accent and she was saying something like "Surely the Nhs wouldn't refuse me if I wanted a csection though, they'd just do whatever I wanted them to do" and admittedly it got my back up a bit, just the flaws in the system and all of that kind of stuff where you find yourself wondering what treatment they'd get if they were still in the country from which they came.
The midwives were clearly in favour of vaginal deliveries though and rightly so in my opinion. Well, they'd be out of a job for a start!
After all of that I was surprised to find that 2 hours had passed and it was time to go, so I guess I must have got into it afterall.
Driving away afterwards James asked "Will the NCT ones be better?" so that about sums up his opinion on them.
In hindsight, I thought they were ok but I must admit that I quite missed all the "stupid and embarrassing" stuff where they get you to sit with your partner and practice giving birth and stuff. Apparently they don't do that anymore.
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