opinions on *birthing from withen* classes?

[alisonsage]

my midwife reccomended that i take birthing from withen classes, and i have signed up for some that start monday, but i am beginning to worry that they will not give me the tools i need for my first homebirth. i had my first dd in a hospital and really felt like i did not have any pain coping techniques to draw upon. i labored naturally for 12 hours and only progressed to 5 1/2cm. at this point i had an epidural and dilated completely to 10cm in less than an hour. i believe i was not letting my body relax and open up because i was fighting the pain and the contractions.

should i look into bradley method classes instead? am i too far along? i am beginning to freak out a little bit- i am at 26wks right now so it seems a little late to start bradley classes.

any advice helps mamas! thank you!!

[Doula Gina]

I love BFW. I teach a lot out of the book in my classes, though I'm not a BFW certified instructor. They offer a great philosophy, with very good coping techniques and help to integrate your unique experience into your life, whatever that birth experience may be. IME, Bradley can help some couples, but it isn't the end-all, be-all of Childbirth education. It's also very expensive and time consuming.

Maybe you can flip through the book - check out the chapter about pain coping techniques, and I think you'll find a wide array of tools that are easy to use in labor and don't require you to use your thinking brain, but let you go with the flow - so essential to the end stages of labor when your body just takes over and can overwhelm that brain if it's thinking too hard!

(And this is coming from someone who had a baby yesterday at home, using almost exclusively the jedi mind tricks from BFW)

[nadine]

i LOVED the bfw class that we took. with my first baby i labored for 14 hours and then got an epidural (i hadn't been progressing past 4cm). once i had the epidural i was checked 2 hours later and was completely dilated. prior to the epidural i had been tensing up with every contraction and fighting it.

with my second child, we took the bfw class. it was so wonderful! in that labor, i never once tensed up and was able to relax, i was so amazed with myself and proud.

i would recommend the bfw class to everyone, i thought it was great!

[Snowdrift]

I'm not a huge fan of any childbirth class system, but it seems to me that with your situation you might also want to think about hypnobirth.

[alisonsage]

doula gina and nadine, thanks for the positive reinforcement. i really appreciate it. i think i am just starting to get nervous and am second guessing myself!

[ananas]

I don't have any opinion on the classes, but I really enjoyed the book. I think if I were ever to take a birthing class, it would be that one.

[JanetF]

Just being at home will make a big difference since you won't have the things which are scary there making you pump adrenaline. Try this article to see how simply being out of that anti-birth environment will aid you enormously to access your own instinctive way of birthing It's all within!

[Nora'sMommy]

I'm a huge fan of Bradley classes. Complete relaxation, visualization, and a supportive husband was exactly what I needed during my first birth which was a total of 5 hours. All the practice during the course and my pregnancy resulted in me knowing what to do like second nature the moment my contractions became intense. But I also like alot of what I read in Birthing from Within. Seems like alot of stuff in the 2 methods is on completely different sides of the fence.

I signed up for my Bradley classes when I was still planning on giving birth at a birth center. But since you're giving birth at home, I'd probably go with the BfW classes and definitely read "Natural Childbirth the Bradley Way".....I think that's what it's called, by Susan McCutchen?

It's hard to tell what you'll like during labor, this way you can have a storehouse of info in you brain and what you want will come to you like second nature.

Plus it's normal to feel a bit apprehensive in the days/weeks leading up to delivery, as I was and am again this time. But I also remember that as soon as I realized I was in labor any fear left me and excitement and focus took it's place.

[sebarnes]

I just got finished with my BFW classes, and I loved them! I actually did hypnobirthing with my first, and while there were things about it that I liked, it just wasn't a good fit with me. BFW actually has many different pain coping techniques it teaches, and really, like someone mentioned earlier, they are kind of like Jedi Mind Tricks, which are kind of like self hypnosis, which is kind of like some of what hypno classes teach. The difference is that BFW doesn't try to promise you that you won't have any pain. Just that you can experience pain without it being suffering. Beyond the things BFW teaches you about physical birth, it helps you explore a lot of things about emotional birth. In fact, I kind of think of it as "birth therapy." And since I believe the majority of problems in births occur due to emotional issues, I think this is a near perfect CBE class!

[hubris]

I took Bradley classes during my first pregnancy. Honestly, I wasn't a fan of them. The pregnancy, intervention, and nutrition info was all old news to me, and the relaxation/visualization info was not helpful to me. In the end, I ended up going with what my intuition told me to do, not any of the techniques taught in the class. That worked for me. Bradley classes were still a good investment, not for my sake, but because they turned my medical-minded DH into a total natural childbirth advocate, so THAT was good...I just didn't find them helpful from the coping-method standpoint.

During my second pregnancy, I read Birthing From Within and LOVED it. I really wish that I had taken BFW classes during my first pregnancy. The coping suggestions in the book appealed to me much more than the Bradley suggestions. I did end up using some of what I read about in BFW during my second labor/birth.

I also personally like the tone of the general message in BFW much better than the general tone of the Bradley book and classes.

My advice? Get your hands on both books and see which method suits you more.

[DoomaYula]

I'm in the minority: I hated BFW, and I didn't feel it helped me AT ALL during labor and birth (and I had the TEACHER as my DOULA!)

The art? Did nothing. Practicing dealing with ctx by holding ice? Please. If contractions felt like freezing ice in my hand.... that was the worst analogy ever.

The moaning/growling we practiced did help. But it wasn't worth $350.

I would not recommend it to anyone.

[hubris]

Originally Posted by YumaDoula

Practicing dealing with ctx by holding ice? Please. If contractions felt like freezing ice in my hand.... that was the worst analogy ever.

I totally agree with that, although I wouldn't consider it a knock against BFW in favor of Bradley - because it was Bradley classes that introduced me to the ice = practice contraction thing! It struck me as pretty lame. Some people grok with it, though.

You really hated the art? It was the art that made me wish that I had taken BFW classes!

And, OP... this is why I recommended getting the books and getting a feel for each style, and then deciding! You just never can tell what YOUR preference will be!

[Eaglevoice]

I took BFW classes when pg with dd. I thought the ice was lame, too. But I got a lot out of the class and I'm glad I took it. I loved the art. I used it to focus on during my contractions. I had it plastered on the walls all around my birthing tub.

[DoomaYula]

And it's weird, I LIKE art normally! I just couldn't feel creative about birth, ya know? I see it as hard work and I felt like doing art about it was just... I don't know the word... like making light of it?

Anyway, I agree, read some books before you pick a thing. I have a friend who is a hypno instructor and she's loaning me some cd's to see if I like them. And I have the Bradley book.

[GooeyDay]

I love this thread because I am in the same situation! My first was a hospital birth full of interventions and me feeling ineffectual. Now I am planning an HB and I really want to be prepared/have a plan so I am looking at the classes: Bradley and BfW.

I have heard that Bradley classes are highly dependent on the teacher. My MIL has had four HBs ~ She did Bradley with the last and said that she had wished she'd had it all along, the birthing technique fit so well with her (compared with Lamaze)! But I worry that too many of the 12 weeks will be "wasted" on nutrition and hospital stuff.

I know little about BfW ~ I really don't mean this to insult any practitioners, but my impression of it was something like "Don't worry about the pain, draw a picture for your baby!" Hehe

Anyway, I'd love to hear more experiences regarding each one... And I really appreciated the advice of checking out the books before signing up.

Paace
~* Laura

[Shelsi]

I chose not to do Bradley because I really felt like I would be bored out of my mind at the classes. Since ds's horrible hospital birth experience I've been a birth nut and read everything I could get my hands on. I know the interventions, I know how labor works, I know the nutrition (even if I don't follow it very well! lol). The only good I thought it might do is to help dh...except when it comes to pain or intense feelings I'm a loner. I don't want anyone near me and I don't want anyone to even attempt to touch me. I need dh to get me water when I call for it or an extra pillow or whatever but I don't need him to help me relax.

They don't have any Birthing Within classes near me but I read through the book and found it to be too woo-woo for me. Like YumaDoula, the art just doesn't do it for me at all.

So I picked hypnobabies. I'm on week 3 and so far I am really loving it. I've learned to relax sooo much and it helps me in every day life as well. It doesn't promise a pain free birth although it does say it's possible...I think it's really about training your mind to think of the pain in a different way (pressure instead of pain for example) and to be able to relax your muscles as much as possible and let your body do it's work. I chose hypnobabies over hypnobirthing because it uses eyes open hypnosis meaning I can move around, walk, carry on a conversation, etc and still be in a state of hypnosis or I can lie down somewhere or be fully supported and go deeper if I need to.

[sarahtdubb]

I'm currently taking a Bradley class, and I really like it. I can't compare it to much, as this is my first pregnancy, but I would recommend it. Yes, it's boring sometimes, but it's great just to be in a room with other women going through something similar to me, and the discussions and reading have made me feel really empowered and prepared. They equip you without a lot of evidence and reading about birth as natural process, and I feel like I'm getting to know my body in a new way.

One of the things we read cited a study that said that women's experience of pain in labor was based largely on their "confidence in their ability to cope with labor"-- that was revelatory to me! And that's what I'm working on in our Bradley class-- my confidence in my own abilities.

So far most of our classes have been pretty basic, but we get into more details about stages of labor this week.

Also, although I'm planning a HB, I find the stuff about hospitals really useful. I think it prepares me just in case, and also is actually helping me come to terms with hospitals-- my thinking has changed from "hospitals are BAD!", to "hospitals are set up to do certain things in certain ways," and I'll be glad it's there if I need it, and I'll be prepared for what might happen there.

[wannathird]

I enjoyed birthign with in

I really enjoyed birthing with in it was a 3 day weekned course it was amazing how much my husband loved it and participated it was nothign like the typical birthing classes it helped me have my daughter naturally.

[rajahkat]

Has anyone taken any Birthworks classes?

Kat

[weliveintheforest]

I did enjoy birthing from within, but I really think I should have practised the coping techniques more. It wasn't really smart to think I could be told once and I'd remember.