Bradley class #1

Tonight I started our Bradley classes! It's a 10 week course... and if our teacher tries to shove as much into our heads as she did tonight...whooooa! I'm gonna be learning a lot!!!

I'm bummed out however, since Jeff works nights, he can't take the class with me. :-( Thankfully my awesome mom offered to fill in his place and be my "coach." Which I thought was a pretty great idea, since she needs a refresher on this stuff anyways. (As Debbra, the teacher said tonight: "Marni, how do you plan on being her coach? You might be in labor at the same time!!" ...hadn't really thought that thought through yet!) It'll be fun taking it with my mom, it's a good chance for us to visit and hang out without the little ones jumping all over, but I am jealous of the other ladies who are lucky enough to have their man with them.

We covered so much tonight. (And we darn well better! These classes go from 6:45-9:00pm!) My mind is spinning from all we learned...I wonder if i'd look silly bringing a pad of paper next week to keep notes...?

We learned tonight portion sizes for food. Bradley classes are ALL about eating healthy, and since they encourage us to eat so much, I was really happy to see what portion sizes really are. I had no idea! Of course though, as I'm trying to think of examples to share I can't remember most of them. The only one I do remember...I wish I could forget! Did you know that a serving size of ice cream is the size of a tennis ball?!? Whaaat? She can shove 2 eggs a day down my throat, she can force me to eat however many serving sizes of meat a day, she can make me walk and squat and everything else she said tonight. But DON'T mess with my ice cream serving sizes!!!!!!!

She also showed us various work outs we can do to help us feel better, sleep better, and in general, help us with labor. But most importantly, she showed us the "right" way to squat. So all these weeks that I've been exhausting myself and straining my feet trying to obey my midwife and squat...well they've all been in vain. I've been doing it all wrong. :-<

She encouraged us from now on, instead of bending over to pick something up we need to squat. Practical examples of this was doing dishes. Instead of bending over to put the dishes in the dishwasher (this applies only for the luckies who have dishwashers!) they need to squat to put them in the dishwasher. One quiet gal, suddenly exclaimed, "Forget the dishwasher! I'll hand wash." Psh! If I had a dishwasher I'd be thrilled to squat. (Truthfully, the only reason I'm even boring all of my readers by blogging this stuff...It is just to get out of doing my dishes for a little bit longer. Pathetic, right?)

Our instructor is one of my mom's friends. She's super fun, incredibly funny and so energetic. So it's nice to take this class from her, versus a stuffy old lady! But the way she talks and says things, she puts it so..."there ya go!" That you almost leave feeling stupid, thinking, "Why haven't I ever thought of that myself?"

For instance: obviously I'm completely opposed to being induced. I think every apple ripens at its own time...so do babies. Something Debbra said is, "Notice when you talk to new mom's who were induced, almost all of them say, "I had to be induced because I was a week overdue." Well, considering most women are induced these days, wouldn't you just assume that gestation is actually 40-41...sometimes later?" It was like a light bulb went on in my head...like "Oh duhhh!" It did however somewhat dampen my spirits, as I've really been hoping and keeping my fingers crossed that I'll have this baby a week or two early. But after listening to Debbra, I pretty much just need to assume that i'll be going a week or two "late."

My "homework" for this week is: practicing my kegals, squatting and eating healthy. And unfortunately, I can't just tell her that I ate well...she wants proof!

Debbra gave us all a little folder, and in the folder is a diet page. (Basically to keep track of everything we eat for her to look over and talk about.) She said in her 10 years of teaching Bradley classes she has only had to give one lady a sad face. Apparently the lady did so horribly on her eating that Debbra drew a big baby's face on the paper with tears running down its cheeks and said, "This is your baby crying." ROTFLOL--I thought that was a little harsh, but apparently the next week the lady came back with an excellent diet page! As soon as I saw the page and realized we have to daily fill it out, I thought, "I failed already." I told my mom heading home, that I'll just draw the sad crying baby face on it for her, to spare her the agony of having to do it herself.

One other thing (amongst many!) that she said is, "If you are going to eat something unhealthy...make it count. For instance, which is "better"--a snickers bar or bag of chips? The snickers bar, because then at least you can count the peanuts towards our daily needed protein.

I can totally work with that logic.

I'll end this post here, so that I can get scooting and figure out how to justify the cupcake that I just ate. It does have eggs in it...eggs are good for me! Right? ;-)