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Paul's Diary Entries Diary Navigation: Choose A Diary Entry -------------------- Latest Entry: 9/27/00 -------------------- 9/5/00 8/23/00 8/3/00 7/19/00 7/12/00 6/28/00 6/19/00 -------------------- Paul's Introduction

Introduction

Hello, Readers!

Well, there's been an awful lot going on in our lives over the last couple of weeks. There’s going to be even more in the next two, so I think I'll break things down into a couple of subjects rather than ramble from one to the next, as is my usual course.

Travel, together and apart
Two weeks ago, Anne and I went to Tucson, Ariz., to visit her parents and rendezvous with her grandparents, who live in San Francisco. It was a wonderful week filled with lots of good food, copious naps, and time to talk and swim. I’m fortunate in that I really enjoy my wife’s family, and feel very strongly that they must always be a regular, consistent part of our life together, despite the distance. (Anne and I, and much of my family and history, are in Cleveland, Ohio).

So it was a great trip, filled with much baby dreaming and storytelling. Unfortunately, we weren’t home before I hit the road again: A couple days that week in Virginia, a couple this week in San Diego, and I leave in 48 hours for a week in Copenhagen, Denmark. Now, for those of you reading who don’t have such a lifestyle, let me tell you there’s little glamorous about it. It’s lots of late night, red-eye flights; cancellations and delays; ugly, nondescript hotels; and, an equal mix of fast food eaten alone and fine dining, sprinkled with lots of technology-in-business stuff. Not exactly the stuff of which vacations are made.

Worst of all, my tolerance for being away from Anne is rapidly waning. I’ve made my commitment -- to not travel from a month before to two months after Joshua is born -- clear to everyone, and to some extent, I think I reiterate it to make it undeniable to myself as well. So I just need to gut it out for another six weeks or so, and we can focus together on preparing our hearts and home even more for the wonderful event we’re expecting.

Birthing Classes
Anne and I are choosing an alternative method for Joshua’s birth, rather than conventional Lamaze classes. Anne investigated and was intrigued by a school of thought and practice called Hypnobirthing, which uses self-hypnosis, guided imagery, and other heightened-consciousness exercises to enter into the birthing experience without fear. Now, I should preface all of this by saying that I am not a spokesman for this technique, nor am I trained in it beyond reading a book and attending two of the four individual training sessions we’ve had thus far.

That being said, they teach that fear and anxiety at the expectation of a painful birth becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. The example is of the athlete who sprains something during the heat of competition hardly noticing the injury or the pain associated with it, because he is so completely focused on the task at hand. It’s only when that concentration is broken by the conclusion of the event that awareness of the injury is acknowledged. Similarly in delivery, which should be a very natural event, if the body anticipates pain, muscles clench and the tension is felt by both the mother and the child.

If instead the mother can, in the context of the heightened state of consciousness that hypnosis brings, welcome and embrace and breathe through the "surges" that others would call labor pains, she can effectively relax the counter-positioned muscles of the uterus. Not panting -- panting is draining. This is slow, deep hypnotic breathing.

Sound crazy? Well, we watched several videos of couples using this method, (wherein, by the way, the husband or birthing partner plays a very supportive, insulating role) and the births we saw, and those that have been studied, were much faster, didn’t use Pitocin or epidurals, and were very peaceful, quiet, even reverent affairs.

So, we’re committed to giving this a try, and like my weeks’ earlier mention of the Babywise philosophy of Parent Directed Feeding, we’re also committed to talking through the decisions we’re making. I’m sure I’ll have more to tell you as these subjects progress.

Paul