The one good thing that came out of my bad OB experience was that he recommended taking a Bradley Method birthing course. We found a Bradley class that we could fit into our schedule and dove right in. We'll let you know how the birth goes with this method, but everything we're learning makes intuitive sense. I'm not worried - one of my new colleagues had two very successful Bradley births - so it comes with high recommendations!
One of the most frequent questions we get is, "Is that like Lamaze?" And well, it's hard for us to say since we've never taken a Lamaze class.
From my understanding they're similar in that both focus on unmedicated, natural childbirth, and emphasize the importance of the labor coach (usually the baby's father or a doula).
The difference lies in philosophy. Bradley focuses on embracing the bodily sensations (err...pain) involved in labor and relaxing through deep breathing and visualizing those sensations so that the body can do what it was meant to. Lamaze focuses on deflecting pain through using other focal points (distraction) and breathing in a way that is theoretically supposed to act prophylactically.
Both seem to have good outcomes in terms of women having unmedicated births, Bradley's statistics claim that 86% of women who take the courses give birth vaginally without the use of pain medications of any kind. I couldn't find statistics on Lamaze.
What made me choose a Bradley course was that it's more intensive (12 weeks vs. 6weeks) and that it focuses on embracing all the bodily sensations of birth and working with them, rather than trying to mask them, which can work against their purpose.
If you're curious about the Bradley Method you can check out their website.
Our Bradley course is on Saturday afternoons for 2-3 hours in San Francisco. This is just over an hour away (if there's no traffic), which is hard sometimes, but it does get us out of the house and exploring the city every week! AND it's in the Mission district, where a lot of good Mexican restaurants are so it guarantees that my permanent Mexican food craving gets assuaged at least once each week!
1 comment:
I've never experienced the "Joy of Childbirth" myself or taken any of these classes, but I have to say that Lamaze always struck me as counter-productive (tensing up and hyperventilating). I agree that the Bradley method sounds much more intuitive. In fact, that slow relaxing breathing is exactly what I do whenever I am in pain.
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