Second NCT Class

So last Wednesday night was the second of our NCT classes, this time we were practically the first couple to arrive, still managing (using our amazing powers of judgement) to bag the worst place for Flyingpops to sit (a huge sofa with virtually no back support)...the session kicked off (when everyone had arrived) with the group being split into three groups (I got the kitchen crew, Flyingpops the living room posse and the rest had to huddle in the hall) where we had to modify (with black and red marker pens) a large picture of the outline of a gingerbread person so he (or more probably she) was exhibiting signs of stress...so we duly scribbled on rough approximations of frowns, fists, weights on the shoulders and speech bubbles with "F*** off" all over it earning us the comment "I should be quite concerned at how familiar you all are with the physical signs of stress" from the tutor...

I won the teachers pet award for knowing that all these were due to the "fight or flight response" (largely caused by the hormone Adrenalin) and we were then treated to a little display demonstrating what effect this could have during pregnancy, and it's all sorts of nasty things, but most importantly Oxygen is diverted away from the uterus and baby, Oxytocin is rendered less effective (one of it's key jobs is uterine contraction), and all this works together to basically grind everything to a halt...this is precisely why some women are in and out of hospital like a yo-yo...at home - contractions fine, getting more frequent, everything looking good for delivery in the near future, unfortunately once the mum gets into hospital, if they start to feel stressed then the whole thing shuts down and you have to pick all the bags of snacks, lotions and pads back up and return home until she calms down again...extremely useful in the days when a bear or lion might spring through the entrance to the cave, forcing a quick getaway but rather annoying in this day and age...we concluded that section with five minutes of deep breathing and muscle clenching...

Probably the other most important thing we learned during the rest of the evening (as we went through the three stages of child birth) was that eating and drinking are extremely important - apparently the mother will burn up something like 4000 calories during the process, so it's important to have a good selection of sugary snacks to keep energy levels high, oh and drinking needs to be handled extremely carefully as the bladder will be squashed down to a very tiny size indeed as the space around the cervix is reduced (and sitting on the toilet is an annoyingly comfortable position for giving birth apparently, but not to be encouraged for obvious reasons)...oh and I am also not to take offense if Flyingpops becomes a little insensitive to my ministrations in the latter stages of childbirth, apparently activity in the neocortex is going to practically flat-line, and that section of the brain is the one (that in humans) is responsible for language...interesting stuff!