Last month I introduced the work we are doing around pregnancy
and birth, and supporting women and their partners to use
person-centred practices.
Since then Karina, the mid-wife, and I have co-facilitated three
ante-natal classes. After each section we have asked people to
reflect on it and add information to their one-page profile, their
person-centred birth plan or the 'Birth Partners Job
description'.
This is how Karina described the very first class:
"Tuesday was our first ante-natal class using person-centred
thinking tools. I arrived at the venue with mixed feelings,
excitement about what the evening might hold and some trepidation
about how the experience would unfold, both for our participants,
as well as for Helen and myself as facilitators. This experience is
an adventure and as with all adventures I worried about the tricky
bits we might encounter on our way.
Prior to the start of the course everyone had been asked to
bring with them their personal 'Hopes and Fears' for this
childbearing journey.
This linked in nicely with our first activity which was setting
the content of the programme, with participants keeping these hopes
and fears in mind when thinking about the information they wanted
the course to cover. In the first week we introduced people to the
idea of one-page profiles, person-centred birth plans, and the
'Birth Partners Job Description'. We are building these session by
session. The one-page profile is both for the woman and her
partner, so that we can keep a focus on what matters to each
person, and how they want to be supported through pregnancy.
Week-by-week we are adding to the person-centred birth plan. This
describes what is important to the woman in birth and how she wants
to be supported by the midwife and others. We are using the 'Birth
Partners Job Description' as a way to clearly describe the support
that the woman wants and needs from her birth partner. This issue
came up immediately in the first session to set the content of the
progamme, when one of the men asked "What does the male do during
birth?"
Having introduced the person-centred thinking tools and how we
are going to use them, we then looked at pregnancy and all that it
can bring with it (in the bothersome and uncomfortable sense of the
word!). We talked about backache and heartburn, as well as more
serious things like bleeding and pre eclampsia, and then Helen
asked everyone to use this information to think about what they
might need in order to support themselves through the normal
discomforts of pregnancy and to discuss with their partners what
they or others might do to help. The women added this to their
one-page profile, describing the support they wanted to get through
the discomforts of pregnancy.
Early labour was our next topic, 'How will we know?' is the
commonly asked question. 'Oh you'll know' is the usual response
from those with experience. This is true, but not always reassuring
to those trying to imagine an experience that is beyond imagining.
Hopefully the information given in the session helped to reassure,
if not completely allay anxieties.
Getting the group to think again after this session about how
they will manage emotions as well as physical sensations and
practical arrangements, had people coming up with all kinds of
different and individual ways of dealing with the experience. Ways
to help them feel more comfortable and to stay calm and positive -
ranging from 'gathering people around to getting organised, from
meditation to talking about anything BUT labour'- each to their own
as the saying goes. This information then went straight on to the
'how best to support me part of the 'One Page Profile' which will
eventually form part of the 'Birth Plan'. So far so good!
Learning about the pelvis proved to be a more light-hearted
affair and saw both men and women sprawling on the floor, locating
their own pelvic 'landmarks' and charting them on the paper beneath
their bottoms. Not for the bashful and prompted exclamations about
how small it appears to be. This was an excellent opportunity to
talk about the design wonders of the human body and its ability to
adapt, accommodate and yield.
Over the next week, everyone has been asked to think about and
record what for them makes a day good or bad, and bring the
information with them to the next class. It will be fascinating for
me to see how that information will contribute to the picture of
the whole person and their unique life that's developing
already.
It's time to tidy up and pack the car at the end of an
exhausting and exhilarating evening. Time to ponder on the events
of the evening, on the things that worked and didn't. There had
been a couple of tricky moments and the start of a new group is
always full of surprises until people become more comfortable in
each other's company and figure out how to relate to each other.
But on the whole, I think we all left having learned something new
and with a greater understanding of the diversity of every
individual's needs and aspirations, especially when it comes to one
of life's most important events, so all in all, not a bad evenings
work."
