Birth Boot Camp Review

I am currently editing the birth story for Little Bean. In the meantime, I owe you all a review of Birth Boot Camp.

I mentioned before that we were using Birth Boot Camp to prepare for the birth of our second child. I talked about it a couple of times. Some people thought we were silly for taking birthing classes for our second child - especially since their births are only 2 1/2 years apart and we had taken a birthing class before Turtle-Love was born. I have to say, we are both very glad to have gone ahead with the Birth Boot Camp classes.

We live in Virginia, and at present there are no Birth Boot Camp Instructors here (maybe in the near future I hope), and Toad's work schedule is a bit crazy because it is event based, so we likely wouldn't have been able to attend all of the in person classes anyhow - so we went with online classes.

There are ups and downs to online classes - I do really well with them because I can take them at my own pace in my own spare time. Also because the videos are pre-recorded and available to you for 3 months (even though it is a 10 week course) you can go over them as many times and as often as needed. Toad, however, is more of a hands on learner so he found the classes a little more difficult to focus on. After a couple tries, he found what worked for him to be able to focus.

Even though we could take the classes at our own time, we still had scheduling difficulties. His schedule and my schedule rarely worked up to give us time other than at night to do the classes when we were very tired. Also, Turtle-Love is 2, and I didn't want to give up any more time with him than vitally necessary which made it difficult to do the classes as well. Imagine watching a video you need to pay attention to while your 2 year old decides he has discovered he can climb o.0 We ended up having someone watch him a couple times - which meant he was hanging out downstairs with family while we were in our apartment because of our unique living situation. There was also a tragic death in our family that kept us away from birth preperations for a bit. As we started running out of time we watched a couple videos sperately and discussed them together afterwords. Even still, I had to email in and ask for an extension to our access, which was happily granted, the week Little Bean was born because we hadn't been able to finish all the classes just yet.

Birth Boot Camp really covered so many topics and provided so much information. I really didn't expect to learn as much as I did since this was our second birth, but I was so thankful for the resources provided. My pregnancy went swimmingly well, even though we did face a couple *almost* complications. Little Bean was breech for a while, and then we thought we might have to talk about induction as we quickly approached her due date.However, we never panicked because we had all this great information right at our fingertips!

There is also a wonderful workbook that comes along with these classes. It is great for sparking conversation between you and your birth team so everyone is educated and knows what to expect, and what you want and need. There are exercises and coping techniques, diagrams and charts, and even a diet plan to help you stay on track with your prenatal vitamins, water intake etc. Don't freak out over the word diet - I looked at it more as a suggested food and servings list and it really helped. I'm not sure if that is how it is meant to be honest, but I suck at diets in general and usually eat what I'm craving ;-p Hey, while you are pregnant that is absolutely allowed!

Anyhow - as I've been trying to write this on and off for TWO WEEKS now I'll wrap this up...

Whenever I meet someone who is pregnant and interested in birth classes, I pimp Birth Boot Camp out.
Anytime I talk about the birth of Little Bean I pimp Birth Boot Camp out.

The lesson here is that Birth Boot Camp helped me rock my pregnancy and my birth.

Don't worry, that story (Little Bean's birth story) is coming soon. (Lord help me, I swear it is already typed I just have to edit it and add pictures.)

We Aren't Ready

I was having this conversation with my little sister via AIM just a few minutes ago and realized, I should just freaking blog it.

I was whining to her that I have a ton of things to get done (both at work and at home, but since I'm at work I was speaking of work...) and that I'm lacking the motivation to get it all done. Which prompted her to ask me if I've packed my hospital bag yet. She has had her hospital bag (she isn't pregnant, she is part of my birth team) ready and in her car for several weeks now. Since I was like 34 weeks along. This is my response to her, verbatim (because I'm too lazy to recap so I just used copy pasta. Yes, pasta)

    We have clothes in a drawer waiting to be put into a bag, and I have some fo my bathroom stuff together waiting to be put into a bag. I have my rice sock and tennis ball and lotion ready to be packed and I bought the snacks I wanna take last night
    I just have to put everything together
    I'm so unorganized and all over the place and I feel like I can't find the time to get anything done. By the time I get home I look around and think of all the things I need to do and just get really frustrated because I can't do them by myself, I don't have everything I need, or I just get overwhelmed with where to start
    And every time I go downstairs to get something ready I get resistance from [names of people we live with go here] and bullshit comments - or I get sucked into some vortex of theirs
    Which I know I shouldn't let bother me but it does
    I really just want to go ahead and take off from work to try and get it all done
    but I cant
    And I feel like because I'm not ready, she isn't coming
    and so she will be late because I'm late to do everything
    its just a really big bullshit and unhealthy cycle

Here she mentions something about how I can only do one thing at a time

     Well I tried to get my bag together the night you were leaving. But then I found out my luggage of course smells like smoke so I don't want to put anything in it. So that's why everything (well... everything we have) is sitting in a drawer. I'm airing the bags out.
     But even then I don't have everything from the list together. Either I don't have it, or its on the wrong floor and when I try to collect it from said floor I get stopped to do something else and completely lose track of what I'm doing and bam. Nothing gets done

Here we talk about how I haven't put anything in my bags because they smell like smoke and I'm airing them out. She comments about how I haven't used my luggage since I quit smoking/we moved out of our old house which was smoked in(not just by me).

    My duffel bag is HUGE so I don't think I need all of that
    Maybe I'll just throw it all in there anyways and say fuck it
    because now that my luggage has been sitting outside on the front porch for 2 days I'm sure it is A- full of bugs and B- smells like smoke again

Four members of my family that we live with smoke. Which would be all the adult members that we live with, excluding my husband and I (my sister doesn't live with us - nor does she smoke). They all smoke outside but if you've ever lived with a smoker you know how the smell wiggles its way in anyways which really bugs me and makes me thankful I have my own, completely smoke free (because no one walks all the way up there) apartment to run away my duffel bag has escaped the smoke and been used a ton of times since moving so I have no issue with it aside from its very large size.

She mentions that means I can fit my pillows inside it. Sweet. Done. I'll do that.

Anyhow - the problem is that I just have so much to do still! We haven't gotten the house ready or finished getting the things we need for Little Bean.  We still haven't finished our damn birth classes. Seriously - my husband's schedule sucks for finding time to do this when paired with the other timing crap we deal with. And it is pretty difficult to pay attention to a birth video while you or your husband is falling asleep. Or while your toddler is running around like a crazy person. I don't want to send him downstairs to be with someone else I want to spend time with him! I'm away from him all day at work, I miss him while I'm at my prenatal exercise classes, and then I have to try and squeeze this video in... it's just rough.

Never mind. I'm done whining. I need to try and get something accomplished at work today. Make that several things. Maybe then I can feel a little bit better.