Bradley Moms of 2+ How Are You Preparing?

pixieprincss

Re-reading books? Winging it? What about DH?

DS wasn't born that long ago, so I like to think that I remember all of our Bradley stuff, but I just read chapter 1 from the workbook and had indeed forgotten stuff (like the butterfly exercise). I feel like a champ in relaxation breathing since biofeedback was part of my post-partum pelvic PT that ended just ended in October, but now I am questioning if I really am as prepared as I was thinking I was. Plus, there is DH and his prep to factor in. Even though we are with a CPM this PG,  I want DH to be a fully-prepared coach like last time. I'm thinking that I will read through the whole  book, and am considering DH to do it with me--maybe a 30 min prep "date" once a week, or something.

StefandTodd

I've been thinking about the same thing.  I know we won't be as dedicated to it as we were last time.  Maybe I feel okay with it since my last labor was pretty quick, we have/had a doula who really helped him coach me anyway, and this one will be a homebirth.  I'm more confident in the process, having done it before, I guess.  But I do hope to still do relaxation exercises with him a couple times a week towards the end.

I've also asked him to start reading through The Birth Partner and maybe we'll glance through our workbook a little.

wannabigfam

Our Bradley teacher offered free repeats of the entire course, but unfortunately she moved away :-(  But another local teacher offered to let us just take the classes we wanted (so we're taking probably 4 of the 12, the ones mainly that do the practice positions for relaxation during labor & talk about the stages of labor).  I never really did the exercises in the book last time; instead I took prenatal yoga which covered most of them.  Then the teacher offered to let us do a private refresher course (2 sessons for $100) if we still needed some more refreshing.  I'm also going to read the books. 

jteneback

I'm not pregnant yet but I plan on winging it for the most part and probably refresh on a few things.  We wound up not using most of the techniques, although the info was invaluable.  I do want DH to learn to catch because I'm anticipating a fast labor (my first was only 6 hours.)