Last Saturday I attended my first birth/antenatal class. It was interesting and not what I expected to say the least.
I went with high expectations and excitement to IHK- I mean birth class!, this was a new thing (in Uganda) and having read the detailed time table of the topics for each week on the bulletin board on the maternity ward a week before, I was sure this was going the real thing like I had heard from friends like Lucy and read from BabyCenter. Okay, I think I forgot that I live in Uganda and I got my head buried in the stories I was reading online.
I sauntered into the class and 10:45 am, restless, eager and mad at myself for being 15 mins late. I had already missed three classes (plus the most important, to me, about labor and birth) and thus had resolved to make the most out of the remaining 5 classes. I was escorted by a nice nurse to the physiotherapy room where the classes were scheduled to be held. Before this, however, this nice nurse had no idea about the classes when I asked her at the reception. She was sure I was either lost or mistaken and had first told me that the classes were not held at the hospital and that if they were, Saturday was not the day. My heart sunk for 10 seconds and I felt a slight mixture of disappointment and anger begin to rise from bulging tummy. I mean, I had been reliably told by my midwife a week before about the classes and it was on her recommendation that I was there. Was she wrong? Did she tell me the wrong day, or location? After having a hurried breakfast, driving like a maniac in the morning rain and parking in a muddy parking spot all in the hope of being on time, and then this! Someone was truly gonna pay. Strike 1!
Luckily, before my heated emotions rose to heightened levels enough to be translated into ape-like rage, the nice nurse calmly asked me to take a seat while she made further inquiries. Lucky girl! Hehehe….
I sat on the hard bench and I waited for a while, waving off a few rude flies away from my feet. After 5 mins, which seemed like 30 to me, I gave this “nice” (now seemingly less nice) nurse one stern look then she immediately dialed a number. I walked back to her desk and asked her to direct me to the classroom if she were busy and she went “I am making the call just now, to confirm your class”- Strike 2!
I sat back down and 30 seconds later she asked me to follow her to the physiotherapy room. Yay! With my protruding self in tow, we walked through the triage, the children’s center, the staff dinning, the hospital kitchen, the oxygen store and towards what seemed like the hospital backyard; until I finally saw the Physiotherapy Room sign. Nice nurse (now she seemed was nice again) introduced me to our class instructor and we exchanged greetings. Shockingly, I was the first student to arrive. So I was asked to wait (again) for the others. It was understandable since it was a rainy morning so I figured my other classmates were delayed. So I busied myself familiarizing myself with the room. I saw birth balls, floor mats, a treadmill, 2 beds, and some cushy comfortable looking like floor things. This is it, I thought. I remembered a picture from Afromeetseuro blog by Lucy with similar like equipment of her birth class and I my excitement grew. I was like wooo…it’s the real thing. I was however concerned that the room was kinda messy, and all this equipment was piled into one corner of the room and there were chairs arranged in a semi-circle. They I had better not make us sit on these hard chairs, I thought to myself, for I was dressed in cotton crop pants convenient enough to do squats, stretches and generally sit on the floor and do what I imagined should be done in the antenatal classes like practice breathing and go through the labor and birth positions, (I thought this should be done at every class.
I had waited about 5 mins when three other ladies and one gentleman walked in and we were ready to begin. Our topic for the day was about how to bathe the baby, clean the cord and take care of baby skin. To my disappointment, we were asked to sit on the dreaded chairs! Urrgghhh. Strike 3!
The class started at 11:00am and I sat unhappily on the ka chair. The instructor seemed shy and a tad too young, if you asked me. She stammered through the first few sentences of her talk and I felt sorry for her. I lessened my frown (from not sitting on the floor) at her, and forged a coy smile in an effort to ease her now obvious nervousness. She went through the baby bathing, cord cleaning and skin care techniques and gradually I started paying attention. We asked questions were we needed to and she answered (not to my satisfaction) but as traditionally as she could. I realized, as the class went ahead that this was nothing like what i had anticipated. After the topic discussion, I asked her if she could recap on last weeks’ lesson about labor and birth. She gladly obliged and she ran through it. As she went on, I realized that this was not like the classes I had read about, nor was the experience going to be anything like what I was reading about in my Bradley book. This was clearly a Uganda- oriented class and everything she said was as traditional, out-dated and this-is-what-my-grandma-said kinda stuff. She said we didn’t need to do any exercises, that there is nothing that can be done about the pain, episiotomies are almost inevitable and nothing about breathing techniques (I specifically asked her about these and she gave a 2 second demonstration by panting like a thirsty cat). Strike 4!
I had, by now, learned to hide my disappointments and was just going with the flow. One of the ladies started asking, what I originally thought were ignorant questions, but later realized she was naïve. She asked what she can do so that her baby does not grow big, if she can wear a swimming costume and a C-section scar not show, if the c-section scar was black or brown and if as time goes by the stomach gets heavy. Needless to say, she gave us quite a laugh.
To cut the long experience short, this class is basically a discussion on what to expect basing on tradition in Uganda. I was the only one in the third trimester, which obviously showed that there were no rules or guidelines that are followed. Now I am not so eager anymore, but if only to get acquainted with the hospital staff and environment for when Brycen comes, I will continue to attend. I feel like I could be a better birth class instructor just from what I have read, but then again, this is Uganda, and I do not know if people are ready to be told that the truth about Natural Childbirth.
Dang! (No more strikes coz i have lost all hope)
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