Friday, March 16, 2012

Baby Class #2: What We Learned...

...despite the sobbing experience, I did learn quite a bit at class #2. Here's a brief recap of what we learned:

*We discussed Parents As Teachers. I called the next day and there's already a waitlist!!! We also discussed car seats. As soon as I have my car detailed, I'm going to go to the fire station and have them help me install this. I love any reason to hang out with firemen!!!

*We also discussed cord bank donation. It would be similar to being used like a bone marrow transplant. I'm planning on looking into this.

*The next hour of the class was mainly preparing to come to the house, what to pack, what to bring and then we toured the hospital. Something interesting they told us to bring was nail clippers because the hospital staff won't clip the baby's nails mainly because they don't want to hurt them because the nails are as thin as skin but some still scratch themselves. I learned a lot on the tour but I won't bore you with all those details since it is mainly hospital related.

*We discussed the T-Dap shot i.e. whooping cough. The hospital strongly encourages anyone that's going to be in close contact with the baby within the first 2 months to get this shot because the baby won't get the shot until 2 months. The hospital will give the mom this shot but dad, grandparents, aunts, uncles, etc...are all on their own. I was worried that my family would think I was being overly cautious but so far everyone's getting their shots no problem.

*Discussed birth plans. I worked on mine this morning. Good thing I referenced my notes because I left a big one off...no latex in our room! Matt is severely allergic so that could've been an issue. Once I review it with Matt and my doctor, I'll post it on here. It was a little intimidating at first but once I got started, it's really just making my mind up on certain decisions.

*They taught us to think with our BRAIN:


*Once we finished the tour, we went back to the room and started discussing the first stage of active labor. They suggest changing positions every 20-30 minutes, rest when you can, stay hydrated (they provide Popsicles-yum!!!) and then we discussed positions and we all know the story from there...

I'm off work today so I'm planning on washing sheets and making up the baby bed!!! I have a ton of errands to run including going to get that birthday meal from First Watch! Then tonight, I'm going to type up our what to pack list and I printed pics of the nursery to put in the baby book. I've got a full day ahead of me!!!

1 comment :

Julie said...

PAT is a pretty awesome program. As long as your school district does it I would do it. I'm also not just saying that as a teacher ;)

I have friends who looked into the cord bank donation. I know one of their concerns was the cost of doing it and no one they asked had done it before. I don't know of anyone who has done it either.