39 weeks pregnant. You aren’t over your due date and less of you are still with us because a fairly large percentage of pregnant women will have given birth one way or another by 39 weeks pregnant. When you look at both Baby Centerposts for 39 weeks pregnant, you’ll notice their posts have pretty much moved past birth into right after birth. And when you look back at all the posts from 24 weeks pregnant and onward, birth is pretty much skipped over yet it’s such an important event and activity.
This is why Birthing Better families want to change your perception and actions around the birth of your baby. If you are reading this at 39 weeks pregnant and still want to learn skills, there is time. Even if you gave birth this evening and had only learned one skill. That one skill would make a huge difference! We know!
What To Expect makes some really good suggestions about more active participation in an unplanned Cesarean. There is no mention of you using your skills if only to fill the Time it takes to be prepped and throughout the surgery, being stitched up and during the postoperative discomforts. Sad really. With skills we feel totally connected and an active participant. Without skills, everyone around us can be wonderful and give us all the suggestions in the What To Expect post yet still feel disconnected and surreal. Without skills, you are much more passive.
Birthing Better families want to add at 39 weeks pregnant:
Birthing Better families feel much more relaxed now that they share a full complement of skills. They feel less anxious, more likely to work with the discomforts of this period. They feel more curious and interested in the constant changes.
As both skilled mothers and fathers, the intimacy just continues to grow. Birthing Better families experience a wonderful period of calm and willingness to meet their baby’s birth experience as it unfolds with their full complement of skills.
Birthing Better mothers absolutely find themselves fascinated by the changes in their bodies as it approaches birth. They are comfortable with ‘down there’ and they periodically check (often have their partner check as well) just to feel the changes as the top of the vagina begins to thin out. They thrill being able to feel the curve of their baby’s head. They use skills such as The Hip Lift to ease discomfort in their pelvis that is normal in these last weeks.
The Pelvic Clock and Directed Breathing are standard skills they use periodically during the Braxton-Hicks contractions. And Birthing Better families also re-look at their Skills-based Birth Plan and tweak any details.
Here’s a Gift … Staying In The NOW
Birthing Better skills were developed by moms and dads in the early 1970s in the US and used by many thousands globally in all types of birth. Birthing Better online birthing classes are housed in Common Knowledge Trust.