Not intentionally but with my 1st they ended up cancelling half the antenatal classes anyway, and in the end I think we had the tour of the ward and the breastfeeding ones. Nothing on pain relief etc.

I did make one of my mw appointments go on forever as a result as I insisted on her taking some time to talk about pain relief options at the hospital I was using.

Can you just try to do that instead? That way you will find out the specifics that you need to know, rather than waste spend time doing role plays and discussing how a tennis ball can help in labour and loads of annoying things like that (went to a refresher class this time for DC3 and lots of it was a waste of time along these lines anyway).

Went to my one and only antenatal class the day before i went into prem labour with my boys... and guess what we were talking about - yep, prem labour!! I remember telling the midwife when in labout that i couldn't have the babies just yet as i didn't know how to breathe...!

Didn't bother with them when having DD - it's strange, but your body just takes over and you go along for the ride. You'll know instinctivelly what to do and what's right for you.

Will do.... baby's transverse anyway, got a scan in 3 weeks... knowing my luck I'll end up with el cs #2!

I'm fairly sure that any amount of pain is acceptable since, let's face it, however much pain you manage to inflict is going to pale into comparison with what you're going through. I ended up clutching my dh round the neck, kind of hanging from him, he's lucky I didn't strangle him ...

And surely the 'reminders for the rest of married life' go without saying, whatever level of pain we manage to inflict. Unless of course they get man-flu, we all know there's no competing with that in the pain stakes

Best of luck with it all anyway, you'll have to come back and report how it all went.

Oh I bet it isn't!

Is there some guide somewhere as to how much pain we're allowed to inflict on our baby's father during labour? Is there a sliding scale according to the baby's weight...

7lbs+ = hard gripping of hands resulting in bruising.

8lbs+ = digging nails in to the arm, drawing small amounts of blood.

9lbs+ = punching in the face at gentle suggestions of maintaining breathing techniques learnt in ante natal classes.

10lbs+ = continuous nagging and reminders for the remainder of married life.

Ah but husbands are very useful to clutch during contractions and cause as much pain to as poss. Esp if he's going to say "pain is in the mind" - he needs to be on the receiving end of your pain imo. Mind you, my dh then moaned about how much I'd hurt him when I was in labour. He only said it once tho

Sorry, didn't mean to disillusion you, bet your body is much more au fait with what it's supposed to be doing than mine was ...

Damn it Hairygodmother... and there was me being all confident and all that!

I'm not sure about tens... I've had back problems in the past and it's never worked for that, perhaps I'm one of those people it doesn't work for. However, something to distract dh is a very good idea. Is it not the done thing to bring a Nintendo DS in for him? Perhaps some headphones.. anything? Actually I'm quite tempted to ask him to stay in the waiting room and get my mum to come with me. She'll be a billion times better and won't keep saying shit like "pain is all in the mind"!!

I went to hospital antenatals for dd1 and when asked about breathing techniques the midwife said "Oh thats all a load of crap we'll tell you what to do when you get here"

Whether that's good advice or not I don't know as I had a cs, but it did make me think the classes were a waste of time

Nice of the mw to say that, HeadFairy, wouldn't like to disillusion you, but I was fed that line about my body knowing what to do as well, not entirely sure I really believed it! But the monitoring thing sounds good - they found some really funky cordless ones for me so I could keep moving (ah the wonders of modern technology) and I found bouncing up and down on a birth ball quite helpful. Also, have you considered a TENS machine? I wasn't sure it was doing anything for me until they took the damn thing off me to do my epidural for the c-section! I hired it from a website www.tens-hire.co.uk

Plus it sounds as though your dh would really benefit from the gas and air ... and actually, fiddling with the TENS machine for you might distract him too, worked for my dh for a bit.

I have had two children and have never been to an antenatal class. Personally I think if you read up pregnancy and birth in general you will learn everything you need to.

I had a vbac with my DD which ended up with forceps and ventouse, I remember my mum asking what the hell a ventouse was and me being able to explain it fairly conherently -well for someone in the middle of a contraction anyway...

Second time I have an em section and again knew everything I needed to without classes.