Why do I Teach Childbirth Class?

When I started having real contractions with my first pregnancy, I wanted to stay home as long as I can but I felt insecure, so we went early.

When we got to the hospital, I was 2cm dilated, contractions just getting stronger. Everything was so strange to me. Nobody paid attention to me and I felt like I was invisible. I lost my whole confidence once I got there. They told me they were going to do balloon catheterization as they started prepping me, taking me to another room. When I asked why, they said its because i am more than 41 wks and they need to get the contraction going. I ended up having intervention after intervention which caused preventable complications.

I was told to stay on bed because it's a lot of work for them to take me off of the wires every time I wanted to move or wanted to use the bathroom. The nurses treated me really bad until I gave up to ask them for help. I finally asked for an epidural because I just couldn’t labor laying on the bed anymore. Even after having an epidural, I was in pain where one side is numb and the other is not. They tried to rotate my baby to anterior grabbing its head which was not only unsuccessful but ended up hurting his delicate head. I couldn’t eat for more than 24hrs and was given bunches of fluids and that highly impacted my freedom to move afterwards (more than two weeks) and my breastfeeding journey. Finally after two hrs of pushing, they gave up! I gave up! I knew baby was not moving down at all and his heart beat was dropping. They did a cesarean section. My baby was born finally.

I couldn't touch my baby after birth because my hands were tied up. I don’t think family centered cesarean birth was an option; I didn’t know it existed anyway. All I could think about at the moment was whether I get the chance to touch my son or not before something bad happens to me, I was scared. I bled so much that I was transfused after.

Because I didn’t have insurance at the time, I couldn’t choose a provider (I’ve never seen any of them before) or a hospital. I thought saying no to anything will allow them to with hold treatment or force me into some intervention or take away my baby according to the stories I have heard. I didn’t know my rights in childbirth or how to advocate for my self or if I can. I didn’t know how to communicate either (even though I speak English fluently). Everything was different from what I anticipated and it was kind of a shock for me. So I said yes to everything from a fear of losing my baby.

I decided to teach childbirth class in hopes of preventing what happened to me to other moms who are in the process. I choose EBB childbirth class because it is designed for all! It is not only for moms choosing natural childbirth, but also for moms planning a cesarean or who end up having unplanned one; for moms who are planning to be induced or for those who unexpectedly end up having one. It is for all! You will feel prepared for all of the options with all the tools you need to learn and advocate for yourself.

Not knowing what to expect and how the system works; how to navigate through this broken maternity care system(which I thought was perfect!) and how to effectively communicate with the staff was, a true challenge!

Other families who truly know how the system works and understand how most of it is designed to protect the hospitals and the providers than the birthing family are in the self protection mode and they tend to fight everything in the system and are ready for a battle. They don’t know how to effectively communicate and this usually back fires resulting in coercion during birth and creates traumatic childbirth experience. What’s worse, many immigrant/non immigrant mothers like me whose primary language is not English and low income families who don’t have a choice of providers or hospitals suffer a lot more.