Today's antenatal class observation has thrown up a few interesting aspects to teaching that I hadn't really thoght about.
The class itself was mainly about 2nd Stage labour, covering the physiology, what they can expect and positions for dealing with it. The teacher used digarams to show the class what is happening physiologically and then talked to them about the contractions and how they are helping, how the baby moves through the pelvis (good old doll and pelvis demo) and the moulding of the head, crowning, the changes to the perineum etc.
There was advice about perineal massage, coping with crowning, issues around excrement and how to sex the baby (as it can sometimes be difficult!).
Positions was handled by giving the couples 2nd stage position diagrams on cards and asking them to discuss between themselves the relative merits or not that they had. Each couple then demonstrated thier position and commented to the group and the teacher facilitated lively debate about why or when you might use them and alternatives. The teacher made reference to slowing down/speeding up labour, opening the pelvis (she also used the hands through the legs exercise to demonstrate this) use of gravity, arms being up, pelvic tilting to illustrate this.
After the break some postnatal areas were explored. The group were split into male/feamle groups and given a sheet of flipchart paper on which the teacher had drawn a river with ten sharks in it. At one bank 'Birth' was written and the other '6 months' and the groups were asked to write the things which they anticipate being problematic in the sharks fins. Once complete the groups read back what they had written. The papers were then swapped and the teacher asked them to draw stepping stones and in them write things that they thought might help deal with thier partners worries.
The exercise saw some really useful discussion and some common ground between partners and the illustration provided some nice symbolism with teh sharks and stepping stones analogy.
For me personally, there was a tendancy to nod, smile knowingly, grin, grimace, shake my head when certain postnatal issues were discussed and even though I didn't say anything any of the delegates looking would have picked up on my body language. It is so hard when you have recently gone through some of these issues not to show this - so this is something I need to be aware of and conciously not do.
I was also shocked by a discussion around crying babies and how you deal with them. I am no liberal when it comes to childcare and would consider myself to be quite pragmatic in my approach, but most of the group seemed to be very comfortable that the correct way to deal with a crying baby was to first assess it from a distance before picking it up or seeing to it's needs! None of th group countered the discussions put forward which seemingly were unanimous in the view that you don't want the baby to get used to being picked up the minute it cries! I expected that some may have the 'Gina' view but not that everyone would be this way. I know that in reality 'a mothers instinct' will not let these six babies lie in thier cots screaming for long, but nevertheless I was shocked by what went on. The teacher's response to this was to play devil's advocate and challenge them as to why they thought that the baby would have any other motive than to communicate by screaming and gave them some food for thought. This left me reflecting on the fact that part of the teaching role is to prompt the delegates to start thinking about why they feel a certain way and whether or not it is correct - but without imparting my views! Not an easy thing to do. On talking it over with the teacher at the end of the class - she said that challenging was something she did in this intance as there was a lack of any other viewpoint coming forward. She added that it is something that she felt more comfortable to do now that she has more confidence and would not necesaarily have been something she would have done in the early days of teaching. One for me to mull over for certain.
Interesting to note that the couple who are not together seemed strained today (after appearing so together last week). There was reference to the mother being at the birth and they hardly spoke to one another. Both parties were very quiet in group work.