Good class, bad class
We had another night of class today. There was some good, fairly balanced info on pain medication, and how it is all administered. We also went over all the different tools that can be employed during labor. We saw the vacuum pumps, epidural needles, catheters, forceps, and a interesting, and slightly evil looking device. It is an internal electronic fetal monitor. I tried to find a picture online, but I think no one posts them because people would freak out if they didn't have a feeling for the size of the thing. Basically it looks like a small piece of spring like from a ball point pen. The little bit of spring is screwed into the baby's head to monitor the fetal heart rate. While I was searching for pics of the thing I came across a few fanatical natural childbirth websites espousing the cruelty of the thing, and other technologies used in childbirth. My favorite quote was that attaching an electrode to your baby's head adds a "profound footnote: your baby is a technocratic artifact too" It goes on to describe women as machines, and babies as product that need to be protected. You can read more about that here. Be warned that it is a pretty one sided article though. The bad part of the class was that while describing techniques for pushing, our instructor sat on a chair and pulled her legs back, held her breath and pushed -- grunting and holding her breath for ten seconds at a time. A mental picture would have been enough.