You can tell who are the first time mums....

Poorly children, house stuff to do and we didn't really go out much.

Sam was full of cold and not really up to the early and very cold, start required for football so he missed it for the first time and all 4 boys snuggled up on the sofa to watch a film while I went out to my relaxation class.
Ideally J would have come too as this was the labour breathing class but childcare didn't allow and I was fairly confident I couldn't be the only one there without a "birth partner", sure enough there were 3 of us "flying solo", they run the course every 4 weeks so next time they do this session I'll be 32 weeks and we'll have a better idea of whether I'll actually labour or not and can gatecrash that class. In the meantime I took mental notes and talked him through it at home.

The teacher makes a bit of a deal about me being the "expert" as I have done this 3 times - there are second and third time mums in the group - and to be honest some of the first timers do look at me as if a little in awe - well either that or they're waiting for the men in white coats to take me away.
 Fact is though that I'm not an expert, I have some experience of how my labours go, but none at all of other people's and in fact all 3 of my own have had differences, so even there it's not "expertise".

I watched One Born Every Minute  this week too. 2 first time mums and a 2nd timer. Now obviously it's edited, so who can really say how these women's labours actually were, as opposed to what we saw*.
There's a couple of things it made me think. First about the "expert" thing. One of the midwives described labour as "the worst pain you'll ever experience". Now I'd disagree. Kidney stones (while pregnant and denied good drugs LOL) were worse. Smashing my wrist was bad but not comparable because it was a different type of pain, you can't really compare one with another in my opinion, And you certainly can't say that something is the worst pain you'll know, maybe for her it was, but that's not to say it's always the same for everyone. The same midwife also said that in her opinion someone who has a bad first birth will have a bad second birth because of the traumatic memory and the panic etc. Again I'd disagree.
I'm not sure why my subsequent births were better but they were.

Secondly it made me think about panic and it's effects on pain.
The first, first time mum was so calm, so focussed, quiet and concentrated and had the kind of water birth we all aspire to I'm sure.
The second delivered on a bed but again was calm and focussed, if a little noisier, and delivered a rather large baby in what seemed to have been a very "good birth".
The second time mum however had a rougher time, in loud pain, slow tense labour and so on. But once the epidural was being sited, (note, not once it had begun to do it's work, but as soon as they were siting it) she calmed and relaxed. This made me think about my own first labour, where I too had an epidural because I was tired and in terrible pain and so on, but I too managed to stay still and quiet for the siting of the needle/ tube, long before it started to actually do it's job.
How much of the pain, in both our cases,  was actually caused by panic? Once we knew we were GOING to have the pain removed it started to get better.
So that's got to be something to be considered - my epidural labour experiences were bad, but how much of that was panic? If I'm not panicked will the whole labour be different?

So the first timers were calm and relaxed and the second timer was panicky and tense?

Not what we'd expect and perhaps calling into question my opening statement, that you can tell who are the first time mums?

You can you know, but not by the above. It's that the first time mums arrive at classes with tidy handbags, and perfectly applied make up, gorgeous hair and husbands who open doors and carry pillows for them.....





* this is in no way meant to doubt the veracity of the series as a whole I'm sure it shows a valid picture of child birth in a busy hospital, but that's not to say that we get a clear picture of each and every individual labour.