Just Keep Breathing

Stop press. I've got it. The magic knowledge that means giving birth will not be as horrendously painful as I've been led to believe. Are you ready? ....

Apparently the trick is to breathe.

Yep, breathing is the future. That's it. You don't need medication, or injections, or gas and air. You just need air.

So says the woman who ran my Parent Craft class. All you have to do is remember to breathe. This information took two hours of my life to acquire. I learnt how to breathe in a variety of different ways (well, apparently it was all different ways, but it was effectively breathing in and out over and over again) and then got yelled at and told to pretend to have a contraction. I don't really know how you pretend to have them... I was always under the impression they just kind of happened. In our class, you close your eyes and relax (as much as you can relax on a gym mat in a room full of other pregnant women) and then get yelled at to breathe and then to breathe a different way and then to breathe another different way.

This is the cure for all pain in childbirth.

Personally, I think I shall be relying on a large quantity of chilled chardonnay.