some babies

The other day we had a little meetup with some of the couples that were in our childbirth prep class, and these are their babies! Well, four of the eight babies from the class, anyway. Due to conflicting schedules we weren't able to get everyone together at the same time this weekend but these pictures were too cute not to post. We took an eight week course from Susan Messina and it was hands down the best money we spent during my pregnancy. She is a great teacher and pretty moderate when it comes to birth issues—the "textbook" for the class was a book called Natural Hospital Birth which is written by a woman (who is also an anthropologist who studied birth methods in Russia and a doula) who had a c-section and then two vaginal births, so I felt like she had a pretty well-rounded approach to the (very heated) topic of natural birth. Anyway, it was a good fit for us since we were looking to have our baby in a hospital, but with as few interventions as possible, and it's difficult to find a class that isn't far on the extremes of the childbirth philosophy spectrum.

I could probably talk for hours about childbirth—I'm so interested in everything about it. I love hearing people's birth stories, I love tiny new babies, I just can't get enough of the topic. Susan's class was super empowering (in the end, I got what I wanted out of my birth experience, which I don't know that I would have gotten without some of the things we learned in Susan's class), and making friends with the couples was also so meaningful for us. I still see a couple of the girls from our class once a week when we get together with a few other friends with babies the same age and troubleshoot together. It was really a sound investment of time and money of which I am still reaping the benefits.

If you live in DC and are having a baby, I would recommend her class without hesitation!