Birthing A Ping Pong Ball

Tonight I went for an ante-natal refresher class. It was more like a question and answer session rather than an actual class, except for this one exercise. And I now have the imagery that silly balloon and ping pong ball exercise burned into my brain.

The educator got us to shove a ping pong ball into a balloon. After blowing the balloon up (but not tying it off), we turned the balloon upside down so that the ball sat over the opening. Once the ball was there, we could let go and the ball would act as the plug to prevent the balloon from deflating.

Here comes the fun part...

Firstly, we squeezed the sides of the balloon to show how uterine contractions do not happen. Its ineffective.

Then, we squeezed the top of the balloon, which is what the uterus does during labour and the ping pong ball kept moving up and down the 'neck' of the balloon. The neck representing the cervix.

Then the lady says "crown your baby". So, we all squeezed the top of the balloon until the ping pong ball was about a quarter of the way out of the balloon.

Now, "puff your baby out". And there were ping pong balls flying everywhere! I'm glad there was that funny ending to the exercise because I really did not need the extra props to boost my imagination skills.

I did not like this exercise at all because it made things too easy to imagine. I was quite happy just knowing on paper what would happen...didn't need to see it. But anyway, its on my mind now and I felt like sharing it here. The more I talk about it, the more accepting I will be of it. As 'they' say, I've got to trust my body....somehow.