The Burmese Method

I went to a yoga pregnancy class on the weekend....... bunch of hippies. There are two types of Yoga People. people who think yoga is practical and good way to get into some deep stretching, and people who think that doing yoga makes you one with the earth.

I'm more of the practical stretching type.  I find it hard to visualise myself being rooted to the earth with my soul whilst standing on heated parquetry flooring in a posh loft. Don't get me wrong - I really enjoy the stretching of yoga and feeling quite good afterwards, however pregnancy yoga is defintely for those people who are planning natural childbirths in their owns homes.

I am not one of those people. Yes I find the thought of labour and childbirth quite terrifying, but i'm sure I will get through it like the millions of women who do it every year, my god if women can give birth in rice fields i'm sure I can give birth in a state of the art birthing suite.

The idea of bringing up the notion of taking drugs during labour would have definitely been frowned upon by the yoga crowd, so when asked what kind of birth I was planning to have I avoided the question and went into some uncoordinated stretches. Because the truth is my plan at the moment it to incorporate all the stretching and take the drugs as deemed necessary by my aching vagina. Maybe i'll be one of those people who can just breathe their way through it whilst sucking on pear drops, or maybe i'll be clawing the face off the midwife begging for the epidural, who knows? But I am prepared to do everything, the camel walk (yoga move), birthing pool, morphine, and should it come to it a mobile epidural.

I would like to suggest a couple of other birthing practises that could help ease the pain of childbirth;

The Techno Birth: you have really loud Drum & Bass playing, whilst you jump around and scream your head off. It's an optional extra to have a dreadlocked white guy with fire twirling sticks in the room.

The Burmese Birth: you have a burmese cat in the room with you, kneading your back, purring on your stomach, generally using their calming cat vibes to mellow the mood. You can also request to have the burmese in the birthing pool with you, because let's face it - if you've got a wet angry cat in the bath with you your mind won't be thinking about broken vaginas.