February 17, 2008
Role of the Support Person—Jennifer’s version
In various pregnancy books, web articles, childbirth classes, etc. they discuss the role of the “support person” (husband, boyfriend, significant other, etc.). Apparently this person is supposed to do things like comfort the laboring mother with gentle touch/massage, reassure her with encouraging words and tell her how great she is doing, remind her of what she’s learned about breathing/relaxation techniques, provide emotional support, blah, blah, etc., etc.
Well, this just didn’t seem like it quite covered it for me, so I came up with my own set of rules:
- Don’t touch me unless I ask you to.
- No fussing at me, about anything, for any reason.
- Just do whatever I tell you to.
- No “cheerleading” during delivery. (This means yelling things at me like “atta girl, you’re doing great, honey!” and things of that nature. Seriously, I’ve heard people say “atta girl” on TLC’s A Baby Story, like you’d say to a six-year-old who just scored her first soccer goal.)
- As soon as I’m allowed to eat, get me a snack already. Like, yesterday.
- Keep visitors out of the room unless they’ve called ahead of time and arranged to come by.
- As much as possible, go wherever the baby goes, if she has to be taken away for some reason. And make sure it’s a good reason.
Well, I think that pretty much covers it. Oh, and I reserve the right to amend these rules at any time without explaining myself!
Comments(7)
Have you begun the nesting phase yet? Because if you haven’t, you sure are close! You sound like a mom already!
Good luck in your last month!
Nesting… that’s where you actually WANT to clean, right? Nope, not yet! But it sure would be nice if that would kick in soon.
You know, the nesting phase in my first pregnancy didn’t have time to kick in because my baby was 3 weeks early! During the 2nd pregnancy, I kept thinking, “ok, cool, any day now I’m going to WANT to clean up this mess.” Nah, never happened.
You go, girl!
Oh, very good list! Especially the snack part. I was SO HUNGRY after J was born and with everything that was going on it was FOUR HOURS before I got something to eat. Seriously, if my child had been a girl, I might have named her after the nurse who gave me graham crackers.
Hey, Holly, good to hear from you! I’ll add your blog to my RSS reader.
Yeah, the food thing is one of my biggest concerns about labor! I could go on a rant about the stupidity of denying laboring women sustenance for hours and hours, but I won’t. Not today, anyway. :-)
SO funny! how do you know all this already and you haven’t even been through it yet?!
i read this outloud to matt and he laughed so hard. the don’t touch me part he said, “that sounds like you.”
oh, and the food. the food! take those gift cards with you – and send one of those oh, so loving people standing around doing nothing but stressing you out to the fast food place and eat up!!