Preparing for birth

Week 28 - I'm now in my final trimester and growing impatient to meet our little boy. The weeks continue to slowly tick by and my belly slowly grows bigger and more and more like an alien movie as the baby moves around more.  The novelty of pregnancy is starting to wear off, the rib pain is growing worse and the tiredness from the first trimester is slowly creeping back.

I'm running out of things to do to prepare for baby and help the time to pass so I've begun researching about birth and writing my birth plan.  One of the first things I read was that giving birth takes about as much effort as running a marathon. Oh dear - I'm sooo not in shape for a marathon!!  So then I started reading up on what kind of training regime I need to get me ready.  I found this really useful article on Pregnancy exercises like pelvic floor exercises.  So, I have my fitness regime planned:

Step 1: Do pelvic floor exercises daily
(Step 0.5: Work out where pelvic floor muscles are!)
Step 2: Sit cross legged a lot

Doesn't sound too strenuous to me.  12 weeks is long enough to train for a marathon right? Or perhaps I should have thought about this sooner?!

Next up I found this article on labour tools which had some great simple ideas that made my husband and I laugh (tennis balls? rolling pin?).

Finally, I got to the main topic of concern during childbirth - PAIN! As I read it became clear that for a lot of women their main aim in labour is to feel as little pain as possible. And there was me thinking the main aim is to give birth to a healthy child! Now the big question is do I want an epidural.  Though I'm really not a fan of excruciating pain, I'm not sure I like the idea of being numb from the waist down either.  How am I supposed to feel what's going on or know when to push if I can't feel anything? How will I know if I'm tearing or doing other damage to myself without the help of pain to alert me? 

It got me thinking about how we view pain, not just in child birth but in life generally. Most people view pain as a bad thing to be avoided at all costs.  But is pain really always a bad thing? Doesn't pain let us know when something is wrong? Doesn't it let us know we're alive? Surely feeling pain is preferable to feeling nothing at all?!