Here we are on our fourth week of the Pink Kit Package. I could hardly believe it was time to start childbirth education and here we are a month into the Pink Kit! This is exciting because it means that next week we get to start working with a new book and with the DVD 😀
This week's information has been good. We're a little behind and still working through the language section. I'm not too worried about being behind as long as we keep going at a steady pace. Scott had some things he really wanted to get done in the evenings early this week so we let our PK work slide a little.
Truthfully though, a lot of the Language work is done by yourself, and just discussed with your partner. You get to think through past experiences that you've had, and visualize what you'd like your birth experience to be like. The PK talks about how athletes tend to visualize themselves excelling in great detail – and encourages you to do the same with your birth.
I think this is great advice. I've personally found visualization to be vital for my birth experiences. I enjoy visualizing all kinds of different experiences. It helps me to figure out what I want, what I'm scared of, and what I can do or ask my partner to do to help me. This is what the PK is hoping to help you achieve in the visualization exercises.
Another exercise we did this week was saying no. Now that was amusing. Doing Pink Kit work is always amusing with my wonderful husband. He insists on making me laugh, pretending to snore, etc. This is probably good practice for me – after resisting the urge to give him a good pop during our PK sessions it will be much easier to resist smacking him during labor :p
But last night we worked through an exercise where I had to come up with 10 different ways to tell Scott “No” during labor. That was pretty amusing and had us both laughing. It was challenging to actually come up with ten different ways, both verbal and non-verbal. It helped me to think about ways that would be good if I am in the middle of a contraction when I need to tell him to stop something, or if I'm focused and find I can't speak.
I remember clearly a time during my last labor when I was unable to say “stop” to my older children (they were splashing their hands in the birth pool). I simply waved my hands at them. One of my doulas quickly shepherded them to play in another room, and as the baby was being born I asked for them to come back in. But at that point in labor I was unable to say “no” or “stop.”
I'm really enjoying how much the Pink Kit is getting both Scott and I thinking. And I think reading through the material is helping Scott get a better picture of just what's going to be going on during labor!
A tip Scott found about terminology in the PK – if you come across a term you don't know, do a search through the other .pdf books. There's some places where terms are used in New Focus that you may not have learned yet. A search through The Companion Guide will probably define the term for you. Usually these are terms defined on the DVD – and The Companion Guide is written through the DVD exercises.
In the next few days we'll be starting the DVD work ourselves, and I'm looking forward to that. We're also going to be going through the Touch section of New Focus and our preparation will get a lot more “hands on” – very exciting :p
Click Here to Read My Full Pink Kit Review
