Curriculum Topic: Group Activity, Student Demonstration
Activity Type: Healthy Birth Practice 1, Birth Planning, Pregnancy
Purpose: Look at relationship between fetus, parent, uterus, and placenta to avoid induction.
Supplies: Penny's Arrow for reference - one for each person is ideal
Lots of props - families can use anything I have in my classroom.
Items families have used in the past include: Birth balls, tulle in assorted colors, dolls, balloons, Moby Wraps, hand weights, balls of many sizes - tennis balls, ping pong balls, beach balls, an inflatable microphone, bottles of water, cushions and pillows, thermometers, chairs, books, streaming music
Instructions:
Ask particiants to create an activity to represent the changes that are happening to their assigned role and present it in the general order that those events occur. Let them know that skits, songs, cheers, poems, interpretive dance, stories, charades, newscasts, or any kind of presentation is expected and entirely appropriate. Share that the goal is to make the presentation memorable for the other groups, so they will recall the important events. You may want to extend an offer to provide any type of prop that they might need. As an alternative to that, you might collect items that you think might be useful and keep them in a large basket for them to go through as they need them.
The groups are given about ten minutes to improvise their presentation, send them all head to a different space in the classroom area to work in their small group. Circulate amongst all four prompting, providing gentle suggestions, or brainstorming props with them.
Come back together as a large group to start the presentations. Each group takes just a minute or two to offer up their activity. Before you move on to the next group, identify together the key activities and functions that really can make or break the process.
After every group has presented, facilitate a discussion about how everything works together. Talk about what happens if the process is interrupted or not allowed to proceed. What might be left out? How does that impact the baby, the labor or the parent?
Sharon closes with an activity that she believe she learned from Barbara Hotelling. She asks people to hold the arrow horizontally and fold the paper back and make a crease. Open up the paper again, and look at the crease line. What if the baby came at that time, either spontaneously or by induction or planned cesarean? Everything to the right (toward the arrow apex) of that line might not have a chance to happen. What impact might that have on the baby? On the birth?
Set-Up:
I introduce the activity and share that many important but subtle things are happing in the last weeks and days of labor to the uterus, the fetus, the parent and the placenta. I divide up the entire class into four equal groups: fetus, parent, uterus, and placenta. Sometimes I keep couples together and sometimes I mix them up. Everyone gets a copy of Penny's Arrow.
Talking Points:
-Last few weeks of pregnancy can be uncomfortable, stressful and fraught with all the emotions.
-Have families consider why it is important to respect the process of the baby and the parent physiologically preparing for and going into labor and what happens when that process is interrupted.
-Ensure families understand the importance of letting everything work in synchronicity on a natural time schedule.
-Reinforce the relationship between all four systems and the impact of interfering with the process.
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