spindemissen

That is true.. I know now that next time I need to be more clear about what I want. When we talked about what we wanted we agreed that my mother in law should be there to support me through the whole thing, because my mother and I are so alike that I thought that she might irritate me, but when the time came she was the one that knew what I really needed. I also tried to accommodate my boyfriends wishes and that ended up making me feel like me and my family was pushed aside. When I was finally in labour my boyfriend was there and so was his mother, his sister and my mother... but one of the most important people in my life (my sister) was told to come when it was over... and that kind of pissed me of after the whole ordeal was over. So next time i'm going to be crystal clear about what I want. In stead of trying to please everyone.

I would say that you should accept that you and your girlfriend can't come prepared to the wonderfull chaos that is childbirth, so the best thing you can do is to take a deep breath and go with the flow. I gave birth to me and my boyfriends first child at may 13 this year and when I was in the middle of it I would have lost my shit if my boyfriend or any other family members there would have told me I was doing a great job over and over again. I needed peace and quiet around me so I could concentrate about the task at hand. So talk to your girlfriend and ask her what thoughts she has about the up comming birth. Ask her if she ever have had some kind of situation or pain she couldn't escape from and how she reacted in that situation. That might give you a slight idea of what your in for. A birth is just as much a psycological pressure for her because you know that the pain will not go away untill it's over (unless she gets an epidural.. but even in this case the pain will return when she has to push) No births are a like what works for one would be completely wrong for another. I needed to be quiet and for everyone to leave me alone but in the delivery rooms on either side of mine were two women who needed to scream all the way through.

Exactly... I think I knew what I wanted, but I had no idea what I needed. Now that im a mother I know exactly what kind of mother I want to be. If i need advice i'll ask for it.. and no one should try to tell me or my boyfriend how we should be parents. Some have tried... but that didn't go over to well.

I get what you mean.... :-) but for me family isn't the wrong kind of people in my book... I wish my sister and my dad could have been there to, but my sister didn't feel welcome because of an misunderstanding between her and my boyfriend and my dad died very suddenly when I was 20 weeks along with my pregnansy. But I felt very blessed and lucky to have my family with me... I had a midwife, an assistent nurse, an anesthesiologist (he came and went a few times to check on my epidural) and later when my daughter was born a pediatrician came to check on her because she had swallowed a bit of amnionic fluid... so for me the best time during birth was when I was in the active fase of my contractions and the midwife and the nurse went to have a cup of coffee and I was told I could get a family member to push the call button if anything was needed. It was quiet and nice to have my family talking among each other and making sure I had what I needed before the battle. And the birth was so smooth for me.. when I had the epidural in place I had contractions for an hour (I had contractions before that for about 6 hours and the epidural just gave me the last sprint) and the pushing part took 7 minuts... and now that it's all done I have most of my family to talk to about the experience.