FIVE Family Road Trip "Essentials"

Planning a road trip with the kids this summer?  Here are a few tips:

1. Plan activities that cover creativity, imagination, movement (singing), and brain activity (puzzles). 

Variety helps to keep things interesting and engaging.

2. Recruit help, have a spouse, friend, sister, mother come along with you to entertain the kids, help drive, or plan meals. 
Having help gives the driver a break of having to entertain while driving as well as allows for driving breaks.

3. Allow yourself extra hours for travel. 

When on a time crunch it just adds to the stress, so plan an additional day or hours to help.

4. Snacks- Having snack like peanut butter, carrots, rasins, trail mix, yogurt, deli meat, V8 and pleanty of water. 

Fastfood is inevitable on the road for atleast one meal of the day, so having healthier snacks will help your system balance.  Having your system off-balance will add to stress and discomfort.

5. Plan plenty of stops and do large motor activities for atleast 20 minutes during them. 

Especially with children, they need to move and being strapped into car seats for long lengths of time will add to discomfort and moods.  If you plan to let the kids watch DVD or TV in the car, large motor activities with fresh air will ensure the balance from non-movement.

10 Reasons Why Childbirth Education is NOT a Waste Time

1. To Meet other Couples

2. Get your questions answered and be inspired to ask more questions once others do.

3. Partners can talk and ask about how one might have prepared or not.

4. Make friends in your same situation and maybe develope friends for your kids.

5. Have teacher teach you what you want to learn.

6. Get real life examples and how you can practice or reherse at home.

7. Educating yourself about issues or decisions that might come up during your labor & birth will HELP you be more confident about it.

8. Preparing is a begining to parenthood. You planned your wedding, plan your birth!

9. Every woman is different, each labor is different even with same mom/different kids, discussing different scenarios will help eliminate the unknown. Thus helping to minimize fear.

10. Labor and birth are NOT pain free, no matter your plan. Why not get some techniques in your birth bag to do at home or while in the hospital while you progress to Active Labor. (if you don't know what Active Labor is, you should take a class)

Instructors are trained in many ways, two major general institutions train them. ICEA & CAPPA. Most hospital instructors are trained and required to be certified. Hospitals have policies and procedures to abide by, so the classes can be limiting. Private instructors, in a personal or group setting can get to know you and your needs a little better. The classes tend to be smaller vs. hospital classes can be 20-35 couples.

Choosing a Private Instructor is a good way to go to get more of a personal experience.

Please listen to the connected Podcast it reviews many reasons why every expectant parent should take a class. I took a class and I am trained in the field. http://thebbbcafe.podbean.com/
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About Me ~ My name is Sara Hery, ICCE.  I teach childbirth education, and have got a lot of feedback from moms in the area that they felt like it was a waste of time. Most moms I received feedback from took hospital classes. With hospitals they offer a standard format of curriculum. Not much wiggle room on how your questions get answered or covering topics you may want to know more about.

So I formatted my private classes to be customized for you, the expectant parent. The fee is the same if not cheaper than hospital classes, and you pick the topics! Also my classes are 6 hrs total, two evenings. Does this sound like something you would pick over a hospital class?

Question- if you feel like it was a wast of time, why or why not? Did you go to a private or hospital class? How long was it?

I loved this article about why CBE is important, read and give me feedback. I would love to make sure my classes are extremely beneficial and NOT a waste of time for any family!

http://hubpages.com/hub/Childbirth-Education-and-Benefits-of-Childbirth-Education-Classes

thanks!

Sara Hery, ICCE
www.thebbbcafe.com