Jews can now quell the pains and strains of giving birth with a healthy dose of milk and honey.
Offered by the S.F.-based Bureau of Jewish Education, “Milk and Honey” is a childbirth-preparation class for expectant parents interwoven with Jewish content.
In this context, instructor Sarah Fenner parallels the seven days of Genesis with different stages of pregnancy. She teaches Jewish blessings that can help bring comfort during delivery, along with more mainstream methods for minimizing pain. She also discusses Jewish childbirth choices, such as circumcision and baby-naming ceremonies, and Jewish superstitions about conception.
“A person’s growing identity as a parent is connected with their Jewish identity,” said Fenner, a childbirth educator and doulah, trained through the Association of Labor Assistants and Childbirth Educators. “The two are inseparable and they’re both an integral part of who we are.”
The next course is scheduled to start Sunday and will run for six weeks at Peninsula Sinai Congregation in Foster City.
The name “Milk and Honey” was chosen “as a way to convey warmth, nurturing and a love of all things Jewish,” said Fenner. “The context is that you’re coming into a land that is flowing with milk and honey, abundance and richness — that’s how pregnancy feels for most couples.”
Like a Lamaze class, it operates on the premise that education on pregnancy and childbirth will minimize fear of the actual event, thereby minimizing the pain.
But unlike Lamaze, “Milk and Honey” does not put its primary focus on breathing and exercise.
Instead Fenner teaches the couples how to use water, touch, visualization and other relaxation techniques. She encourages parents to support one another both physically and emotionally and tells them to clarify their hopes and expectations for one another before the onset of labor.
“People are so busy they don’t often have time to focus solely on the birth,” said Fenner. “The class is a valuable two-hour window where they get to do just that.”
“Milk and Honey” is open to Jews of all streams as well as interfaith couples in the late second or early third trimester of pregnancy. For more information call the BJE at (415) 751 6983 or email [email protected]
Funded by the Jewish Community Endowment Fund of the S.F.-based Jewish Community Federation, the class offers its participants a chance to connect with other Jewish couples.
“Pregnancy can feel very alone because it’s an internal process,” said Fenner, the mother of two boys, ages 5 and 7. “This class provides couples at a similar stage of a pregnancy an opportunity to connect.”
This connection was one of the most rewarding aspects of the class for Joelle and Neal Kaufman.
The Burlingame couple, who welcomed their son Benjamin into the world on Sept. 28, has stayed in close contact with the other three participating couples as well as with Fenner. All first-time parents and Conservative Jews, the couples even visited one another in the hospital after the birth of each baby.
“Our common shared-value systems framed general conversations that wouldn’t otherwise be Jewish, with Jewish philosophy and values,” said Kaufman, who appreciated the fact that classes were held in participants’ homes rather than in a hospital setting.
“We shared what we were feeling nervous about and obsessing over and got a lot of validation that we weren’t the only ones with those feelings. I had issues with my upper back because my chest had grown. Another woman was sick for six months. Another woman was worried because she was not big enough.
“And we were all laughing because we knew how it felt.”
It is “obvious,” she said, “that these people will stay in our lives.”
Of course the couples also gained many helpful tips about body positions and how to push and breathe simultaneously during the birthing process.
“While giving birth is not the kind of thing you can be taught, what I could learn I was able to use,” said Kaufman.
But she was also primed for life beyond her 14 hours of active labor and delivery.
“Our first day at home from the hospital we all said a Shehechiyanu [a prayer said on first-time occasions] and we had quite a Jewish bris. Benjamin wore a baby kippah, which was just too adorable for words.”