Hmm, this sounds to me like Cribsheet…only offline. Medical reporter Josephine Marcotty guest-blogs about a story she wrote for Sunday’s paper about group prenatal meetings…

How comfortable are you with strangers? Especially when you’re pregnant? HealthPartners and Park Nicollet are trying out a new kind of baby class that’s part check-up, part education, and part group therapy.

You could bring your knitting. Instead of baby class, or lightening fast visits with a doctor or midwife, once every two weeks six or 8 women share a regular pre-natal appointment. Each gets a check-up, and then they meet for two hours or so with nurses or midwives and talk about whatever comes up.

The midwives teach about pregnancy, labor, child development, nutrition. And the women talk. At the class I sat in on three young women talked about everything from back labor to pre-term delivery to how they got pregnant. (For one young woman, abstinence was 100 percent effective  — until she stopped using it.)

Midwives at both Park Nicollet and HealthPartners say they want to eventually offer these Centering Pregnancy classes to all their pregnant patients. They would organize groups according to age, and like interests. What do you think? Would you join a group like this?

Click here for the story.

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