Random thoughts on future projects

So, I have all of these random thoughts circling in my head (usually at nice, inopportune times like when I'm trying to fall asleep). Things like, what am I going to do with my life? And... what should I have for lunch tomorrow? What kind of research can I do for a thesis if I go further in school? So, in order to at least remember some of these silly little ideas, I'm putting them on here. As usual sorry for the boring babbling... but gotta do it.

Anyway, this morning after talking dh into getting up with the girls and playing the "I have a headache" card, I laid there and for whatever random reason starting thinking of what I could do as a research project. So one rough idea is making up some kind of pamphlet survey, and distributing them to participants in childbirth classes, and asking each mother to participate willingly. Then, when any primiparous (ie first time) mother comes into the hospital who *hasn't* taken birth classes, asking them to participate as well. The point being to see how being educated and prepared effects perception of the labor/delivery process. Although, I'm not sure how accurate it would be to have the sample of 'non-educated' mothers from ones who are coming in for antepartum reasons... that might mean that they are having issues (for whatever reason) already with the pregnancy and might not be simple, low-risk, 'easy' pregnancies - or at least not as similar of a ratio if that makes sense. Maybe I could work with physicians to distribute them, or just randomly send them to when getting the pre-cert sheets at the hospital... hmm. All these bugs to work out. Anyway, there would be a form for the initial 'baseline', then another assessment that would be filled out in the first 24-48 hrs postpartum, and then a second assessment which I would mail to them 6-8 weeks postpartum. Questions asked would be things like how do you expect your labor to go (on the initial form) and then reporting how they perceived that their labors actually did progress. There would also be a section on the early postpartum worksheet for the nurse to indicate length of labor, list complications, whether it was induced or natural labor, apgar scores, etc (and this would be filled in after the mother returns it - while still an inpatient - so that the nurses' assessment of the labor doesn't influence the mother's).

I'd also be interested in seeing how induced labors stack up in perceived pain/satisifaction of birth experience (such as "If I were to choose again, I would/would not choose induction, etc), or the presence of a doula (although I think this has been done - maybe something from the nurse/physician point of view, or even the father's).

Ok, ramble on.... but this is what goes on in my head, in my life...