NATCHEZ — Nurse Patricia Cavin knows a thing or two about babies.

In working in the labor and delivery ward at Natchez Regional Medical Center for the past 14 years, she has seen most of what can happen during a pregnancy.

That’s why Cavin teaches a child birth training class for expecting mothers.

“All these first time mamas come in with that deer in the headlights look,” Cavin said. “They don’t know what to expect.”

Cavin’s job is to prepare the expecting mothers for what can be a long and painful, yet, as she describes it, rewarding experience.

“If they prepare and know what is going to happen to their body and to their baby, after nine months, you see them transform,” she said.“You see them mature.”

During the class at the hospital, she covers the different phases of the pregnancy that the women, who were all past 30-weeks, should expect next.

She then details the hospital procedures once a woman arrives, goes into labor, has her child and is released.

“They are all nervous and scared,” Cavin said. “I am just hoping to help out with a little bit of that fear by giving them a person to talk to about all the different things that might happen.”

For Kaitlyn Blaney, an expecting mother in her 31st week, the class was informative. But Blaney can’t help to still be nervous.

“She makes the labor part sound so painful,” she said. “But I guess I will figure it out for myself in just 10 weeks.”

The fear does not stop at just the labor for Blaney.

“I’m only 20, it’s not what I was expecting to be getting ready to do at this age, not at all,” she said.

But the fear is cancelled out by the anticipation to meet her child.

“It’s a baby; It’s my baby. I get to raise a baby,” she said. “Yes, I’m scared, but I’m even more excited.”