Childbirth class

Last night we had our first (of four) childbirth classes.

Hmm.

For the record, we both prefer the stork method.

We were the first to arrive, exactly on time, with the sleeping bag and three pillows our information sheet told us to bring. As we were the only ones who followed the instructions to the letter, we can bet Baby Girl is going to have the best exploding volcano her 4th-grade science fair has ever seen. As if there was any doubt.

As people were arriving, we were encouraged to look at the informational posters around the room. My favorite was a "road map" of pregnancy. Imagine a long, winding road (that, for some reason, they decided to pave with yellow brick--no mention of Dorothy or Scarecrow anywhere, though). All along the road were placed cartoon pictures of a woman laboring in agony. The road had two offshoots: the "back labor" offshoot, which promises extra agony, and the "epidural" offshoot, which rockets you to the end like the game Chutes and Ladders, amid pictures of a happy, resting woman. From this, I learned that childbirth may be painful. I couldn't stop staring.

Once everyone arrived, we began sharing our feelings about birth. This continued for two hours, almost until the end of class. The end. The $20 for this class not refunded.

Fortunately, there were snacks. In the car on the way, Matt and I had been wondering what kinds of snacks they'd serve. Would they have the cookie/potato chip table for the guys, and the carrot stick/broccoli table for the preggos? Would I be glared at if I migrated toward the cookie/potato chip table? We made a pact that we'd go to our designated tables and he'd get plenty of extra cookies to share (and I'd get plenty of carrots to share). Thank goodness I have such an understanding husband!

I did feel better when we were talking about our pregnancy cravings, however, and the woman with twins mentioned she'd been craving Pizza Hut deep-dish pizza. Her husband chimed in that they'd already had it a couple times that week. So, apparently, all the other pregnant women out there aren't eating 80 servings of veggies a day as some pregnancy books and websites would have me believe. I think that was one of the more helpful things I learned last night.

It turned out that the snacks were juice boxes (100% juice, no added sugar) and "healthy" snacks, a few of which were actually healthy, all of which were not too unhealthy and none of which fell into any of my cravings categories. Nonetheless, they certainly beat out carrots and broccoli.

A few notable moments:

At one point, the instructor was asking us to come up with ways we could alleviate our fears. One woman suggested prayer. The instructor agreed, but then asked, for those who weren't religious, what's the exact same thing as prayer? The group came up with meditation. Wait a second--the exact same thing? Umm.... Fortunately the guy in the corner who never once smiled reminded the instructor that they're different. She managed to eek out one of those Unitarian Universalist feel-good phrases to smooth things over. Crisis averted.

This is the same guy who, when he was introducing himself and telling the class what he liked to do for fun, sarcastically said he enjoyed listening to his wife talk about every detail of her day for two or three hours when he came home from work. Hopefully they were just having a bad night.

I asked about walking epidurals, which are basically milder than the original so you can still walk around a bit. I was informed that most women who want epidurals want complete and total pain relief, and not just partial pain relief. Thank you for your stereotype, but I don't quite fit (not yet, anyway).

We have homework. Because we didn't discuss our fears enough in class, we were given the assignment to come up with some more fears at home, and then address them with positive affirmations. I told Matt I'd do my homework after he did.

We did each receive an inspirational quote to take home. Maybe that was worth $20?

Not that I don't like sharing feelings. I just don't want to pay $20 per class to do so among strangers (but are they strangers? we spent 30 minutes introducing ourselves), especially when there are so many helpful things we could cover, like the possible medical interventions we may need to make snap decisions on, or how to recognize pre-term labor. If I start having contractions 3 minutes apart tomorrow and the doctor wants to do an emergency c-section, I really don't think it's going to matter how the media influences my culture's notions of childbirth, and other such topics from last night.

1 class down, $60 worth of classes left. We truly are optimistic that we'll get the information we're hoping for. If not, at least hopefully we'll have 4 good inspirational quotes to get us through.