childbirth classes
“I’m just here for the hot pregnant chicks. Let’s have a hand for all these glowing beautiful women!” After the applause and laughter in the room at the Women’s Center finally settled down, I realized I had not made the best first impression on our instructor. She glared at me with one raised eyebrow while continuing around the room, asking each couple what the best and worst parts are to being pregnant so far.
If there was ever a need for an icebreaker, I think it’s when you’re asked to sprawl out on a mat in a crowded room of strangers and give your spouse a neck and back massage in front of everybody. It might have been a little less uncomfortable if we weren’t packed into the room with everybody’s elbows and knees touching. At various points in the class there wasn’t any instruction going on, just the sounds of the shuffling of hands on clothes, which was kinda creepy in the large setting. Crawling around on the floor giving our spouses massages is what got most of us there in the first place.
At the first class, we didn’t bring our Focal Point, the designated object (a baby sock, sonogram picture, etc) that the mom in labor is supposed to focus on instead of her convulsing uterus. So we improvised with an Ozarka bottle. During our first simulated contraction, we stared and focused hard at the Ozarka bottle, doing heavy timed breathing in the crowded, quiet room with 20 other couples. Not one to allow an awkward moment to go unannounced, I whispered loudly into my wife’s ear during the next long breath. “Ohhhhhh zahrrrrrr kahhh.” It got the desired effect of making her laugh and elbow me, but I didn’t expect to completely derail the class. In my haste to be silly, I forgot that we were jammed in next to 20 other couples who heard me too, and I also forgot how pregnant women will spontaneously tinkle while laughing. As the class went nuts with chuckling and women running for the bathroom, the instructor glared at me again. She told the class (and I quote) “See, class, Jeff and Amy are what we call a disruption. You will face many disruptions like them during your real labor. With good focus, you can ignore them.”
One night, our instructor Miss Glarey von Glarenstein was out of town and we had a substitute instructor, a different nurse from the Women’s Center. I’m not sure if she did this normally in her own classes, or if it was just because we weren’t her students, but the substitute teacher went out of her way to tell us every labor horror story she’s ever experienced. Every mild question was met with some frightening story of a baby that almost didn’t make it for some reason, followed by audible gasps around the room.
“Yes, I was wondering… what percentage of women need episiotomies?”
“I’ll tell you one thing, you don’t want to just let yourself tear down there. Don’t try to be a hero — I’ve seen some ugly blowouts you can’t imagine.”
(More audible gasps around the room)
After hearing about the baby who was born with three legs while part of the hospital was on fire, we were happy to see a different, third instructor the following evening at our Breastfeeding class. I understand that breastfeeding is optional, so I wondered how intense this nurse was about making this choice. The nurse/ instructor opened up the class with “I’m glad to see you all here learning about Breastfeeding. You are the ones who love your babies. The only ones.”
The instructor went on to explain all the great benefits of breastfeeding, talking about what great bonding it is for the mother and child, how the milk is always clean and the right temperature, and so on. Then she told us about studies that showed how breastfed babies have higher IQs and less eating disorders later in life. Then she made wild claims about how every U.S. president was breastfed until eight years old, how breastmilk is the antidote for every poisonous snake on the planet, and how babies who don’t breastfeed have a 87% chance of growing up to become the teenagers who wear black makeup and noserings and hang out at mall food courts.
We were reminded no less than 23 times that there is a Breastfeeding Center next door to the Women’s Center, and we were encouraged to stop by for regular visits to make sure she’s doing it right. I can’t imagine what they do there that would require a whole building. I imagine a group of nurses crowded around the baby, chanting Chug! Chug! Chug! like a kegstand at a frat party.
I giggled during the powerpoint presentation of differences in breast shapes, which drew another elbow from my wife and instigated additional giggling around the room. At the end of the class, during the Q+A portion, my wife saw the smirk on my face as I raised my hand, and she managed to successfully stop me from asking the instructor why men have nipples.