Birth Class #3: What Does Pregnancy Do (Besides Producing Babies)?

Yesterday was just an odd day. Mistah C headed to Colorado as previously announced, so I ended up getting my lovely friend Miss J to go to birth class with me so I wouldn't look like an abandoned wife. Miss J is usually up for most things and she offered to take scrupulous notes for The Boy so he would not be behind in classwork (I will use these notes to recount the class).

First of all, we got our diet tracking sheets back. I was expecting a lecture on the evils of Pop Tarts and Cadbury cream eggs, but instead Jan wrote a lovely card thanking us for tracking our foods (us nothing, snort), listing all the good foods she saw that we were eating to help the baby and make the uterus strong. Since I was expecting a little bit of a scolding, it was a sweet surprise.

We met Latia, who is a doula-in-training. She told us the story of her home birth, which was very quick and sounded great. She was a L&D (that's labor and delivery) nurse in a hospital which is when she decided she didn't want to give birth in a hospital. I found her story reassuring and normal-sounding (well, not normal in how fast she gave birth, but normal in how normal the process of birth is). I would have liked a Q&A session here, but I thought it would be rude to ask questions about something personal like birth when questions were not invited, even in a birth class, even with a doula-in-training.

We went over pregnancy vocabulary, including hyperventilation and fetoscope. They talked about babies being born with the "bag of waters" still intact, which is what I believe I would call a caul. Babies born with a caul are supposed to be gifted, either just plain lucky or have second sight. If we have a kid with a caul, I will spend time periodically thinking, "Can you hear me? HEY!" to see if the kid jumps. Maybe teaching the kid to buy lottery tickets and gamble if s/he never responds to telepathic thoughts or sees dead people.

There was a section on "issues with pregnancy" which nobody seemed to be having. Everyone else seems to be having Braxton-Hicks contractions, but I haven't had any yet. Now I can have contraction envy in addition to belly envy.

The doula in training said the C-section rate in San Diego is currently 31%. Nationwide last year, it was 29%, according to Jan. Those are scary numbers.

We watched two movies: Gestation: the First Days of Life and Natural Squatting Birth. The second one was a birth movie where the five-year-old sister of the baby being born attended, which was highly amusing because she made comments like, "Gross!" and "Why is he all bloody?" and "Can Mommy feel anything?" while the baby's head was crowning. "Yes, she can feel that," Daddy says while Mom grimaces her way through crowning.

In between the movies, we did a relaxation exercise in which Miss J rubbed my back like nobody's business (note: if it's relaxation time, the horror porn can't be too far behind). At some point (after the second movie, I'm guessing by the notes), we also did some ice breaker type things where we all lined up by name, zip code, due date, etc. Miss J took notes which I will find so helpful when I try to remember the names of the new people in class.

Miss J said she really enjoyed the class. The people in our class are really great, which helps. I was worried that it would be horribly dull to someone not currently gestating, but I was really glad she went. I see by the notes that next week we are having a show and tell, otherwise known as a baby and birth story from previous Bradley Class students. Next week's also about the coach's role, so that should be interesting.

When we got home, the Boy called to say that all tasks in Colorado had been accomplished and things were going well, so that made it a lot easier to deal with the fact that he wasn't here.

It's good that I didn't get a lecture on Pop Tarts, because I woke up this morning to make my own breakfast (usually the Boy makes us breakfast in the morning) and there was no bread for toast and no milk, so I had Pop Tarts and a yogurt smoothie with one of my horse-size vitamin pills and felt just fine about that, thank you. Otherwise, I would have been eating leftover penne with vodka sauce or leftover sirloin stirfry.