Bradley Class #2: Are You Poisoning Your Baby with Pop Tarts?

I will have the verdict on my diet next week, although Jan said, "Not much green veggies, which is pretty normal." There two other women there last week are health food people; one of them told Jan that she only ate organic, free grazing, hormone-free beef and one of them asked for forgiveness for her slice of chocolate cake because "it was from Whole Foods." I fear my Pop Tart is going to come up pretty poorly in comparison, not to mention my Cadbury cream egg.

There was no horror porn in yesterday's class. We talked about nutrition; aside from the protein fixation, you know all this already: green and yellow veggies, fruit, milk, no junk, yadda yadda. I found the movie a little condescending and the characterization of soda, chips and candy as "death and disease" slightly over the top. But I also had a Cadbury cream egg, so I'm reckless. I might even serve this child a cookie someday.

One of the other women in class has been referred to a dietician due to her weight gain. She's due two weeks after me (I'm just about to roll 24 weeks) and she's gained 25 pounds, which the dietician claims might be too much. (She's the one who had one slice of chocolate cake.) She's just a tiny slip of a thing and she loves spinach - Jan was happy about her green veggie intake. (My God, is this how I'm-a-better-Mommy-than-you starts? With the veggies?) She looks fine. But even though her midwife said she was fine, she was looking for some assurance. As outspoken as I am, I just couldn't say, "Hey, I wish I had gained some weight." But she looks great, and as my midwife said, "Everything is normal." I hope she doesn't go to the dietician; he sounds like a fascist.

The portion of class normally reserved for horror porn was used to show us a placenta, an actual, honest-to-God placenta that came out of someone's womb a couple days ago. It was about the size of a dinner plate and a couple inches thick at the most with the umbilical cord still attached, slimy smooth and veiny on the kid side and rather like a chopped beef steak on the mother's. It was still bright red. The instructor gardens (which is one of the reasons why she had a placenta), but Jan thought we should see a placenta since we may be preoccupied with our babies at birth and less interested in the placenta. It was a little much for me, but I'm the one who looks away when Chase, Cameron, and Foreman are doing all the nasty procedures on House. Nobody wanted to touch it.

Tonight we are going to the opera. We'll see if the kid likes high culture more than bad musical theater.