Bradley Class #4: The Coach's Role

Last night's class, friends, was a disappointment. It was a mild train wreck of a lack of linear thought meeting the indefatigable power of a pair of three-year-olds.

We were having a "show and tell" class on top of the regular class: mom with a month old brand new baby, plus her coach (her mom), plus her three-year-old son. Then we had another new couple who were there not for class but to meet other parents because they were new to this area. They also had a three-year-old son. Two three-year-old boys playing together have a lot of energy, and these were extremely verbal three-year-old boys.

Add to this our instructor who is not the most linear thinker in the world, as sweet as she may be and as much as she may know, and you had an hour that was pretty darn incomprehensible, at least to me. I know it was an hour because this is the first time I've turned to Mistah C during class and asked, "What time is it?" That's generally my barometer of whether or not I'm having a good time (waiting for appointments while chatting with friends notwithstanding).

The mother talked about her births. Our instructor prompted her to start with the first one, but she got a little into that and realized that she couldn't remember all the details, at which point her own mother said, "Talk about New Baby; he's newer." While this is going on, the three-year-olds have discovered that they can bang the toys in the doctor's office against the toys, the walls, and the floor. The parents of the second boy are trying to shush them; Grandma of the speaker's son is trying to convince him to come over and tell his part of the story. He doesn't want to. He's got toys and another boy. At some point, the kids began throwing the toys, and that's when our instructor decided to try and occupy them, but there's honestly only so much muzzling you can do to a three-year-old. We watched a birth movie while the kids were still there, one with a woman with a large supportive family there for everything; more on that later.

I know it's a birth class. I know I'm getting one. I just don't know that it was worth my time to witness that.

When the new mom finished speaking, she asked if we had any questions. The woman of the other new couple spoke up with a comment on her own personal birth. The only question I could think of was, "Where is your babies' daddy?" but since that is so obviously rude and was for my own personal curiosity more than any educational purpose, I didn't ask it. Nobody had questions. I had a hard time following her narrative over the din, so I didn't have enough details to work with.

Then we got to actual class material. The birth movie was hard to follow because of the talking of the three-year-olds, but the plot of these things is always the same, thank God. The woman had an entourage of people - sisters, two kids, sisters-in-law, and her mom and dad, plus hubby all rubbing her and talking in soothing voices to her. In the car on the way home, I said to Mistah C, "I would be looking for a bat with all those people talking to me and touching me while I was in labor." He told me I wouldn't be putting up with lots of people talking at the same time now.

Grandpa in the movie was distinctly there against his will. They had a quote of him after the birth saying: "I've never seen a birth before. I will never forget it." This is a smart guy. He didn't want to say, ew ew ew I didn't ever want to see my daughter's hootch ever again, particularly with a baby's head sticking out of it, but he managed to come up with a line that his daughter could get teary-eyed and nostalgic about when the movie is played but that his friends at the bar will never be able to fault him for saying if they ever hear about it. The birthing mom admitted during the post-birth debrief that she had manipulated her parents into staying, and I thought that was pretty crappy. It's like Bridezillas who force their bridesmaids into blush and bashful dresses because that's what they've always dreamed of, and it's my my my my day. Are there Laborzillas? Momzillas?

Anyway, after the kids had left, we started going through the questions in the workbook. I know I was already annoyed. I'd been up since dawn loading stuff, work is sucking wind again this week, my teeth were adjusted which always gives me some residual pain, and my in-laws were (are) about to arrive which put me in a position of last minute picker-upper and toilet-cleaner with the way our day turned out.

But the questions annoyed me. Questions like, "What strengths do you bring to pregnancy and labor?" Then we're going to go around the room and state strengths. You know what? If you're stupid enough to have gotten this far throughout your life and embarked on bringing up a human being without figuring out what your strengths and weaknesses are and what your spouse's strengths and weaknesses are, I don't want to know about it because you scare the living crap out of me. I don't think you're going to get it from the "suggested answers" in the workbook.

The other part of this that annoyed me is that this is not something I think should be asked in a class after "What are some drugs given in labor that can cut off feeling?" That's heavy stuff. I love my dear husband; I really do. He's the air I breathe and my sanity and my sense of humor. I can't imagine life without him; I can't imagine being sane during this pregnancy - as easy going as it has been - without him. I can tell when I haven't spent as much time with him as I should because my temper gets short and my sense of humor vanishes into thin air. I can only imagine that labor without him would be twice as difficult.

There is absolutely no way to distill that into a ten-word "Strength" answer for birth class.

This was the contrary class for me. The one person who has given birth before said she got "very vocal" during pushing and wanted to know why none of the women in the video had been verbal. Jan said they just weren't. I asked, "Why not?" Jan didn't know and didn't speculate.

Jan also mentioned that some women get PTSD from a bad birth experience. PTSD (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, although I don't know if it's a disorder or a syndrome right now according to the DSM) is something I know a lot about, and I have read that some women who have had C-sections largely against their consent have had PTSD. It was introduced pretty lightly for how serious PTSD is. "How traumatic would a birth have to be for you to get PTSD?" I asked. Jan went into a segue about prior sexual abuse and the issues that birth may bring up for some women, which was muted and not very informative. I realize this is a hot button of mine, but it drives me nuts when people with limited knowledge of mental disorders start talking about them in an educational way. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing and, in my case, an infuriating thing.

My in-laws are officially on the ground; my workplace is officially running behind, and as such I think lunch will be happening soon.