Bradley Class 11: And then there were four...

Four couples left in class with babies in utero, that is. Yup, someone in our class gave birth yesterday. Unfortunately, she was the last one due and wasn't due until August. The baby's premature and going to be in the NICU until she reaches 5 pounds and/or the original due date (birth weight 3 lb, 6 oz). But mom and baby are both apparently doing well. For all you Bradley folks out there, they managed to have a natural, drug-free childbirth.

I think it took our instructor 20 minutes to tell what she knew of their birth story, all in typical tangent-laden Jan-fashion. It was quite the saga: pre-term labor, doctors nagging the mom to get an epidural, getting transferred from one hospital to another mid-labor due to the NICU being overrun at the first hospital, an ambulance driver who massaged her back with tennis balls during the transfer, ending up at a different hospital than intended, a mom who began begging for drugs at transition and her charming husband-coach who helped her understand she didn't need them. This is apparently the first preemie Jan's had in class; it looked like it shocked her.

Note to self: When telling a story about anything medically-worrisome happening to someone, like pre-term labor at 32 weeks or a car accident, start the story by giving the current status of that person. For example, an introductory sentence like, "Tallulah went into labor yesterday and had little Belle this morning prematurely; both of them are doing fine. Belle is in the NICU but was breathing on her own and had an Apgar score of 7 at birth," does so much less for the imagination and so much more for sanity than a sentence like, "I didn't know if I should call all of you and let you know before class, because I thought maybe I should call each of you and tell you each individually and I've been thinking about it all day, but Tallulah went into pre-term labor yesterday." Do not dramatically pause after delivering any kind of statement like that; people think you're about to tell them horrible things.

This is especially useful when speaking to a room full of pregnant women who are worried about someone they've known who has been having problems throughout the pregnancy.

Anyway, it was Class 11, How to Be a Super Coach. We watched two films, one friendly natural waterbirth in a US facility and one with a midwife and a sculptor having their child in their beautifully-tiled outdoor hot tub in a garden in Mexico. The one in Mexico was idyllic. I'm not sure what this had to do with being a super coach.

We did some relaxation techniques, one imaging a place you've been and I honestly can't remember the other technique. I watched the fishtank and tuned out. We re-visited circumcision as a topic for discussion, although I don't know why because nothing new was brought to the conversation by our instructor. The class is rabidly anti-circumcision; there's one couple having a boy (not circumcising him) and there's us having whatever we have (not circumsizing it whatever it is).

She asked if anyone had been to a bris; I had and I was struck by how great the potential for minimizing or disparaging the solemn and sacred traditions of another religion was. So I was extra careful. Honestly, what I remember about it was how fast the baby stopped screaming. The doctor in our class described doing circumcisions in the hospital (with scissors that sound like a cigar cutter) and he also commented that it was surprising how fast the babies stopped screaming. I'm not sure Jan was happy with my trying to explain how significant and joyful the act of circumcision seemed to the family I saw in the context of the Jewish Covenant with God, but I'm also not sure I did it justice. Mistah C said he could tell I was being very deliberate.

We had to discuss how there's no medical reason for a baby to be circumcised in the US today although we did at least talk about Africa and AIDS transmission theories. Our instructor made some comment connecting "AIDS and the morality you teach your children" which tweaked me; I made a neutral comment that AIDS had nothing to do with morality but with making sure your kids had sex ed. Maybe it wasn't that neutral. I wish she'd said more so that we could all be morally outraged together here on the blog, but unfortunately, that's all I've got. The larger conversation was too interesting to get into the gory details of what connection Jan thinks there is between AIDS and morality.

At the end of class, we took pictures of us preggo vimmen and then of the couples (except the ones who gave birth yesterday, sigh) so we can compare the bellies to the babies at our class reunion. Mistah C did not have his super new camera so we'll have to depend on others to send us pics. I'm now the last one due - everyone else is due in early July. It was fun to take the cheezy pictures but a little sad with one of our class's babies in the NICU. Let's all think good thoughts for her.