Wow, long time, no update

Random notes here before I fill out my absentee ballot and vote. I took a quiz to tell me what kind of accent I have and yes, I am from the Northeast.

What American accent do you have? Your Result: The Northeast Judging by how you talk you are probably from north Jersey, New York City, Connecticut or Rhode Island. Chances are, if you are from New York City (and not those other places) people would probably be able to tell if they actually heard you speak.
Philadelphia
The Inland North
The Midland
Boston

We had no trick or treaters for Halloween. We had a boy in a cute tiger costume but it was too hot for him to wear all evening. I may still take him for professional pictures in his costume for his three month picture.

Master A is at 15 pounds and change at the last weigh-in (Friday), not bad for three months. He is huge. Huge! I'm glad we finally got the crib set up. He likes it a lot more than the basinette, probably because we don't have a bumper on it so he can see out of the crib easily. The mobile is interesting to him, as are the various toys we've got in the crib for him to look at. He's getting more self-amusing, which is good.

We had our Bradley class reunion Friday night. It was fun to see everyone and all the babies. I don't think any of them were as cute as our own, but I've been told he's extraordinarily beautiful. Oh, and I'm biased. Mistah A slept through the group baby pictures, probably so as not to blind the other parents with his gorgeous blue eyes (still no sign of changing, btw). He's so sweet that way.

Chocolate fountains are not good potluck food, just in case anyone wants my opinion.

Everyone Else in Birth Class Gave Birth

One couple moved up a week from their due date and had their baby on the 4th; the other couple with the original due date of the 4th gave birth yesterday. Both were girls. That's three girls and one boy for our class so far.

Now it's just Mistah C and me waiting. I will roll 37 weeks tomorrow or Saturday, depending on whose math you're using. Then I will enjoy the "we made it to full term" sigh of relief and celebratory Ben and Jerry's.

I'm not at the fabled "I'm so sick of being pregnant" point, although it will be lovely to roll over in bed in the middle of the night without feeling like I need a crane to assist me. I keep telling this kid to stay in until it's done, which in my mind is at least 40 weeks but I won't quibble on timelines between 37 and 40 (or 42) weeks. It's just been a surprisingly easy pregnancy.

Week 12: The Very Last Birth Class

Two happy surprises in yesterday's birth class: both couples who have had their babies showed up (one gave birth a week ago yesterday, one gave birth Saturday night). I was so pleased to see them. We got to hear all about their births, which were both unmedicated. The couple that gave birth Saturday had tiny baby with them (the other couple's little girl is still in the NICU but doing great and we got to see pics of the cutie). I've got not enough time and too much sense to invade their privacy by trying to repeat their stories here, but if they end up putting theirs online somewhere, I'll post a link.

A lactaction consultant was also in attendance, and boy howdy would she not shut up. After the birth stories, she began peppering the moms with questions about their techniques. It was like being at a lecture you never asked to attend. I appreciate that she was trying to help, especially the couple with the preemie, but most of what she said, the mom said, "Yes, I'm doing that," or "Yes, I'm doing this."

The consultant put in a movie by an Australian consultant about breastfeeding which could have been, oh, a quarter of the length long. It was extremely repetitive. Halfway through the movie, the couple with the baby in NICU had to go visit the kid, and instead of stopping the movie like a sane and rational person to allow us to say goodbye, the instructor kept the film rolling and the consultant kept pointing out the same damn points that had already been made ad nauseum. I so would have rather said goodbye properly to the other couple; I was so glad to hear that they were all doing so well.

Anyway, part way through class, the baby looks like he needs fed. The lactaction consultant pretty much sacrifices the mom to the God of Education by making her the Vanna White of Breastfeeding for the remainder of class. While the consultant was helping them get settled, I think people tried to give them a modicum of privacy. Once the kid was latched on, this woman invited the entire class to come stare at this woman's breasts to observe the latch.

I don't care who the hell you are. Don't invite people to look at breasts that aren't yours. I asked the mom, "Is this okay with you? You don't have to be the class guinea pig just because you're here." She said it was; otherwise, I wouldn't have looked. I'm not sure what I was supposed to get out of looking; I probably didn't get what I was supposed to because I was so ticked off at this woman's assumptions of my classmate's comfort level as a new mom. I mean, we're all nice people and the new mom is capable of saying no, but she's also in an incredibly vulnerable position right now as a new mom and I wanted to respect that.

Anyway, the consultant kind of soured the rest of the class for me. She started talking about how we should be only wearing our pajamas for the first two weeks to send a signal to guests that we are not entertaining. Then she said something like, "There are some people you have to let in, like the grandparents," and this is where (yes, where was my emotional baggage again, ah yes, HERE are my 18 steamer trunks) I said, "Hell no," in my outside voice. The consultant tried to argue with me, but I wasn't having it. Nope. She may be a grandmother, but I am a woman with a backbone.

There is nobody who gets an automatic free pass to the house in the first couple weeks after birth (if you're not on the lease - and the baby and the cats already are, smarty-asses) and there is no tie of kinship nor cute little babydom that negates that. Sorry! I love you folks out there in blogland, but you had better damn well ask if it's okay for you to visit, especially if your visit requires luggage. It may be fine for you to visit if you're staying at the lovely Embassy Suites but not fine here in the tiny apartment of too much stuff.

Grumble grumble. Mistah C said I was not rude. Other people in class were laughing at whatever I said, so at least there's that.

I have to eat breakfast now so I can get to jury duty on time. Wow, jury duty. But that was class in a nutshell. I really hope we can stay in touch with our classmates; they're just cool people.

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.

Bradley Class 10: the Heisenberg Principle

The act of being observed changed our instructor's normal behavior. I can't tell if Jan was being evaluated or just observed, but there was a person taking notes on the class. Jan was not her normal self during class Tuesday night. She tried hard to adhere to the book, something she normally doesn't do, then made a point of telling us all the things that would happen during class at the beginning of class, which is also strange.

Class was an extended dance mix of Stage 2 labor techniques. First we went over the vocabulary in the book, which we'd covered already. Then relaxation, which I didn't like because it was about imaging warmth while I was already hot in a hot room. Pregnancy makes me hot.

Then we watched a movie on breastfeeding, which had decent step-by-step information on how to get a kid to latch on even if it was not the most professional video I've ever seen (it reminded me a bit of Wayne's World). Then we went back to the workbook, which had a series of questions like, "How can you differentiate among an overwhelming urge to push, some feeling to push, and wishful thinking that you need to push?" These questions seem pretty straightforward to me, but those were for the guys. (Yes, because they really need to know and won't be able to ask. Right.) We also had to go around and report on what exercise we've been doing to get ready for birth, which was a little more pushy than I expect from Jan.

The most striking bit of class was the "dress rehearsal" for labor, which meant we went from station to station assuming different positions and practicing relaxing when Jan rang a bell. Assuming positions sounds better than it was. Positions were things like straddling the back of a chair, squatting, and sitting on a birthing stool. The observer asked Mistah C and I during this if this was our first child, because "you seem so confident." We said it was our first and that it was just "blind...courage?" I was thinking stupidity, but stupidity wasn't the word I wanted. I still don't know what the word would be. I don't know what there is to be afraid of or how we were expressing confidence in a way that someone would feel the need to comment on it. Maybe it was our cue to wax rhapsodic about the classes.

Other rants: I've been reading Morgan Spurlock's Don't Eat This Book, the follow-up to the fabulous Supersize Me, and it's spilled over into making my reading skills even more critical. Example: The Times had an article this week about how some/many researchers are beginning to say that breastfeeding is so much better than formula-feeding that is it a disservice to tell parents that formula's an equivalent alternative to breast milk. There's research saying kids who are breast fed have lower instances of infectious diseases in childhood and lower chances of developing certain cancers and autoimmune diseases (like diabetes and asthma), among other things like being smarter and not obese.

This is making some people defensive. One of the experts quoted in this piece is from Cato Research, basically saying correlation does not equal causality; as such, the link between breastfeeding and lower incidence of disease is in dispute.

How does this relate to Morgan Spurlock? Well, Morgan takes a bunch of "independent research institutes" to task in Don't Eat This Book for being funded by large corporations and making statements that just happen to defend what those large corporations do and decrying scientists as food Nazis. So I Googled Cato Research and found out what kind of work Cato advertises that they do. I don't know about you, but I don't think an organization boasting about getting pharmaceutical products approved with minimized, shortened, and abbreviated testing has my best interests at heart. I'm sure they potentially make more off my formula-feeding than they would off my breast feeding.

Boy, I better be able to breastfeed now.

Bradley Class 9: but really I don't know what technically

Class last night was a roller coaster, up and then down. Way down. Stick your fingers in your ears down. I'm not kidding.

We started off by finishing the Class 7 vocabulary, which was fine. Actually, since we hadn't had class for two weeks, we started by commenting on how big everyone's bellies are getting. Someone even said to me, "Wow, that baby's really growing." I probably still have belly envy, but I'm at least pregnant-looking now.

Then we watched a movie by Suzanne Arms, the author of Immaculate Deception and now an activist for natural birth. Mistah C probably said it best: "They should show that movie at the first class." It was the most professionally produced film we've seen (after all folks, we are in California; production values matter). It intercut film of a natural birth with talking head pieces from doctors, doulas, midwives, and other birth advocate-types. It also presented (woefully outdated but still scary) statistics on birth in this country. While I'm sure it's considered vitriolic, it struck me as a good basic presentation of the reasons why you might want to reconsider trotting off to the hospital to give birth even though 93% of the other women in this country do it.

Then it was time for the relaxation technique, which is a technique I've actually encountered before as part of my wrist injury biofeedback therapy. You're basically supposed to imagine an object that changes colors through the spectrum of the rainbow (and let tension go, and just concentrate on the colors changing, yadda yadda). Well, it turned into brainstorming. "The first color is red, so, oh, I should have brought the red roses from my garden. What else is red? No, not fire trucks. Strawberries are good. Shiny red apples." There were other conversations going on that got woven into this, like email addresses and other weird stream of consciousness stuff. The instructor pretty much gave up on the technique at green, but I also don't think she understood it.

So the relaxation technique wasn't terribly relaxing but we were reclining in the dark with someone rubbing us. Jan started talking about the vocabulary from Class 8, which is on interventions and unforeseen problems (like C-sections and whatnot). As part of that, she started talking about miscarriages, stillbirths, and babies/young children dying. These terms are not actually in the vocabulary; talking about the categorization of a woman based on first pregnancy versus first child delivered (primapara versus primagravida) made her go into a discussion of miscarriages, the grieving process, and all the rest of it. This discussion was longer than the discussion on the actual vocabulary for Class 8.

I had a "What the hell?" moment. I'm pregnant and hypersensitive right now, so I know that I don't want to hear about death, particularly death of babies (in or out of the womb) or animals. I still can't get through the special "Oprah visits Auschwitz" episode on my TiVo; I really can't watch the blood and guts sections of House. I certainly am not watching any dead baby episodes of anything. I don't read news stories about horrible things happening to families or children and I never ever watch the TV news anyway but I would have given that crap up too, stupid news as consumer product. It's not the innate superstition of "If I hear it, it'll come true," but it's just upsetting to me right now and as such, I'm filtering out what I can. At some point during Jan's monologue, I thought about putting my fingers in my ears; Mistah C says yes, I did cover an ear with one hand.

I don't understand how that discussion was educational. It would have been enough to say, "If you've been through a miscarriage, an abortion, or something else that makes you grieve for that lost child, then that's a valid feeling and you should probably talk to someone about it. I've had a miscarriage and you're welcome to talk to me about it, plus I have books and films to recommend to you on the topic that might help." The whole extended discussion of people she's known or taught who have had kids that died or were stillborn was not necessary. I was put out.
I don't know what next week's class is; I think Class 9 was the extended dance mix of Labor Stage 1 techniques, but I don't think we got there yesterday. I've had a prenatal checkup but that will have to wait until I sort through what I'm doing today for work.

Bradley Class #8, um, #7 extended

Last night's class was once again refreshing. The class is getting more comfortable with each other. We had two birth stories, both of which were uplifting "I did it without drugs in a hospital" stories, although the common theme about giving birth in a hospital without standard interventions seems to be get there as late in labor as possible, completely dilated, so nobody has time to do anything to you.

The funniest comment of the night was from the guy who is a California State Highway Patrolman on giving his wife a heparin lock during labor. Heparin locks are IV needles stuck in your arm or hand that are not attached to tubing. They're better than a conventional IV because you're not tethered, but you still have a needle stuck in your arm when you've got better things to worry about. The nurses wanted to give his (fully-dilated and pushing) wife a heparin lock "just in case" she needed something, and he said, "No, I've seen enough strung-out, neurotic people come into emergency rooms who you give IVs to just fine. She's just a woman in labor. She'll be no problem." After my time in the ER, I have to agree. It was probably most compelling coming from a guy who looks like he could stunt double for Bruce Willis in Die Hard.

Little sparks of controversy happened when we started discussing AFP tests. Jan assumed we would all pass on the AFP test because "those tests are done to determine whether or not people will abort." I had an AFP test, and it wasn't because I would abort. We agonized over the AFP test, both about whether or not to take it and what the results were once we did. Eventually, we decided that since I have a sister who has Down's and was born with some pretty serious (read: life-threatening) birth defects, it was important to get an AFP to see if further (more invasive, more risky) testing was indicated. As much I want to give birth in the birth center and avoid a hospital birth, if we had any indication that the kid required an intensive neo-natal unit, we would switch to the hospital with the best neo-natal facilities in town. Happily, our AFP came back negative. It's not a guarantee of a 100% healthy baby, but it meant that I felt like I was making the responsible choice by passing on amnio. The risk/benefit ratio was just too out of whack at that point.

I didn't talk about all that in class, but I did find out that a couple of people in class have learning disability connections: one of the women in our class who is a kindergarten teacher has her specialty in Special Ed but needs to finish her CA certification before she can teach Special Ed here, and one of the men's mom was a lifelong Special Ed teacher (recently retired). It's interesting what you end up having in common with people.

Class 8 is supposed to be medical interventions in labor, but we still have the last set of vocabulary words to go through from Class 7. I haven't even looked to see what Class 9 is. We've got no class next week for the Memorial Day holiday.

Bradley Class #7: Planning Your Birth

Class last night was better than I expected, although I'm the only nerdy girl who did all the homework. Last week we had two assignments: one was to define a list of terms relating to birth and the other was to write up what you imagine happening day of birth.

My terms were pretty easy to define, although I will out Mistah C here and say that he had a programming error in execution of his homework. (See, I am not one of those women in class who did the assignment for her husband. He has to do his own homework - not that he would expect me to.) He and his partner divided the list into odds and evens. C had the evens, but he started counting his list with zero instead of one and as such he and his partner defined all the same terms. This was pretty funny. At least Mistah C had lots of good statistics to back up his information.

We spent the class with each person (completely out of sequence to accommodate the two gentlemen who will not be there next week) defining their terms and having a discussion about them. It was a good, lively discussion because everything mentioned was controversial: induction of labor, circumcision, Vitamin K shots, eye ointment treatments right after birth. I like lively discussion.

I was the only one who had done a birth story. I had such a hard time with it that it gave me a headache. I don't like playing "let's pretend" with the whole birth thing; I'm trying very hard to curb my over-planning tendencies to adopt a "go with the flow" attitude for birth. Imagining is partially for me starting to set expectations. At this point, I feel like I'm as educated as I can be on terms, procedures, and techniques, so it's not like writing a birth story will uncover new fun facts for me. I don't think visualization works as a technique here because I find visualization only works with repetitive tasks and I can't practice birth. It's just a tool for figuring out what you haven't thought of, but I really think a lot about this stuff.

Our birth story was very general and non-specific as a result, with no triumphant ending of, "And we held darling Bluto/Beatrix in our arms and wept with joy." Maybe it's easier when you know the gender and have tied all those expectations to the kid already, but we're still waiting to see what happens.

Speaking of expectations, I've been thinking about the effect that gender has on your expectations. It would probably make the shopping easier, but I like having a complete stranger moving in. Plus I've got one of the most non-sexist yet chivalrous husbands on the planet so I'm not concerned about fighting the ill-effects of my spouse. I'm talking about those men in the universe who talk a great game but do very little to fight actual sexism, like those who spout, "You can be President someday, honey!" at their daughters while their wife clears the table of all the food she has shopped for, prepared, and will now clean up and put away. "Now why don't you bring Daddy something to drink?"

I've read recently of a fun psych experiment you can do with your kid that we're going to do (surprise, Mistah C!) at some point. Regardless of gender, take a kid out somewhere public dressed as a boy. The comments will probably be: "What a little bruiser!" and "He's so strong!" You can take the same kid out dressed as a girl and get the, "Oh, how pretty!" "How sweet!" "How quiet!" "So delicate," comments. We'll do a couple control experiments when the kid is a couple months old and then we'll do it again when the kid's eighteen. That should make for a good college entry essay (and grist for therapy, yay therapy!).

One more thing: Bluto and Beatrix are the stand-in names we use when talking about the kid to other people; they are not the actual names in contention. We're just not naming the kid until we see what the kid looks like. Could the kid look like a Bluto or Beatrix? Hmm, good question.

Bradley Class #6: Intro to Second Stage Labor

It's early here and if that wasn't enough of a tip-off for you that I might be cranky today, I could paint a picture of one small white cat knocking everything off every high surface in this room to better grab my attention, my being unable to find the cat sprayer to convince him that this was not how he wanted to grab my attention, and finally locking him out of the room I am in because I can't find the sprayer and I don't have the patience to deal with cat + gravity yet today.

Class last night was a grand improvement over the last class. Second stage labor means "the part where you push and the baby comes out." We watched a birth film which made six water births look pretty easy, although I did not care for the New Age-happy music that swelled dramatically after each birth. It was a step away from the pop songs during the credits of Japanese animation. Water births make me wonder when you get to shower, though. Even regular baths leave me feeling like I need a quick rinse; with all the stuff that comes out with a kid, I would want a shower.

I also have a hard time with the "practice" exercises. I have a hard time imaging what a contraction is going to feel like, but since it's the contraction of involuntary muscle, I'm sure it'll be different than tightening up any voluntary muscle in my body and relaxing it. I have mastered the squat enough that I don't like to be leaning on the Boy during a squat; it throws my balance off. It'll be different when there's a kid coming out, I'm sure.

There was another couple with a new baby for show-and-tell last night as well. These people were much more interesting and easy to follow. There was no three-year-old and the baby's daddy was right there (I'm sorry, but that did make it easier to relate). The mother was much more linear and articulate than the previous mother; the father quite pleased and smitten with the kid. The baby was five weeks old and cute. This mom went into labor about 7 days early at her baby shower, which is funny, really.

The father was so filled with fun facts, "Hey men, this woman will not be your wife. Just don't think of her that way for that one day. She's going to say things that you just have to remember, she's not your wife. Oh, and bring a change of clothes, maybe two. Oh, and be prepared early." Yeah, we probably need to get some place for the kid to sleep.

The mom was able to talk coherently not just about the birth, but also about breastfeeding, co-sleeping, slings and the like. She even talked about being at home alone with the kid and being lonely after the baby's dad went back to work. I asked her how long it had taken her to become an adept nursing mom, and she laughed (like she didn't feel adept) and said six weeks was when things started clicking.

I found the two of them to be reassuring because the what to do when you get home is where I'm truly concerned. Yes, birth's hard; it's the rest of my life thing that worries me. I've read enough to be able to say, yes, I want to breastfeed; yes, I want the kid carried around instead of deposited in the infant seat all day, but I still don't know anyone personally who does that. It's reassuring to meet first-time parents who are doing those things.

I would like also to give a shout-out to J & T who took on screener duties last night and watched House then sent me an email saying, no, you don't want to watch it this week. I watched Oprah's Monday show on prostitutes and thought, "Oh God, if we have a daughter, now I have to remember to tell her not to become a hooker." I appreciate the heads-up, especially on the same day Save the Children comes out with a report saying the US has the second highest infant mortality rates among "modern" or "developed" nations, losing the top spot to Latvia.

Bradley Class #5: 1st Stage of Labor

Last night we were back on track in class, boy howdy. We went through the book (slowly, oh so slowly at times) and answered the questions, then had relaxation time, then a movie.

I think I'm getting better because I am short-tempered, which is always a sign that I'm getting better when I've been sick. Nobody could make me happy last night. The room was too bright; the floor was too hard; there wasn't enough space to lay down without other people touching my pillow with their feet; people were talking during relaxation and the movie. I was aware that I was feeling beastly and so I tried to rein it in.

People are getting more confident in our birth class, though. The horror porn last night was about sweet, young, first-time parents having a natural birth. The movie was pretty benign until the close-ups of crowning came on, and then, oh my (consider this your too much information warning). Watching the top of a baby's head pop in and out of a vagina like a jack-in-the-box is disturbing. The woman looked like she was in intense pain and just couldn't get the gumption up to push the kid past the pain (which of course she did, but by the shots of the clock in the movie, it looked like she pushed for two hours, which is a long time for the top of a kid's head to be popping in and out, I think).

After the movie, Jan asked what we thought of the movie and one of the guys said, "Grody." Then Jan asked if at least it didn't look painful, and I think all the women in the room said, "Oh no, that looked very painful. Incredibly painful." There wasn't even a pause in our responses. "But manageable," Jan says, "and how happy she was at the end."

Yes, yes, everyone's happy with the baby at the end. What's wrong with saying it looks painful? Pain can be managed if you know it will end at some point. The institutionalized birth machine in most US hospitals says that birth is just too painful to endure without drugs/interventions and the natural birth fascists say that birth is just a walk in the park if you just, well, walk in the park during birth. I think the truth is probably somewhere in between. But it's as much of a disservice to tell women birth doesn't hurt as it is to tell women that it is the most blindingly painful thing ever and cannot be managed without meds.

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.

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.

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.

Protein tracking

The Bradley Method is big on nutrition. This means eating enough amounts of the nutrients a growing baby needs, specifically protein (80-100g per week) without regard to weight gain or salt intake. This is based on the work of Dr. Brewer, who found that high protein diets for pregnant woman prevented pre-eclampsia and other nasties. I've had to track my diet for the last week as homework. I am not eating enough veggies (but I knew that), but I have protein covered in spades. Counts for the week are:

Wednesday: 110 g
Thursday: 93 g
Friday: 129 g
Saturday: 70.7 g
Sunday: 85 g
Monday: 101.5 g
Tuesday: (early estimate) 93 g

I'll let you know what my teacher thinks. This made me feel better about my lack of massive weight gain. I already had an unhealthy dose of padding due to my new job of sitting on my butt and not having to go anywhere. First month, I lost five pounds, most probably from my concerted efforts to "eat right" and my sudden aversion to fried food (after all, my first hint that I might be pregnant was eating In-n-Out and feeling sick). I didn't really make it back to my starting weight until the second trimester.

The last couple visits have been up a pound, down a pound. My midwife is not concerned by any of this (if I was vomiting or not eating, she would be). Most of the books say I should be packing on the pounds by now. I have read this week that some overweight women don't gain much due to the changes in diet and exercise, so I'm satisfied with that for right now. I haven't been consciously trying to gain or lose weight; keeping sushi and Brie out of my diet is enough trauma without eating rabbit food and ignoring chocolate.

Bradley Class #1: Introduction

Yesterday we had to drop our friends off early at the airport so that we could make our first official birth class, so since it was important enough to cut their visit short, I should probably say something about it. I will have more to say about it when Mr. Secret Agent Man and I have completed our preliminary reconnaissance.

We got our workbooks. They're a little outdated in terms of appearance and font choice, but I'm also a snob about this. An earwig-looking bug ran between our pillows and The Boy killed it for me. It made me very happy that I had brought a blanket ($5, IKEA) for the "lie on the floor and practice relaxing" section of the class.

Practicing relaxing is difficult for me to do on a floor of an office. It's not all bad because we are there in the semi-dark with our partners massaging and rubbing us. I had a hard time getting into the spirit of things because the exercise is to consciously tense up a body part (hand, shoulder, foot) and then relax it. My first response was, well, duh, if you can tense something, you can relax it. But my dear husband took it completely seriously when I could not and him taking it seriously made me at least take him seriously, because he is so dear and sincere. Since I had a nasty bout with tendonitis a couple years ago (more than a couple now, hmm), I've had biofeedback therapy and the Boy and I have done a lot of relaxation exercises, which means we've practiced a lot of body consciousness/awareness exercises before. There was a time when I couldn't differentiate between relaxed and tense, so I should just get over my cheap self.

Then they showed a birth movie and this is where the class probably needed to be restructured so the relaxing was after the movie. I felt clinical towards the movie. The husband in the film was a bit of a smart ass and I was trying to decide if he was annoying to his wife or not, having (and being) a smart ass at home myself. This film was the first we've seen with full-on crowning (and some tearing), which is a little shocking. At some point during the movie, my husband gripped my shoulder very, very tightly, and while at first I thought he was trying to comfort me, I realized that this was not a happy moment for him.

Later on, he asked me if I had noticed the body language of one of the other men in class, and I had not.

"He looked like he didn't want to put his wife through that," he said, my sweet husband who hates to see me suffer.

While the whole labor thing sits heavily on the shoulders of women, at least, thank God, I don't have to decide how much to watch and I will be all-consumingly preoccupied. I don't have to worry about him or watch him be in pain. I may not feel that way when I want to pull his lower lip over his head during labor, but right now, I feel bad for the men sweet enough to not want to put their wives through labor.

Birth Class: A Modern Whodunnit?

I am glad we got to birth class yesterday, because it led to this interesting exchange.

We got to class on time, and I must say that I'm impressed with our instructor's memory. Besides remembering our names and noticing that I've gotten my hair cut short since the one time she's seen me, Jan asks how our niece's birth went and how the parents were doing, since we had talked to her briefly about induction of labor at the early bird class. Good priorities.

But then she takes us into another room to give us our official workbook (which I assumed was also to talk about the fees due in private, since yesterday was the day final payment was due) and she says the most gobsmacking thing. She asks if we got her message, and we say, no, we've been out of the house today and as such haven't picked up messages recently. She says that $100 of the class fees have been paid for us as "an anonymous donation." We both sputter a little bit and ask who paid it was, and she refuses to tell us but tells us how wonderful it is. We agree, but now we're feeling like creeps because we can't express our gratitude to those who have done this. Jan isn't budging.

In the car on the way home, we make a list of suspects and realize that most of these people are inscrutable when they want to be, so the odds of getting a confession are low. We identify motive and access, interrogation techniques, idle threats, and entrapment scenarios. I wonder if I should call Jan and double-check that she's not just giving everyone a break and trying to make us feel special or if my inability to wear socks makes her think we're financially disadvantaged and can't afford socks, let alone classes, and she's just giving us a break. (I discard this plan as being crazy.) I think about calling my hair stylist and asking if Jan does this for everyone (I table this plan until my next hair cut).

Then we realize that we're lucky enough to have a list of suspects. So we're still hunting, but we're grateful. Hopefully, if you did it, you read this, and thank you very much from the bottoms of our hearts. We're really surprised and completely befuddled, which probably delights you to no end. While I hope you're not insulted that we don't immediately know who did this ("Ah ha! It was Miss Scarlett in the Dining Room with the telephone!"), I'm almost as grateful for the reality check that we have friends and family who love us and go out of their way (and behind our backs) to do ridiculously kind unexpected things for us as I am for the gift of the classes.

We're still trying to decipher your identity. But we're also thankful.

First Birth Class

Last night, we went to our first birthing class. It's an early bird class, but the overall philosophy seemed to be the right one for us. It's Bradley Method(R), which I think ends up putting a large emphasis on nutrition (80-100 g of protein a day? Really?) and exercise but is mainly a class for People Who Don't Want an Epidural. In our class, it seems to be people who want to avoid the typical hospital birth and, more specifically, episiotomy. Three out of four couples there were planning on going to the same warm-n-fuzzy free standing birth center we're planning on popping in and the other couple's going to the warm-n-fuzzy midwife floor of UCSD, so it was relaxing to be with people who didn't give me the cautious and concerned "what do you mean you're not going to a hospital?" look. I think it was a little much for our instructor to discover we were already converted, but she tried gently and respectfully to get us to articulate what was bothering us about standard births in this country so we could get on with the lesson.

And we had to watch what I can't think of as anything besides "horror porn" after I heard the phrase coined on Coupling, a birth video. I think the instructor was hoping we'd all see it as an intense (but not painful) and beautiful thing, but nobody really said anything. Finally, the one person in the class who's given birth before said, "That video is just as scary as it was last time," which made everyone feel better that we all weren't swooning with the love and power of the woman giving birth without drugs. To me, it looked painful. She looked happy with the kid at the end, but I'm not a crazy person and that looked very much like it hurt before then. If the instructor calls contractions "lovehugs" or some of the other stupid crap I've seen in some of the fascist natural birth literature, I may have to roll my eyes.

But honestly, the worst part of the class was when we had to lie down on the floor with our two pillows as if we were settling in for the night. Well, see, I don't like my face being on the floor of an office. It's just distasteful to me in a very deep-seated way. It's visceral. I got up as soon as I could and kept popping up for the period we were showing our sleep postures because I couldn't believe everyone wanted to be on the ground that long. I must have looked like a groundhog. The pillows I had brought with me were my leg and body pillows, not ones I actually planned to put my face on.

So now I'm trying to figure out how to take a blanket with me next time so I don't have to put my face near the filthy floor again without saying to the very kindly instructor, "Putting my face that near this floor is like asking me to put my face in a toilet. " Oh, maybe I'll take my yoga mat. Hmmm.

We have an ultrasound tomorrow, so hopefully we'll get a picture and the midwife will have some reassuring words as to why I have the smallest belly out of all the people in the birth class when I'm not the last one due.