Childbirth Class - Part 1

For those of you not interested in hearing about our first childbirth class, sorry. This post is not for you. For the rest, here's how it all went down.

We arrived at the hospital and went up to the room. There were 7 couples there (one left halfway through - perhaps they had the gift of foresight)... The instructor was a nice woman from Slovakia. We began by introducing ourselves and answering the question, "What do you hope to get out of this class?" which I thought was kind of pointless because I'm sure we all just want to know more about the birthing process. I mean, that's what the class is for! It's called "Preparing for Childbirth."

Anyway, so we do that, then she has this huge PowerPoint with all of this interesting and helpful looking information like how to get rid of back pain and good positions for taking stress off of your hips, etc. but then she cruises by all of the promising slides and stops on slides of miniature babies formed out of marzipan (which, until this point, I thought was just the female character in Homestar Runner. I've never had marzipan). Think I'm kidding? Take a look.


Then she keeps halfway telling us about things and then says, "But we'll talk about that later." Did we? No.

Right before our five-minute break, she shows us a video called "Michelle's Story" and promises us that it has a lot of relevance and we'll all be able to fully relate to the story of this woman. Who gives birth in Guatamala. In a hot tub. With her father videotaping. While she and her whole family are naked. And she sucks on the fingers of her newborn right after she pulls her out of the womb. What the heck! And let's not forget when her Dad zooms out of the birth and focuses on a pair of dragonflies mating.

So Dan and I passed a good 10 minutes awkwardly staring at the ground and being thoroughly
weirded out. Goodness!

The second half of class wasn't as bad. We talked about signs that accompany different stages of labor and she had a fake pelvis and baby doll that each of the men had to pass through the birth canal. As if they'll be doing that in real life, too. We ended class by dimming the lights and "relaxing" while she said such things as "Imagine your mind is a lake. Without any ripples. With cool, crystal clear water." At this point, I was thinking, "What kind of ice cream should I have when I get home?" And Dan was thinking, "Is there any way we can get our money back?"