First Birthing Class

So!  Last night was our first BIRTHING CLASS!

A girl at work yesterday asked if I was excited.  I told her, no!  I'm not ready to learn this stuff!  They will show us videos of babies emerging from vaginas!  I will go home scarred!

They did, in fact, show us a video that included a baby emerging from a vagina.  Also a doctor presenting a fresh placenta to the new mother.  The purpose of this, said the video, was to show her it had all come out intact.  The doctor sort of stroked it, right in front of the woman's face.  All there, nice and whole.  Just the word 'placenta' has always made me feel a bit faint.  The sight of one, red and moist and presumably still warm, made my head spin ever so slightly.  

The video followed three or four women through the stages of labor.  Which meant three or four variations of grimacing, groaning, panting and writhing.  "Here's the redhead again ... oh look, she seems to be in as much pain as the Chinese girl.  Now back to blondie ... yep, lots of suffering going on there too."  Thanks, video.

It would probably be accurate to describe the state of my mind as petrified.  Excited, yes.  Able to ponder the impending childbirth scene with anything like equanimity ... no.  I was in a fairly sour mood as we drove to class.  This was because my fight-or-flight mechanism had picked 'flight,' so I felt like a kid being dragged to the dentist.  However, here's what I have going for me: first, a husband, who's the type of guy to keep a soothing hand on my shoulders throughout almost the whole two-and-a-half hours of class, in complete understanding of all my inward quaking.  Second, the fact that the reward's gonna be a little baby.  I know, I get all cootchie-coo at those words too.  Then third: the medical care's been really good so far.  Including last night's class, which did more to assuage my fears than to provoke them.  I went home feeling better than I did beforehand.

Something I've somehow never considered before: birth from the baby's perspective.  It's gotta be awful.  Last night, through illustrations and live props, we were able to see what it's like when the poor kid's head is stuck right in the middle of its mama's pelvis.  And just think how long that position must be endured.  Good thing you'll get over it quickly, Jabberwocky.