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February 03, 2007
All I need to be a good dad is a powerpoint presentation and a video.
Categories: Personal
(Warning. Lots of birthing talk to follow which may be disturbing to some younger viewers).
Seriously. Or at least I felt that way after our childbirth class today. Sorta. Okay, I am kidding. Except the class would have been a lot more useful if it would have had a powerpoint and they had shown the video first.
Sarah and I were at The Women's Center at 8:30, where are childbirth class was supposed to last until 1:30. It was taught by a very nice labor and delivery nurse who had apparently been doing this for over 30 years and was from Canada. At least that's the reason she gave for pronouncing "centimeter" something like "sontomater". We wrote our $40.00 check out to her, which I also thought was odd. Was she really even a nurse at the hospital? For all I know, she could have given the security guard at the desk $50 to use the conference room. Of course, we got certificates at the end, so that means everything is totally official.
Here's the deal. I will confess my ignorance and accompanying nervousness at being a parent. I feel good about it. I want it and am ready for my daughter to enter the world (aside from the fact that, if she came tomorrow she wouldn't have a place to sleep yet. Or we don't even have a seat to get her home from the hospital). But I know there are a lot of choices to be made about the labor and delivery process, not to mention afterward. What I need to help me make those choices are a fairly straightforward presentation of the medical facts involved and how the process usually works. What we got instead was some odd mantras -- "If it smells like pee, it's pee." -- a bunch of anecdotes, some useful information, and a hospital commercial.
There was useful information given. I learned stuff. Sarah and I practiced breathing (or she practiced breathing and I practiced counting and tapping her arm). We are going to work on a birth plan. But give me some visual aids! Don't just thow what seem to be important terms and points of decison making (the drugs available instead of an epidural, when we have to decide these things, when we need to call the doctor) between voicing subtle disdain for obstetricians, telling us why your hospital is better than the one in Pineville, and mentioning that you sneak your laboring mothers graham crackers.
Maybe I am hyper-critical because I am an educator, but just a bit more organzation in this presentation would have helped me out immensely. I have friends and family who can give me lots of stories about how their labor and delivery went. What I need from the hospital is . . . wait for it . . . medical facts.
I am also beginning to realize how poiltical this whole process is. It's like you are choosing sides in the childbirth war or something -- breast feeding, car seats, pain managment -- everyone's got a side.
At the end of everything, we watched a video which detailed the labor and delivery process, complete with footage of births. Sarah cringed a little (understandably so -- "That's gotta fit through where?!"), but to me, that was the highlight. Not only did it lay things out in a straightforward manner, but by showing the actual footage of women giving birth it helped me deal with part of my nervousness. It sounds dumb, I know, but I wasn't sure how I was going to handle the sheer physicality of the process. Would I be freaked out, even though it was my child and my wife? Yet I found the birth footage interesting and, in many cases, moving. It's just such an amazing thing. I can't wait for it to happen to us.
Actually, yes, I can wait nine more weeks. That's plenty of time, thank you. At least let me get a car seat and a crib.
Posted by Nakia at February 3, 2007 07:37 PM