12:34 p.m. - 2006-08-21
All About Birthin' Babies
Joe and I spent our entire day this past Saturday at Sibley Hospital, where we participated in a 9-hour "Preparation for Childbirth" class. Long? Informative? Mildly annoying? Inadvertently amusing? All of the above.
We didn't know where to go when we arrived at the hopital, so we logically (I thought) asked the old bag at the information desk.
Me: Hi, we're trying to find a Childbirth Education class.
Old Bag: Do you know where it is?
Voice Inside My Head: Um, no. That's sort of why I asked you.
Me: No.
OB: They didn't give you any directions when you signed up?
Me: No.
OB: None at all? Nothing? No room number or anything like that?
VIMH: Look, just lean over the counter and choke the shit out of her.
Me (with much huffing, eye-rolling, and restraint): If I was given directions, I do not have them at this moment in time.
OB: OH! Well, you weren't being honest with me. Now we're getting somewhere.
VIMH: Do it! She's old! And we're already in a hospital!
OB finally decided us worthy of giving directions to, and off we went.
There were eight other couples in the class. The one we were assigned to meet and chat up and get information about to introduce later were named Priscilla, and, I'm not making this up, Odd-Even. O-E, who goes by Odd, was named after each of his grandfathers. Not in the U.S., in case you hadn't guessed, but in Norway, where he's from.
During our get-to-you-know time, I told them that I was a human resources manager by day, and that I also owned a pet sitting business. When Priscilla introduced us, she informed the class that I was a small-business owner, specializing in pet snakes. I didn't catch it, but luckily Joe did and corrected her. I'm sure at that point I was branded in everyone's mind as the Snake Girl. (Didn't help later, when the instructor explained the delivery of the placenta and I asked "Can we take it home?" and some guy suggested I feed it to my snakes.)
Most of the class went pretty well. We learned everything -- what all the stages of labor are like, how to manage pain through breathing and (yay!) drugs, saw where we'd be delivering our babies (and living for the next couple of days after that), ate the icky cafeteria food.
My overall impression was that, even after all this, I still can't believe this is actually going to happen to me. I'm not even scared of labor, mostly because I really can't believe that this is actually going to happen to me. I guess when compared with being absolutely wigged out about the whole experience, as I could easily do to myself, this is the better option. By the time it does happen, I'll be to busy to freak out and will just hope that I remember the "hee-hee-hee-hoo" breaths and that the epidural kicks in quickly.
