In this blog I am going to attempt to convey to you what this past Saturday was like for Jesse and me as we spent EIGHT hours at a birthing class. I'll tell you now that I am going to fail at this miserably. There is no possible way to articulate with words that which is "the birthing class." But alas, I will try.
Lets start with the teacher. She wore Birkenstocks. There's nothing more that I really need to say about her other than that. I could say that she was way...WAY too free with her body, modeling a birthing position longer than most women who are actually in labor. I could say that she tried to tell joke after joke while her voiced trailed off to barely a whisper so by the time the punchline came you had no idea what she was saying. I could say all those things and more, but I won't. All you need to know is that she wore Birkenstocks.
The class itself was in a rather small room. We were there with 6 other couples. We lined the perimeter of the room, all sitting in bean bag chairs. The man that sat across from me was as typical of a police officer as you could imagine. He was my favorite in the class because his discomfort with the chair and with the awkwardness of the entire situation was written all over his face. It was awesome. I stared at him a lot. I also stared at one of the mothers who was insanely serious about the class. She was hanging on every one of the teacher's words. To no surprise, she was that one student who, when everyone else was dying to leave, kept asking question after question (think back to your college days. You remember that person, don't you?) My 3rd favorite was the guy sitting to my immediate right. I didn't like him at first. He could not have been more disinterested in the class. I'm pretty sure he would've made a run for it several times if he didn't think his wife would kill him. But when it came time to practice putting the diaper on the pretend baby, he shined. I'm not saying the diaper I put on the doll was perfect, but this guy's was awful. Not only was it bad, but rather than try again he decided it would be a better idea to take one of the wet wipes and fashion it around the baby's head to make it look like a bandana. This might not sound funny to you, but when you've been sitting in a bean bag chair for 8 hours listening to your hippy teacher telling you jokes you can't understand, a baby with a bandana is hilarious.
Now more about the bean bag chairs. I've glossed over them but I'd like to give them some attention now. Let me say this: you haven't lived until you've sat in a bean bag chair for 8 hours straight. At first thought they seem comfortable, but they end up enveloping you to the point where you can't move at all. Any attempt to adjust your position in the chair brings some much noise (bean bags can be loud) that you draw the ire of everyone in the room. The girl that I mentioned earlier, you know, the teacher's pet, gave me a death stare more than once because I interrupted the very important "to play music or not play music in the hospital room" portion of the day. From that point on, no matter how uncomfortable I was, I refused to adjust. The sound that came from the chair was too deafening to risk it.
I could go on about the class. It was 8 hours of pure comedic material. But I'm not going to go any further simply because a lot of it isn't appropriate. For instance, I'm not going to talk about the videos we watched and how there were cameras in places that no camera should ever go. How the women in these videos showed things that usually require a 2 drink minimum. I'm going to make no mention of how all the men had to give their wives hand massages while the lights were dim and the teacher played new age "crystals will heal you" type music. (That might not sound weird, but you try doing that with 12 complete strangers). No, I won't talk about those things because I have class.
I will say this: I'm glad it's over and through it all it made me even more excited to soon welcome Cassie into the world. There were several times during the class where I looked at Jesse and just smiled. It wasn't the class but rather what the class represented - we were one day closer, one less obstacle to go through to having our daughter. We are praying and trusting that God will ready us for something that you simply can't prepare for in an 8 hour class.
