Time to get educated on all things related to childbirth and infant care!
Richard and I began our baby classes at our hospital this past week. So far, they’ve left me feeling uneasy and intimidated. As for Richard, he’s more excited than ever after each class session. No surprise there – nothing motivates Richard more than a challenge and parenthood definitely sounds challenging to say the least. He actually wishes he was the one giving birth. And believe me, so do I after our labor class!
Our first class was Baby Basics, which was all about infant care following delivery. Richard and I were the first couple to arrive. Once we took our seats, Richard immediately noticed that our practice baby doll was black. As soon as the instructor left the room for a minute, Richard whispered to me loudly, “We can’t have a black baby!” Next thing I knew, he was up looking for another baby doll. He quickly switched our black baby for the nearest white baby.
But something was wrong with the white baby doll. It looked like it was either extremely pissed off or it had two lazy eyes. Plus there were dirt marks on its face. Richard said, “We can’t have an ugly baby!” He quickly grabbed the nearest smiling white baby and switched them. I just hoped that our instructor didn’t come back to find us switching around all the dolls. Luckily, I was spared that embarrassment.
Once we got to the portion of class when we had to practice a variety of infant care tasks on our dolls – diapering, bathing, burping, swaddling, etc. – we had to unwrap our baby doll from its blanket and remove its diaper. And once the diaper was off, it was evident our smiling white baby was a girl. The ugly baby that we had rejected, now in the care of another couple sitting next to us, was a well-endowed boy. Richard looked devastated. As I tried to focus on properly bathing our baby girl, Richard kept saying “I can’t believe I gave away our boy!”
After that incident, I think it’s pretty obvious that one of us (Richard) would prefer Baby Kopp to be a boy.
My husband also thought it was funny to pretend to suffocate our baby doll with the swaddling blanket, another clear indicator of how Richard feels about the female gender.
I did learn quite a bit in our Baby Basics class, including that baby wipe warmers are useless and that there’s no need to sterilize bottle nipples after each use. As our pediatrician instructor put it, “If you were breastfeeding, you wouldn’t boil your nipples before each feeding.” Good point, Doctor!
Next, we began our labor classes. After hearing all about dilation and the thinning of the cervix and vacuums and forceps and epidural catheters and C-section incisions, I was still most disturbed by meconium amniotic fluid. Meconium is basically your baby’s first poop, which usually happens after the baby is born. But in our labor classes, I was horrified to learn that this is not always the case. So now I will have nightmares that when my water breaks, the fluid will be brownish instead of clear and I’ll know that my baby took a crap inside me. Gross.
Meet our baby dolls from class (yes, Richard actually took photos):
The rejected black baby doll. We were soon to learn that the blue blanket and bathtub were not true indicators of the baby’s gender.
The rejected angry-looking white baby doll. I think it may be a little cross-eyed.
The smile deceived Richard and he was fooled into picking this happy white baby girl, who, by the way, kept smiling even as Richard tried to suffocate her. 🙂
I know I keep saying this, but you reall need to write a book or something. After Erma Bombeck made a great living writing about her and her families everyday life. You could make so many people laugh!!
i totally would have gone with the black baby doll….. just sayin’. i too am petrified of the labor process…i read what to expect when you’re expecting (so when i’m really expecting i won’t be too surprised), and i was freaking out! just load up on the drugs and you’ll be fine!
This is hilarious!