HE-HE-WHOO... HE-HE-WHOO..

Well we have now completed the hospital's child birthing class!! Unfortunately our accomplishment came with no graduation or certificate, but we did learn a lot during our time and had some fun while doing it.

On Friday evening the instructor mentioned that there would be 30 people (15 couples) participating in the class, so things would get tight. Luckily not everyone showed up and we had more room than was first anticipated. Which turns out to be a good thing when 1/2 of the participants in the room feel like over sized blimps and 2 of them wishing they would POP at any moment to rid themselves of their current discomfort. This first evening was rather slow and the group sat there like bumps on a log just trying to take in all of the information and wondering when the emphasis "birthing video" would be shown. Finally around 9:00 we learned that we would watch the first portion, showing stage 1 of labor and would actually see stage 2 of labor (delivery) on Saturday morning, after of course we had all had time for our breakfast to settle down.

On Saturday we began with a Q/A session and our instructor was trying to wake us all up. Her sense of humor really began to show and helped lead up to the climax in the video we were all anticipating and dreading. Finally after our short morning break it was time for the viewing to resume. Everyone watched, prepared to be grossed out or frightened to no end. Then it was done and a classmate commented about how this was nothing like the famous tape they showed high schoolers during the sex education unit. This was the beginning of a relaxed rest of the day. Our instructor taught us many relaxation techniques and massage positions (which sent the class into chuckles), and had a 10 minute tangent about the show "I Didn't Know I was Pregnant." It was very humorous to listen to her discuss how the girls/women on this show were either uneducated or in denial the entire time they were pregnant and how we won't be so dumb to miss the signs of labor (a common fear that we would miss the signs and end up delivering in some random, non-hospital location) since we had recognized the obvious that we were pregnant and knew a due date was in our future.

While we didn't learn Lamaze like many used to learn and I assumed we would learn, we did have a more enjoyable time than expected.