Yesterday Tarzan and I spent four hours in a classroom to learn about “life after baby”.
Let me first just say that it is completely ridiculous that they didn’t have more comfortable chairs. I was uncomfortable from the beginning, as was Tarzan and he isn’t even 34 weeks pregnant.
I feel like I’ve graduated from knowing nothing about baby to having a pretty good understanding of what my life will be like with baby. Well, as much as I can. I fully believe that all of the advice in the world isn’t going to totally prepare me for my own baby. He will be his own personality and what works for you might not work for us.
I fully plan on taking it as it comes and learning what best suits us then. Seems like the most logical thing to do, at least to me it does.
Tarzan has never changed a diaper in his life and he felt like we needed some kind of class, so I agreed. We picked the “Life after baby” class and I honestly thought it would be really informative. I mean, the class was 4 hours long, so I had high hopes that it wouldn’t be boring.
Oh but I was wrong.
Now don’t think that I have a big head and think I know everything about having a baby because that’s the furthest from the truth. However, I feel like I’m extremely real about how life will be like with baby.
And thanks to this pregnancy blog and to twitter, y’all have given me the best advice ever. Seriously I kept on telling Tarzan yesterday that our online friends are amazing because I knew just about everything that was taught at the class yesterday.
So thanks!
No offense to the people who ask a lot of questions, after all, that’s what taking the classes are all about. I get that. But I don’t get the people who are 34+ weeks pregnant and are completely oblivious to all things baby.
I mean, really?
There was this one couple and I wanted to throat punch the husband. As did Tarzan. He was about as annoying and immature as they come. I just kept on thinking, “He’s going to be a dad?”
He constantly made noises and grunted when the baby in the video cried. And when the instructor talked about breast feeding. And when he realized that babies go through tons of diapers in one day.
How in the world do you get that far in a pregnancy and you don’t know that babies cry, that they will get their nutrients from the breast (when breast feeding), and that you have to change their (sometimes poopy and quite disgusting) diapers?
His wife was equally irritating to me too. Who knows, maybe it’s my pregnancy hormones, but being with them for the first 30 minutes was torture, not to mention the whole 4 hours.
When we were talking about the different newborn appearances, she was shocked. The instructor even asked her, “Did you think that babies come out looking all cute like the Gerber baby?“
She did, my friends. She did.
I didn’t know all the technical terms for newborn appearances, but I knew that they come out looking a little scary sometimes. I knew that they could have white bumps on their nose (milia), have the extra hair still on them (lanugo), red marks on their forehead (stork bites), and that they could be puffy.
I feel like that’s just common knowledge. (Well not the technical names, I did learn that at the class.)
If you think about squeezing a baby out of your vagina, you just have to know that the chances of them coming out looking beautiful are going to be slim to none. Have you seen a baby’s head compared to the birth canal? It’s something very big going out of something very little.
You figure it out… and here’s a tip to help… sometimes baby’s heads come out looking like a cone head.
Shocking, I know.
Another guy asked how he should deliver the baby in the car, if he couldn’t get to the hospital on time since his wife is due during hurricane season.
He was dead serious too, like ready to take some notes on the proper procedure.
He asked where to cut and tie the umbilical cord and the instructor looked at him like a deer caught in the headlights.
I knew that she wanted to be like “seriously?”, but she just told him that in a case of an emergency he should call 911. Does your brain really go out the window or what? He did know that our instructor wasn’t a doctor, didn’t he?
Oh, the best part was that the instructor asked him if he lived far away. 6 miles away, he said.
He’s worried about 6 freakin’ miles?!
The instructor told him that he could always peddle his bike with his pregnant wife on it to get to the hospital.
I looked at Tarzan and we shared a secret laugh. 6 miles. Give me a break. I should have told him that the hospital was a good 35-40 miles from our house and I wasn’t worried.
So for $50 and four hours of my time, did I think that it was worth it? Maybe, but I’ll have to let you know that answer after the baby is here because I feel like we could have learned everything at the hospital. We shall see.
Even Tarzan, who didn’t know how to change a diaper, is unsure of how worth it the class was.
Of course we did learn a few things, but again, I feel like even if we didn’t learn these things at the hospital we would have learned them by searching online. Or blogging about it. Or using Twitter.
What did we learn?
- How to clean the umbilical cord
- How to clean the circumcised penis
- Clothing for baby, especially in this hot, humid Houston weather
- That SIDS prevention recommends 68-72 degrees in a house (do they want to pay our electricity bill??)
- When breast feeding, it’s most important that the baby eats at least 10 minutes on the first boob so that he gets all of the different layers of breast milk.
- How to swaddle
- The 5 S’s by Dr. Harvey Karp
Most importantly, I learned that I am calm and not delusional about having a baby. I know that there will be rough times, especially in the beginning, but I feel as prepared as I can be. I know that I’m a pretty mellow person and I know that I will continue to be laid-back when baby T arrives.
Naturally being a mom and being responsible for our little baby will be a task in and of itself, but deep down I know that Tarzan and I will be awesome parents. And it helps that my parents are here to help and that we will have the support that we need, if we choose to.
We will learn as we go and figure it out. No doubt in my mind at all.
After all, we already know how to love and that’s the main thing that little ones need. Well love and food and diapers, but you get the picture.
You might also want to read:
- 20 weeks pregnant: Starting to freak out over baby shower, baby furniture, and other overwhelming baby-related things.
- 35 weeks pregnant: My checklist of things to do before baby arrives
- 34 weeks pregnant: Pregnancy questions, why not?
- 26 weeks pregnant: A meltdown about pregnancy, anxiety, and the unknown
- 26 weeks pregnant: Ready or not only 98 days left until we meet our baby boy
Hi Jane,
I realize this is a really old post but I had to comment about the 5 mile question. I have had 2 friends give birth without making it to the hospital and one was only 2 miles away. Some women are just fast laborers and one gave birth in her minivan on the side of the highway (of course 911 was on the phone) and the other in the home bathroom. Anyway, better prepared than sorry right?
Loving the blog! I am 28 weeks and reading the whole thing :)
Thanks!
Meghan
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