The (Birth) Teacher's Pets

That's Right.  Birth Classes.

The Man and I are enrolled in Bradley Method birth classes at a local medical center.  For those who don't know, the Bradley method focuses heavily on natural pain relief to empower women to give birth without medication and have a fully conscious, healthful birthing experience.  I'm terrified of medication so it seemed like a good idea to me.

However, I still don't entirely get the concept of birth classes.  It seems like someone who can read just as well as I can reads a book and then relays that information to us.  We pay $160 for twelve weeks of siphoning information through a middle mom with the added benefits of watching videos produced in the 1960s showing real women in unmedicated childbirth situations.  So far, everything that we've learned, from kegels and pelvic tilts to proper prenatal nutrition, could be covered with a careful Google search. (If you're gonna Google birth videos, please do so with your safe search on or you might end up with Two Girls One Fetus or something equally horrifying.)

Don't get me wrong, I do enjoy going.  The short, friendly woman who leads the class is as helpful as they come and it's interesting to see other moms-to-be and share in their experiences.  But I'm looking forward to more information on labor and delivery.  You know, the scary parts that classes still can't really prepare you for.  It's the same as watching those television programs with the guys who eat crazy food:  They can tell you how bad a durion tastes and smells, but you'll never really know until you've tried it.

I'm not writing this blog to talk about Bradley or birth classes, but rather the people with whom I have to share my Thursday nights: The (Birth) Teacher's Pets.  They know everything and they aren't afraid to tell you.

Lukewarm Hipster Status

We'll just call them Rachel and Mark.  Rachel really is her name, which doesn't matter because there are a million Rachels out there and I can guarantee that you don't know her.  Mark probably isn't his name, though it sounds right.  I generally just refer to him as Fauxhawk.  I'll let you figure out why.

She is a "crunchy-overtanned-brown-leather-handbag skin in a Midwest November" level of annoying to look at; he's an "Olde Englishe Scripte Tattooe down the forearm poking out of my ironic indy band T-shirt" level of annoying.  Together, they're a pretty good combination of people who's general appearance makes me groan at the though of having to talk to them.  And once again, my judgments were confirmed.

How Not to Act in Public

During our first class, we had to share some basic information about ourselves.  Hi, my name is ______ and my due date is _______ and we'll be giving birth at ________ with Dr. _______.  While everyone else seemed to do this without problems and without getting self-righteous, the hipsters had to take it a step further.

"Hi, my name is Mark.  We don't have a doctor; we're using a midwife.  And we're not giving birth at a hospital, we're going to do it at home" in the most condescending way possible.  "Yeah," Rachel chimes in.  "We don't have a due date, because we don't believe in due dates.  But I guess when people ask, we need to have an answer so we just generally say the end of February."

All of us idiots who, for some odd reason, would choose to not give birth in a tub in our living room kind of shifted in our seats as if to say, "Oh boy, here it goes." And it pretty much set the stage for the rest of the Thursday evenings we'd be spending together:  Condescending rhetoric and so much self-love that it's almost dripping from the ceilings.

Birth Teacher (BT):  "We'll be watching some videos during the course of..."
Mark:  "Will we be watching 'The Business of Being Born'?  I think it's a very enlightening movie."
BT:  "Um, no.  We won't really have time for that."
Mark:  "Oh.  Because I think it's an invaluable resource that everyone should see.  I mean, you really should watch it.  I'd be more than happy to bring it in."
BT:  "Well, we're really trying to focus on short videos showing women in unmedicated birthing situations."

Mark (While watching a video):  "Um, shouldn't those women be standing in a squat instead of pulling their legs up like that?"

Rachel:  ::laughs::  "Um, expressed breast milk is not the same as breastfeeding.  It's the inferior option.  Dad can bond in so many other ways that doesn't involve feeding the baby, like, y'know, skin-to-skin contact.  I tell all my patients to wait for three or four weeks before even attempting to give a pacifier."

This is obviously not what the rest of us came for:  To ask questions to an instructor only to be met with laughter and condescension from someone who, despite knowing everything, is still attending birth classes; to be a potential audience to propaganda films by Ricki Lake of all people, decrying the horrors of modern medicine; to be basically told that our choices are "inferior" because despite us all having the same opportunity to educate ourselves, we reached different conclusions.  How dare us.

And then on the day that JM and I signed up to bring in a snack for the class, which was healthy enough to include a vegetable, a whole grain and a jug of orange juice, they brought in bags of Hostess cupcakes, Ho-Hos and mini-muffins.  Because they're smart enough to push out their offspring in their filthy bath tub without some ignorant doctor, but not smart enough to not try to load up a bunch of pregnant women with refined flour and corn syrup.

All I can do is sigh and wait to see what unfortunate entertainment I'm subjected to next week.