Tuesday, December 18, 2007

Birth Preparation Classes

Josh and I have been going to birth prep classes for a couple of weeks now. Up to this point, they've been great. The nurses teaching them have been good presenters, and we've gained some good information. Last night was our newborn care class - the "free" class (aka the only one we don't have to pay for). We were a bit disapointed. I think we both had visions of us practicing giving a doll a bath and changing his diaper. Uh, not so much. We watched a 5 minute video on procedures the hospital do to the baby as soon as he's born, and then our nurse began talking. Her first words are, "Ok, things you need to have on hand at home for a baby are..." Everyone in the class starts flipping through all the brochures and papers we were given to figure out what where she was at. Nobody ever did figure that one out the whole class. She was a wanderer when it came to presenting material. Josh though was smart and grabbed a pen and wrote down the list (one of the reasons why I married him - he's practical when needed). I raised my hand to ask a question when she took a breath once. She looked at me in shock that someone was asking a question. I decided that was the go-ahead to ask. Then she looked like I was dumb for asking it, but later she did this to every other person who asked the question. I think she couldn't hear or understand what we were saying because the questioner had to reword their question usually a couple of times before she knew what she was asking. My favorite moment though was her circumcision procedure analogy. She was describing how some doctors use this "ring" to help with the procedure. Then I guess she didn't think that was clear so she says, "Well, the ring it's like a, for lack of a better description, like a plunger. Except it doesn't have the top part so it's like a ring." What? You mean the ring used in the procedure is shaped like a ring? Yes, we all know what the shape of a ring is like. Josh made up his own analogy later, "Well, the ring it's like a...globe. Except take the globe off the stand and cut off the top and bottom parts so it's like a ring."

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