I’m finding it difficult to talk about being a father. There are many reasons, not the least of which is that I have no idea what I’m talking about. If I tell a baby-related story to someone who’s already a parent, they’ll look at me like I’m a 15-year-old girl pontificating on the subject of love. It’s cute.
“Awww. Honey, come here and look at the stupid man.”
Plus, for most people, their kids are angels, and your kids are your problem, and I’m fine with that.
But, it turns out that there is actually a small demographic who can relate, and my wife and I recently spent six hours with them when we, and 11 other couples, attended our first birthing class.
The instructor had us stand in a line based on our due date, which also served as the order in which we introduced ourselves. My wife introduced us, told everyone we were having a girl and announced our due date. Now, any normal couple would leave it at that, but I, being nervous and a comedian, chimed in with: “It’s not mine, but I swear I’ll raise it as if it were.”
An uncomfortable silence hung heavy in the room. My wife hung her head.
“Ha, ha. I’m just kidding. It’s mine,” I said, but 2 minutes and 45 seconds into our six hours, the trust had already been betrayed.
Then, they showed The Video. If you’ve been to a birthing class, you know the one I’m talking about. If you haven’t, just recall that film you saw in Drivers Ed, and replace “horrific car crash” with “woman in labor.”
The narrator was cheerful and upbeat, but every scene showed a sweaty woman in absolute agony, and a wide-eyed, shell-shocked husband crouched beside her like a shortstop waiting to field a live grenade.
Then, the instructor passed around a chart illustrating the various stages of dilation. That’s when I learned what “10 cm” was. Now, centimeters had always seemed fairly benign to me, as if, someday, if they just worked hard enough, they would become inches. But now I know that centimeters are evil.
Ten Centimeters, I’m convinced, is why America rejected the metric system.
So clearly there’s going to be pain, and a lot of it. Ideally, I learned, the husband is there to help alleviate some of the pain, which is much better than my initial plan of pulling my knees up to my chest, rocking back and forth and weeping until someone hands me a baby.
The last half of the class was devoted to the intimate massaging designed to soothe the mother’s contractions and general discomfort. Coincidentally, this was one of the many moments that our unborn baby chose to make Mommy use the bathroom. Without my wife to focus on, I had no choice but to glance around the room.
What began as a normal class full of normal people now resembled Caligula’s Rome. There were couples on the floor, on all fours, squatting on exercise balls. There were tilting pelvises, clumsy rubbings, and I swear the couple next to me was demonstrating how they came to find themselves in a birthing class in the first place.
Until that moment, I never knew how hard it was to try and focus on absolutely nothing.
But now, I’m completely educated and informed, and I have no doubt that the delivery will go exactly as planned.
“Awwww. Honey, come here and look at the stupid man.”
