And etc…

If TV has taught me anything in life, and we all know it is my main source of education, it has taught me that when a woman is pregnant, she attends prenatal classes. So I signed up for one at the local hospital. Matt was pretty excited about how four nights of this month are now spent in a room full of women who somehow are trying to be proud of their pregnancies while still seeming ashamed that they had sex in the first place. Yeah, that’s where organized religion gets weird. It’s awkward. Not just for them, but for me, seeing how I just figured everybody was getting it on most of the time in some way or another. I guess not?

It got weirder when we viewed the labor and delivery video. Turns out most women end up pretty well naked by the time the kid comes out. There were lots of fairly gratuitous breast shots, and several embarrassed men. Lots of giggling. (Although, in all fairness, I was giggling as well–though I’m still not sure what I was laughing at exactly. I think I was just worried about infant head sizes and trying not to freak out, though I may have also been laughing at all the laughing. And the woman who kept turning her head away from the television and blushing.)

This whole childbirth class has been surreal, actually. The dominant religious culture has made it odder than it may have been, but it’s still just odd all on it’s own. Why is it necessary for me to know all these medicinal things, like how many centimeters you need to be dilated in order to officially be in each stage of labor? Am I going to have to check this myself? I hope not. I’m a rhetorician. Not a medical doctor. If we decide to debate language use and subsequent power issues surrounding pregnancy in the United States, I’d be relevant. In fact, I actually have some opinions in this area. (Probably they tell us all these things so we feel “in control” of our pregnancy–though, since they all happen somewhat automatically, I feel that knowing that they’re going to happen doesn’t give me any more of a sense of control. Just panic. Lots and lots of panic at the anticipation of pain. Yay!) However, in the event someone is needed to, say, administer anesthesia, I’m not useful. Although I was happy to learn that the patient gets to control how much anesthesia they get through their epidural. I plan to find out how much is max.

However, I have now signed up for a couple of more classes–infant cpr/car seat safety and breastfeeding. Should be fun times. I probably could learn these things off YouTube, but I’d prefer to hear it from someone I know has a nurse’s license.