Stupid New Parents – Part 1

Not our class, but it could have been.

As about-to-be parents, Matthew Osgood reveals how he and his wife had a day of their life sucked away.

Historically speaking, new parents are the dumbest breed of human. We try to fight this distinction, and use words like “informed,” but, really, it’s quite the opposite. The evidence is in the fact that we just paid $200 to take a birthing class.

We wanted to know two things, really: when should we go to the hospital? Obviously, with our first child, this is an event we’re unprepared to recognize. At our last doctors visit, she asked my wife if she’d felt contractions at any point and my wife’s answer was, “How would I know?” Finding out when we should get into the car and take the 25 minute drive is critical information that will hopefully avoid me delivering a baby on the side of Route 93 north of Boston during rush hour.

I also wanted to know what the rooms looked like. If we’re going to be spending a couple to a few nights in a hospital room, I was interested to see what the rooms look like. I wasn’t expecting the Ritz, nor was I expecting Abu Ghraib. I figured we’d settle comfortably between the two.

But that’s it. When to go, what do the rooms look like. Nothing less, nothing more.

I played golf with a friend five days before the class. He took the same exact class, at the same exact hospital, with the same exact teacher.

“Don’t do it,” he said.

“Is it that bad?”

“It’s the worst day of your life and you don’t learn anything,” he told me. “And I was there making jokes and trying to make light of the situation, but people there were so serious.”

Now, having a baby is serious business. You’re charged with keeping a human being alive. But, my friend was right, you should make light of the situation. The class may suck. It may be long and tedious and the topics are sometimes gross and sometimes boring, but pretty consequential. We should at least be able to crack some jokes and laugh at the absurd situations we’re about to enter into.

We had fair warning, but like idiots, though, we took the class.

“How bad could it really be?” my wife asked. “We already paid for it.”

***

The class was supposed to take place two Saturdays before, but attendance was low and they moved the class two weeks later because no one has anything else going on in the summer time. Again, stupid new parents, willing to drop it all. In New England, summers fill up pretty quickly with weddings and barbecues, playing golf, day trips to beaches or lakes. Usually around mid-April, a summer calendar is full. With the baby due in early August, we kind of quit making plans around the end of the July so that we were available for doctors appointments or suggestions of rest, whatever. So we did have the day free. Turns out we should have made plans.

We arrived at the hospital armed with four pillows and better than average attitudes about the whole ordeal. It wasn’t going to be the most pleasant way to spend an 85 degree sunny Saturday, but at least the windows were huge and we could see how nice it was outside. We were the first ones there and we met our teacher, Jan, a holdover, it seems from the Women’s Liberation movement in the 70’s. I think this woman invented birth control. She was thrilled to be there.

Slowly and surely the other pregnant women and their partners waddled into the room. I don’t get why pregnant people move so slowly. My wife was further along than everyone but one person there and she moves like a rabbit even going at quarter-speed. It’s always driven me crazy, too, that parents are always late.

Ugh, had to put the kids in the car and pack their bags. Then Joey wanted a snack and Mikey peed.

This is a trend with enormous weight and longevity. It’s an uphill battle, but I’m ready to fight. We will not be the Perpetually Late Parents. If nothing else, we’ll start getting ready earlier. We say this now. Again with the stupidity. These are the things we truly believe before we actually become parents.

The first five minutes of class started out a lot like the first day in high school. We went around the room and introduced ourselves. The wives talked about how far along they were and what they did and what they were having; The partners talked about what they felt their role was in “all of this.”

“I like to believe I’m the father,” I started, breaking the ice for my gender, “but if I’m not, I’m crossing my fingers it’s Tom Brady’s baby.”

Tepid laughter. I did, it should be added, provide a serious answer. I’m not that much of an asshole.

Jan asked us what we wanted to learn in the class and made each of us answer, which we did. She then proceeded to give us a syllabus that was pre-made and included very few of the things we wanted to actually learn. Why the fuck would she ask then? It’s like asking dinner guests what they’d most prefer to eat tonight and then handing them the menu.

A birthing class is, essentially, an advanced sex ed class, but not a sex ed class that guys ever took. Remember in middle school when they separated the girls and the boys and the boys talked about their dicks and made jokes about boners? Well, the girls class was much, much grosser. And, of course, this knowledge is essential. We need to know that our little kid is going to drop and drop and then take a dog-leg right out into the world. It was like reading a map of a golf course. Okay, looks like we should aim for the 150 marker toward that tree there and play the second shot before the pond.

Jan, our teacher, is about 60 years old. She’s got wavy, graying hair and clothes that don’t fit her very well. She’s an average sized American woman, meaning there are curves and bumps and parts that jiggle. At one point in the class, she starts demonstrating positions that are comfortable for a pregnant woman and also positions from which to deliver a child.

Have you ever taken a yoga class with one of those hippie-ish 23 year old girls in great shape who wear those tight yoga pants and their bodies do things we didn’t realize were possible when we were 23? The ones our wives or girlfriends absolutely loathe because she greets everyone with a hug and is super touchy feely? The ones you mention in e-mails to your buddies like, “Oh, God, and the teacher, Gretchen …”

This was the opposite of this.

I was sitting right in front. Her tank top hung loose and I saw things. Things I didn’t really want to see. Her jeans were baggy and comfortable for teaching a class on a Saturday, but not for doing stretches in front of a group of strangers.

After what seemed like a half day of anatomy and physiology, plus another hour of yoga stretches, we looked at the clock.

“Okay, time for a break. Let’s meet back here in five minutes.”

It was 9:30. We’d been there a little over an hour.

***

We’re told that the experiences only matter as much as with whom we share them. In our group were three other young couples, late 20’s to early-30’s, one of them I correctly predicted to my wife that they work at an Italian restaurant. It was the most amazing prognostication of my life. There was an accountant in her late-30’s and her partner and there was an older couple – mid 40’s – having their first child.

All of these people had varying due dates; ours was second in line after the older couple. She looked every part of the one to go soonest. I don’t mean to say that she was too fat, I mean it in a way that she made everyone look like calves next to their mother whale.

Jan had a doll in what looked to be a rucksack that hobo’s use when traveling by train that she used to mimic what birth looked like. She did this excruciatingly slow, pulling the head out, stopping to tell a story and putting it back in, getting back to the task at hand bringing the head out then putting it back in to tell yet another story. The baby’s head looked like that of a scared turtle, looking around for predators, but retreating when realizing danger still lurks.

Once fully emancipated from the faux-uterus, Jan handed the baby off to the partners at various times. She did this so that she could demonstrate downward dog, usually twerking right in the face of said partner. I assume part of the reason, too, was to mock how the partners would receive the baby. Now, I was under the impression that I could stand in an athletic stance, about five feet away from my wife, raising my right leg like a quarterback in the shotgun formation telling her I’m ready for her to snap the ball.

Jan handed me the baby mid-swig of an iced coffee. This took me by surprise, so I grabbed the baby out of her hands like I was snagging a football one-handed across the middle. I quickly snatched the baby one-handed and tucked it in the crook of my right arm. My Heisman instincts propelled my left knee up and my left arm out.

“We’ll have to work on that,” Jan said, to the delight of the crowd. Now I’m the asshole of the class because parents take this shit seriously. I should stop pretending to be Randy Moss and taking it so blasé.

Part 2 coming 8/21 1:00PM…

Photo: Nate Grigg/Flickr