a first class experience

A First Class Experience

Yesterday was the first in a series of prepared childbirth classes that Laureen and I are taking in preparation for Jacob’s arrival. It was in the same building as my doctor’s office is in, which is a Good Thing. The fact that it’s next door to Richardson Regional Memorial Hospital is another Good Thing. I wasn’t really sure what to expect out of class. It’s not really a Lamaze-style breathing class, although they cover breathing. It’s pretty much a “here’s the entire book on childbirth, taught by someone who’s been through it” adventure.
We get there a bit early, and since it’s the first class, there’s the standard icebreaker with the other couples: sign-a-square. If you’ve been (un)fortunate enough to know what this is, skip down a few lines. Otherwise, imagine a bingo-style board, but instead of numbers, each square has some sort of datum that makes you go “oh, that’s interesting”: Lives in the same town as you, sees the same OB/GYN as you, has a birth date in March, Has never changed a diaper, etc. The idea is to get other couples to sign these squares for the things that are true. In our version, with 7 couples total in the class, we were able to sign up to three squares. The winner is the one with the most boxes filled with signatures. The amazing thing is that this does little to promote communication among class members other than the “can you help me out here” variety. I was able to sign a few of the items, seeing as how I’ve never changed a diaper, we plan on using cloth diapers (apparently, safety pins are a thing of the past), Laureen was born in Texas, blah blah blah. I got to meet other fathers and mothers, albeit remarkably briefly as we scanned the sheets.
After class starts, our teacher, an RN named Mary (who is a certified Good Person) gave us sheets to interview another couple. We spoke with the people on our right and filled out the forms. At the bottom of the sheet was a great question about fears. What is her biggest fear about this process? What is his biggest fear? Glen, the father in our target couple, had no fears. He also has an 8 year old daughter from a prior marriage. I said, “doing or saying the wrong thing.”
Thinking back on it now, I’m positive that somewhere along the way I’m going to do something wrong at least once. So, I should really just get over that fact and move on to something that might be a more legitimate fear, but for now I’ll hold onto it.
We go around the room, and I must admit, it’s interesting hearing what other people consider fearful: pain, fainting, passing out, the health of the baby and the mother. There are parts of me that worry a lot about all of those, especially fainting. Of course, there’s a history behind that:
When I was young and my heart was an open book…wait, that’s a song. Second try: when I was still in Oklahoma (less than 13 years old), I remember skinning my knee playing a game of football at a neighbor’s house. I remember going into shock because of the experience and being carried home by Mom because I couldn’t remember exactly how to get back there. Other traumatic events produced similar reactions, like the time I broke my arm and very nearly passed out on the way home. When I became a teenager and had to deal with cystic acne, I took Accutane, a delightful medicine that requires you to have your blood drawn at regular intervals to ensure that you’re not poisoning your body with too much Vitamin A (or D…I’ve blocked the experience out for the most part.) So every month for five months, mom would take me to the doctor’s office and I’d get my blood drawn.
I fainted three out of five times. If it were baseball, I’d be a billionaire.
I’d love to know what the trigger is, and I think we’ve even talked about it before in this space. Sometimes it’s the sight of my own blood. Sometimes it’s a particular smell that’s only associable with hospitals and hemo-workers, a sickly-clean ammonia smell that causes me to tremble with fear and dread. Somehow, this has become connected to my autonomic nervous system, so I know that I’m not feeling well, but I have a hard time doing anything about it. Even getting away from the situation still requires some time to actually get away, and sometimes that isn’t enough. My worst experience so far was in San Diego, when I fainted twice and threw up three times in the hospital with nothing really wrong with me.
However, since I knew that having a child meant that my presence would be required, I had been working on a regimen of “anti-fainting” activities to ensure that when it came time for the child, I’d still be there in the delivery room. I’ve watched a lot of CSI, including the morgue scenes. I’ve watched some of Discovery channel’s Life in the ER series. I’ve even watched “A Baby Story” on TLC, although that show only goes to prove that you can turn every single special event into the same exact special event in four acts:
I. Exposition – hey, we’re having a baby!
II. Conflict – hey, here’s the reason why this might not be easy!
III. Climactic Struggle – hey, here’s the brave decision to go ahead…ta da!!!
IV. Resolution – hey, ain’t our baby cute?!
I’ve also spent time at church during the blood drives to try and condition myself to the smell. Of course, a church auditorium is much, much different than a hospital, so I’m still not sure how things are going to turn out.
Back to the class.
We start discussing dilation (and forgive me, Mary, but it isn’t dilitation. That ain’t a word; cervices dilate, the act is dilation. Dilettantes might engage in dilettation, I don’t know) and engagement. Then, the doll comes out. It’s a cute little plastic baby! Look, it fits into the mock pelvis we have! Aw, look at the fuzzy placenta with the umbilical cord that attaches to the baby….
Next thing I know, I’m on the ground, looking up at Laureen and our instructor, wondering why I have carpet burn on my face from a prepared birthing class.
It was the fuzzy, cuddly placenta that did me in. I’d started feeling not well a bit in, but for some reason, attaching the placenta to the baby combined with the illustrations of the side view of the birthing process in the background triggered a fainting spell in me all at forty-five minutes into class.
So today is a trip to the doctor, not just for this fainting (because apparently it looked more like a seizure than a faint to other people), but also to clear up this silly upper respiratory infection so I can breathe normally.
Yes, the fainting bothers me and worries me. I’m going to find better ways to deal with it, though. No fainting in the delivery room is my credo. I just hope I can deal with it better next week.