Suburban Turmoil
Hubs and I sit in a darkened room, watching the projected image of a woman rocking back and forth, bare-breasted and moaning, while ’70s-era elevator music plays in the background.
Oh, get your mind out of the gutter. This is a pregnancy class at Baptist Hospital, and my husband and I are one of eight couples viewing a film on natural childbirth. The problem is, I can’t stop snickering.
“Why is she naked from the waist up?” I whisper loudly to Hubs. “That sure wasn’t in any of my pregnancy books.” Behind us, a father-to-be clears his throat in irritation, and I straighten abruptly. Apparently, this is Serious Business.
Before I gave birth the first time, I thought natural childbirth meant simply lying in bed at home and pushing until a midwife caught the baby. As it turns out, though, the event takes about the same amount of work as a college course, complete with required reading, class attendance, tuition and a final pass (no meds) or fail (meds) grade.
As for course options, the list seems endless. Whether prospective parents choose the Bradley Method (i.e., “husband-coached childbirth,” which sounds about as appealing as clubbing with Pacman sans Kevlar vest), hypnobirthing (“You’re getting verrrrry dilated”), water birthing or that old standby Lamaze, most techniques include weeks of training and cost anywhere from $150 to $300. Plus, these days, all the cool moms hire doulas who, for a mere $500 to $800, will do everything during labor from giving foot massages to fetching ice chips—allowing, I suppose, the proud father-to-be to seek refuge in hospital cafeteria hoagie-land without feeling too guilty.
Supposedly, the financial payoff is that natural childbirth can cost half of what a hospital birth would run you. Still, I found out the last time I had a baby that, in the end, all that preparation ends up being something of a crapshoot.
“What’s going on out there?” I asked my hospital nurse, hearing a commotion outside my room a few hours after I had been admitted into Labor and Delivery with my first pregnancy.
She looked at her watch. “That must be the crowd from the natural birthing center,” she said. “They don’t give epidurals there, so we generally end up with a load of their patients every night about this time.”
I laughed evilly.
While I was pretty damn sure I would be heavily medicated for my baby’s birth, I do like to have options. So during both pregnancies, we opted for the bare-bones hospital-sponsored course on natural labor (with an appealing $25 tuition fee), just in case I went loco at the last minute and decided to give birth Little House on the Prairie-style. Still, I’m pretty sure Mrs. Ingalls never had her cervix compared to a stick of Land O’ Lakes.
“When you reach term,” a beaming nurse told my class, “I want you to start visualizing your cervix as a blossoming flower or melting butter. This has been proven to bring on labor,” she said. “So has sex.” Hubs grinned and nudged me.
After we practiced visualizing, it was time for us to engage our blossoming cervixes in a little class participation. Each couple was instructed to try out different labor positions pictured at stations around the room. Hubs and I began with the birthing ball. Gingerly, I sat on it while he attempted to hold me in place.
“Don’t roll off,” he said nervously. I smiled tenderly at his concern. “Because that would look really stupid,” he concluded.
“Get your hands off me,” I snapped, standing up. From the sound of things, my second labor wasn’t going to be much different from my first.
We moved on to Squatting and Slow Dancing before arriving at a mat where I was expected to get on all fours and arch my back like a cat. “Ohhh, I don’t think so,” I said. “Let’s skip to this one over here.” It was the coveted massage chair, where all I had to do was sit and let Hubs rub my back. Claiming to the others that he was having trouble understanding the concept of labor massage, I managed to remain there with him for the rest of the class.
“Which one of these positions did we use the last time you went into labor?” Hubs asked tiredly after he’d kneaded my back for a good 15 minutes. “I don’t remember anymore.”
“None of them,” I laughed. “I didn’t use any of this stuff whatsoever.” It was true. For all my diligence in learning birthing techniques and breathing exercises, I ended up spending most of my labor at home, alternately moaning in pain and griping at everyone to stay the hell away from me. By the time the hospital agreed to check me into a delivery room, I was so tired of the whole thing that I just crawled into my hospital bed and turned up the TV. After a little while, I got an epidural, took a nap, woke up and pushed out the baby in three tries.
Hubs paused. “So why are we here again?” he asked.“Twenty-five dollar massage, baby,” I said, grinning innocently. “It doesn’t get much better than that.”