Okay, first off, no one has ever mentioned the nastiness that is baby's first poo. A dark, tarlike substance that has been sitting, waiting and festering in the baby's digestion for months until it could get out into the real world and let loose the flood of thick, icky goo. And that's my job to take care of because, well, P will have just birthed the little guy or gal and its just my job.
So that's one.
We got to see some of the many ways that baby's can be slightly misshapen during the birth process, pictures of baby's with melons shaped like coneheads, baby's with dixie cup shaped and sized protrusions due to the vacuum lock baby turning equipment, baby's with a swollen heads where the mother bore down to try and vent the baby but instead was bashing it against their pelvic floor.
All of these conditions are short term, lasting at most a couple of weeks.
And there are others that I'm sure we won't need to know about until they happen to us. The class was more about being prepared for the baby to come out and not quite look like a baby yet. Our instructor, who loves to embarass her 20-something kids, told the tale of her daughter being born with a pretty thick coat of dark hair (she's Japanese) and a head squeezed into a bit of a conehead shape. She remembered asking the nurse if she was sure this was her daughter and that they weren't playing a trick on her and giving her a gorilla's baby.
But it all works out in the end. The baby's skull plates resettle into the round shape, whatever bruising happens will go away and the baby will look like a perfectly normal and wonderful little bundle of joy.
But that is, as you all well know, just the very tip of the iceberg. Babies take a little while to get used to breathing air and they'll sound a little funky while the fluid breaks up and is slowly kicked out of their lungs. They'll sneeze alot since they don't know how to cough, they'll gurgle, they'll sound like tiny little Darth Vader's, they'll pant like dogs (the returning mother in the class offered that one up) and they'll sound like they're choking. But its all part of the process although I'm not naive enough to think that we're not going to FREAK when this happens to us.
And there's more, the molting, the baby acne, diaper rash, splotching, stork bites and dozens of other things that will keep us awake at night worrying.
The class wasn't all bad by any means though. We learned all kinds of good stuff like how to wash the infant in the that first couple of weeks, products that aren't necessary like talc and baby lotion, how to bond with the baby, what happens when you expose a little boy's scrotum to cold air (hint, he looks alot like one of those fountains but with amazing distance).
Some of the lingering effects on little girls from their mother's hormones, such as the possibility of a mini-period and what used to be called witch's milk when the tiny baby's breasts can actually leak a substance akin to mother's milk because of those random and strong hormones still circulating in their systems. By the way, back during the Salem witch trial days, a baby with witch's milk leaking from her tiny breasts was called a witch and burned alive. And yes, the very concept of burning an infant alive makes my blood run cold too.
And we also learned how to cope with family and friends who want to help out. The general rule is to not turn down help but to meter it so that there's not too much help at one time and no help later. Also, the rule for dealing with parents, now grandparents, is a good one, if its my mom disrupting the flow (don't worry mom, I know you'll be perfectly fabulous as you've had the training three times with Andrew, Zola and Nic) then its up to me to take care of talking to her, likewise for P's parents.
The very best rule we learned last night is that, when the baby is resting, so is mommy. And that means, eyes closed, not laying in bed reading or watching tv, resting means trying to sleep. And that means that, if people come over to visit, they get to know that the two are resting and shouldn't be disturbed. Which is fine because that's been my rule so far anyway, when P needs to rest, she rests. She can sleep as much as she wants, whenever she wants (though her work seems to frown on her sleeping at her desk for some reason).
But that nasty 9 nine month in the making poo-tar stuff? Yeah, I'm not looking forward to that little bit of joy but hey, its part of the deal and there is a part of me that's truly thrilled to be doing all of this stuff.
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