If The Plastic Baby Scares Me, I May Be In Over My Head

We are halfway through the childbirth class. And we decided to torture, er, I mean prepare ourselves more by taking another class. This one about child care. It's great. Now I'm completely terrified of giving birth to this baby and raising her. Awesome.

In the child care class, cutely titled "Baby Steps" but really should be titled "Get Ready To Feel Even Less Capable Than Before," we learned the basics. Changing a diaper, swaddling the baby and giving her a bath. Mike and I had one baby to share (oh yes, we definitely looked at the pile of baby dolls and picked the cutest one) and so we did the diaper thing together. He did one side and I did the other. And we stepped back to admire our work.

Let's just say that the baby better always lean to the right because my side, the left side, was a complete disaster. I don't know how I managed to not even get it to cover the baby's bottom but I did.

Mike fixed it before the teacher saw.

By the way, I need to mention that he took notes, forced us to sit in the very front and not only asked questions, but answered them. Who is this guy? While I would prefer to be in the back trying to spit-rub off the scuff I just made on the baby's forehead and pretending they didn't just tell me I have use a rectal thermometer, he's up front miming the teacher and giving our baby a world-class pretend sponge-bath.

Oh also, as we were leaving, everyone kind of threw all their babies in a pile by the door. Mike stopped to organize them...

The childbirth class gets increasingly nightmarish every week. Last week we talked about medications and epidurals and we got to pass around the tube the STICKS OUT OF YOUR BACK the whole time if you have an epidural. Isn't there some kind of chewable tablet that I can take instead?

This week we talked about C-Sections. And watched a video. And although the video changed to a cartoon version when the really gross part came, I had to grab the edge of my desk to keep from falling out of my chair.

I just can't watch medical stuff like that. When I first started college I was a pre-optometry major and so my dad took me to watch one of his patients get Lasik surgery. We're not talking watching it on a screen from another room. We wore the blue booties and hair things and stood right next to her during the procedure. I was okay until they started to pull some clear flap of skin back from her eye. That's when everything started to go black from the bottom up. I grabbed my dad's arm and said "I don't feel good." The next thing I know, I'm in a chair, my dad is slapping my cheeks and the entire procedure has stopped. I told them to "carry on" and ran out of the room. I promptly marched into Student Services the next day and changed my major to art history.

But back to this week's class. It was frightening and scary and gory and I was ready to change my mind about this whole thing....

And then this happened.

And all was right again.