There is nothing I like more than being asked how I think other people should behave, especially when no one will ever expect me to behave that way. So, in addition to having laboring mothers take drugs (or not, it doesn’t really matter), I want:
- Editors to just take my word for it
- Everyone in the subway to keep right on the stairs
- Hustling livery-cab drivers at JFK to die
That said, the real question here is the one in the headline. (Duh!) So, yes, sure, dads should go to birth class. Jean and I went to one, at the popular Carroll Gardens spot Everyday Athlete, and it was useful prep for the real thing. I mean, I could’ve read about the procedure on, like, a Kindle or Kindle-alternative, but the information sinks in differently when you have a strident doula-trainee telling you what questions to be asking your doctor when.
But I do remember looking around the room at the other parents-to-be. They looked terrified. Freaked motherfucking out. One guy wore his baseball cap low on his face, like he was trying to hide from reality, and I pitied him, his woman, and their gestating spawn. If he couldn’t handle this, then how was he going to deal with, say, this or this?
The presentation did, of course, include a fair amount of fear-mongering, though nothing to dissuade us from our chosen course of “Epi, stat!” We were told about “The Business of Being Born,” the Ricki Lake-hosted documentary about the dangers of pitocin and the joys of chemically unaltered labor—but we weren’t forced to watch it. A couple of couples were planning water births, and at the time it seemed almost reasonable. (Check out this New York Magazine story to see what went wrong with my friend’s water birth.) At the time, I was willing to let the birthers do whatever they wanted—just because I trust doctors over Ricki Lake doesn’t mean they have to be equally rational, and frankly, I don’t care what kind of stupid shit they put themselves through. Their lives, their labor.
The thing is, none of this attention to how women give birth is warranted. So much labor (ha!) is expended trying to make it a special, celebratory time, as if it’s another wedding, but really, these 12 to 24 36 48 72 hours are a mere blip on the parenthood time line, a quickly forgotten (you hope) portal to literally years of trial and error and retrial and the same damn error you made the other day. If anything, prospective parents should skip the birth class and study up on Early Childhood Education or American Sign Language or Infant CPR.
Or they could just read some fine, fine writing on fatherhood. You know where you can find it.
We pretended that dads are a part of the “going to birth class” decision in this episode of DadLabs:
Totally, there is an element of false choice there for dads. If the wife wants to go, you go. But hey, I learned about determinism in college: it doesn’t matter what we say or do, so we might as well just talk about whatever we find amusing.
scheduled C-section baby! no birth classes, no sitting around waiting for the thing to pop, just fifteen minutes at a reasonable hour, and you’re on your way!
Heya Matt,
as much as I love you guys discussing this topic … I did not love your friend’s article.
I have posted my comments on the magazine site, I think I am on page 17 somewhere (YEEPOA), in two parts. I don’t understand why we have to trash talk each other about things as important as the birthing process. I say we keep our eye on the ball: get those babies out!!! Everything else is an equal split of luck, choice and, well, luck.
What my husband and I got from the pre-birth class (just a run-of-the-mill one) was that we had the right to say no to student doctors poking their germ-infested gloves up my vagina, no to extra nurses or doctors coming in to check on things, no to whatever we wanted to say no to. This allowed me to say no to the two nurses who were arguing over whether or not one had to go on a coffee break while my child’s head was (really!) popping out to take a look. Unfortunately the nice nurse lost, but not until I told them to take the scrum to another playground. Hospitals just don’t seem like a very human place to me these days.
Oh, and I think my guy liked seeing all the beautiful pregnant women too. We skipped the film. I didn’t want to have preconceived notions about what the birth process is like by seeing somebody else’s birth before my child’s own. I also always read the book before I see a film.
karen