Classes - the decision

"We have to decide on birth classes" I was told by K on Sunday. Fair enough, it's something we've been dragging our feet on. She went to work researching the options whilst I tried to clear four years of crap out of the filing cabinet. When she was done we both sat down, looked over the snazzy spreadsheet she had created.... and got progressively more depressed. We realized we're in an awkward spot. We don't fit into the "natural childbirth"-type classes because we're dead-set on being in the hospital, and don't fit into the classes that will think nothing of assuming that the woman plans on having an epidural. As a result, nothing seemed to fit with our philosophy if for no other reason than each class seemed to be locked into one way of doing things.

What made things even worse is that they were extremely expensive, and we started to feel that they were aimed at rich entitled white San Francisco women. I will be the first to admit that we are both white and live in SF, but we are certainly not rich and hopefully not entitled. As a result, the idea of dropping $400 on this seemed like a joke, especially as we had taken two 3-hour classes already at a hospital in Berkeley that cost us $0. What was it about these classes at places with flowery names like "Natural Resources", "Day One" and "The Tulip Grove" that made them so much better than what we had already done? I could smell the BS, and the words "maternity-industrial-complex" came to mind. By the way, tulips are flowers and a grove is a stand of trees, so there's no such thing as tulip grove - one more reason that things just don't sit right about these places.

Adding to the misery was the fact that none of them included the childcare class (those were extra money), which was something I was very interested in doing. I have no idea how to look after a baby, so learning a thing or two in this area might prove useful when the baby has projectile pooped all over my vomit-stained t-shirt at 3am whilst crying at a volume that would make Motorhead cringe.

So, as anyone who knows us won't be surprised to learn, we're doing things differently. We believe that we should approach this like students of any subject should: thinking critically. We will expose ourselves to many approaches to the topic and utilize the tools at our fingertips. To that end, we've put together our own birthing and childcare curriculum. This is going to include DVDs and videos from Netflix and the SF public library; books; the fact we've already done two free birthing classes; and some a la carte classes at a place called Birthways in Berkeley that cover pain management in labor, breastfeeding and childcare (total cost of the three classes is $140 for what amounts to 10 hours of education). This all seems so much better than being tied down to the opinions and dogma of one birth educator who you're paying extortionate amounts of money to.