28w5d Giving Birth the Dumb Way

Now that I’m in my third trimester (and the size of a beluga whale) I get a lot of questions from friends, coworkers, even a random hipster on the 2 train asking me if I’m planning to take any birth preparation classes.  After doing some research and putting some thought into this, I’ve decided that the answer is…nope.  I know that for some people, these classes can be comforting and informative, but for me, they’d just be a huge waste of time and money because quite frankly, these days I have the attention span and memory retention of a monkey on crack.  In another post I mentioned that J and I took an infant CPR class  a month ago, and how I found the class to be very helpful.

Yeah, that was a month ago.  Try putting a choking infant in front of me now and I’ll show you what choking really looks like.  I can’t recall anything I learned from that infant CPR class now, other than “Call 911”.

So no to birth classes.  And if that makes me a bad mother, then so be it.  Yes, part of me is scared that I will be the laughingstock of the maternity ward by not knowing any labor or birthing techniques or exercises (I can already hear the nurses whispering, “Hey have you seen that batshit lady in 2314 screaming like a chicken without a head?  I bet she wishes that she took lamaze now.”), but that’s a risk that I’m willing to take.

I’m going to go into labor the way I strolled into my college Econ 101 exams – without attending any classes and hungover/drugged up with an epidural.  Oh, and some late night cramming the night before.

I recently told my mom about this birth plan (or lack thereof) of mine, to which she replied, “I see that you’re going into birth the same way you got knocked up – the dumb and unplanned way.”

Yup.

For the record, I ended up getting an A- in Econ, so haters can suck it.