Bowman West

Not for the faint of heart, stomach, or nerves!
I teach a class at Tech MWF 9:00-10:00. A fellow instructor, Liz, teaches a child development class at 10:00 and is usually heading out of our office as I'm heading in from my class. This week she's been teaching about conception and the birth process and today she was showing a birthing video so she invited me to come watch. Liz is also pregnant and I'm pretty sure we drive our officemates insane with all the baby talk. Since I wasn't in a hurry to get anywhere I took her up on her offer, and after leaving her class my thought was, "I just thought I knew but it turns out that I don't." I learned about the stages of birth & recovery but what was most educational was the video. To preface--it was filmed in Europe--you know what that means? Vivid, unapologetic detail. It showed several different births--a natural home birth (they just threw down newspapers like they were delivering puppies!), twins delivered by C-section, and a vaginal birth with drugs (go drugs!). So, the home birth--what can I say? Besides the two midwifes who were dressed like Florence Nightengale with hair like the mom on Good Times, it was relatively weird--not quite disturbing but not quite comfortable. The worst part? It graphically showed them delivering the placenta--wow! I had no idea! That's honestly disgusting. Then, they didn't have a portable scale so they tied the baby up in a towel and weighed it with what looked like a fish scale--I'm pretty sure no one's gonna be dangling Charlie from anything! Ok, the c-section, nothing out of the ordinary here--they didn't show too much but I think I've got a good handle on the concept. Vaginal birth--hurray for spinals! I'll sign up for mine now please. Still, very graphic but ok. Something I didn't know--baby can't cry until the cord is cut because it doesn't breath through the lungs until the cord connection is severed--until then it still receives oxygen from the cord. All of this I lump into the category of "things that make sense but I just hadn't thought about."

Ok--good things about being pregnant: special treatment, attention, not feeling fat because you just blame it all on the baby, no one questions the daily nap, not being able to bend over and clean the bath/shower with bleach (poor Andy will have to do this for the first time ever!), people not questioning it when you clean your plate, celebrating extra pounds when you step on the scale, always having something to be excited about, and my new favorite thing--longsleeve maternity t-shirts from Target. Ladies, anything I've left out? Feel free to comment.