The Hippies that Ate our Birth Class

Now, before I commence the telling of this tale, I feel the need to preface my remarks.

The Husband and I consider ourselves to be moderately hippy in our tendencies. We conserve, we recycle, we're making some rather hippy choices with regard to the birth and rearing of our young. I am the token vegetarian at any family gathering, the Husband is against drilling for oil in the Alaskan wilderness and I hate whalers, I don't care what ethnic tradition you come from. But we don't belong to Greenpeace, the Sierra Club or PETA--not yet anyway. (Sorry, but I have to keep the families guessing!)

But these people redefine HIPPY.

They're nice enough, I think. Annoying beyond the telling of it in human speech, but I suppose deep deep DEEP down under all that annoying-ness they're probably nice enough people.

These people came into Birth class on the first night and described their expectations of birth as, "I don't want to have a plan, I just want it to happen. I want it to be calm and peaceful and not stressful in any way. I don't want clocks, or timers, or monitors or anything, just calm and peace."

Which, ok. I can understand that. I also want it to be a calm environment. So, I didn't share the Husband's overwhelming loathing for this couple from the beginning.

The next week we were practicing pressure points and counter-pressure massage techniques. And the Hippy Woman would NOT stop whining! "I don't like this music. I don't like the way that feels, we always use this other pressure point." To which our instructor replied, "You may want to stop that because that pressure point can induce labor to begin and you're only at 30 weeks."

And that's when I thought that the Husband's head would explode.

This week it was my turn.

First of all. Hippy Woman is in a room full of pregnant women. We're all in various stages of discomfort and none of us make a big deal about it. It is what it is. (Sorry, Whimsy, I know you hate that expression but it's perfectly apt in this moment.) Anyway, and not to sound all melodramatic here BUT--as the woman closest to my due date, I have dibs on the MOST uncomfortable woman in the room. So, last night, Hippy Woman spends the entire 2 hours squirming around and pushing on her belly and sighing dramatically about "Oh woe is me! I am SO uncomfortable." And she's sitting in the front of the room. There's no way to NOT look at her and wish that she would melt into a puddle on the floor.

So we proceed to talk about back labor and moving the baby into the correct position and the movements that we need to be doing now so that our babies take the path of least resistance and her hand keeps snapping into the air and she wants, "NUMBERS! I need a number! How many squats? How many stretches? How many stairs? How much swimming?" And I look at the Husband and he looks at me and says, "I thought she 'didn't want a plan'? and now she needs a NUMBER?" And I'm trying to laugh it off but she's really annoying me now.

We then move on to practice different laboring positions with clothes pins clipped to various body parts to try to simulate pain (some of them are pinch-ier than others, I will acknowledge). Anyway, so we move through three or four different positions and our instructor is timing each simulated contraction and we finish the exercise and Hippy Woman's hand snaps into the air AGAIN with, "How long was that? How long will contractions last? I need a NUMBER!" At which point I'm thinking, "Get out. Get out now, because if you have to time every living contraction, expecting it to end on your schedule, you're not going to make it." So, our instructor (who has immortalized herself as the most patient woman in the world) informs her that the contractions will last anywhere from 60-90 seconds and Hippy Woman's response is, "They won't be longer than 90 seconds? Ok. I just need to know what to expect."

Maybe someone should explain it to her that expectations are another form of PLANNING.