*The sound of silence will be fleeting very soon…as I am reminded EVERY DAY BY EVERY ONE***

We didn’t have a cap or gown; no diploma, no pomp or circumstance, no parents beaming with pride or quivering with anticipation over tuition, and disappointingly enough, no streakers. Our last birth class was last night, and that brought a flood of emotions and awareness. For a few hours, we were taken thru the steps we had spent the 3 previous Sunday afternoons learning, shown the rooms where we would be bringing our son or daughter into the world and then sent on our merry way. The tension in the room was palpable.

Looking back 4 weeks, I can say that every penny was well spent on the class. This became clear within the first 5 minutes of the very first class. Just like any first day of class, we all introduced ourselves, gave a quick synopsis of ourselves and then provided an answer to a pregnancy specific question. My favorite part was the men having to state publicly (there were a total of 9 of us in the room, including the instructor. So, not quite Vatican Square) what their favorite part about being around a pregnant woman has been. Some of the guys seemed to dig deep to find something, and most seemed very sincere. After introductions, we learned that (including ourselves) there were 2 couples having their first child and the other 2 couples have already had at least one child. While the attendance for those of us who were on our first was based on lack of any practical experience, we learned that one couple had a 2 year-old and had not taken a class. After expressing how difficult her labor was, this class was already making a difference. The other couple with children had a 7 year gap in her pregnancies. The medical community says  a 7 year gap will yield labor like a first birth. (Curious how the 7 year itch gets involved.) This made us consider how to plan future family members. Then came the videos…

Thankfully, unlike my middle and high school Sexual Education courses, the images in the video we watched in the birth class weren’t designed to scare the living daylights out of us. Each week, we watched a video about a part of the birth process, and every video seemed to have been recorded right around the same time that myself and my husband were born. We giggled at the hairstyles and “fashions” of that time, but always had the haunting thought in the back of our head: what if I see my parents in this video. Paralyzing thought, right? Your own public “Back to the Future” moment. It would be all the more mind-scrambling because my parents are divorced. No one’s parents or family members made appearances in the video (as far as we know), but the age of the videos did offer some unintentional entertainment. But I wasn’t here to be entertained, I was here to learn. I was here to learn how my husband would give comfort thru the art of massage, and give him ample time to perfect it.

After learning how to be aware of breathing and the physiology of relaxation, it was time to teach the fathers how to aid in relaxation. How can anyone predict how they will respond to pain and stress, especially in a situation they have not been in (in our case)? The answer to that is: apply the pain management techniques you learned while keeping your hand in a bag of crushed ice. I am not making this up. First, our instructor had us put one hand in a bag of crushed ice, making sure to grab a handful and hold the bottom of the bag with our other hand. We then had to “deal” with the pain. No amount of squirming, stomping or four-letter words brought any relief. We followed that exercise by doing the very same thing with the ice, but had our instructor walk us thru the techniques we had learned. After we could remove our hands from the ice, it became the job of the father to help us relax. This included walking us thru a relaxation method we had been taught, along with a shoulder massage. Then, for a fleeting moment, the husbands had the opportunity to enjoy a massage…truthfully, it was the mothers opportunity to show them the type of massage they wanted. It was nice to look forward to at least 30 minutes of mandatory massage every Sunday afternoon.

We arrived at the hospital for our last class a little early and exchanged small talk with our instructor. We would be seeing how to manipulate a hospital bed tonight. After finishing another video, we all went upstairs to the birth center. The elevator ride was silent. Having done a hospital tour, I had seen most of this before. In fact, during our hospital tour, we experienced the eye-widening audio of a birth. (We heard the final yell/groan push noise, followed by the coaching of what we assumed was dad. It was a room full of very pale people…) This visit to the birth center gave us the opportunity to experience the exhausted serenity of a new father as he gazed upon his new baby in the nursery. Our return downstairs was followed by one of many bathroom breaks, and then the “final push” to finish our class. We were quizzed on pain management techniques and positions, given additional coaching on breathing and then came the question: “Does anyone have any questions?” Class was officially over and I felt everything I had learned briefly leave my conscious mind. Even if I wanted to ask a question, I couldn’t come up with one. Our instructor had done her job, and very well. I had to have the confidence in myself and my husband that we were now capable of recalling and applying the knowledge we had paid for and asked to be bestowed upon us. What I truly appreciate about my husband, is his dedication to (I quote) “totally dominating this labor!”

We thanked our instructor, not-so-jokingly asked about her availability at the hospital and walked out with the other couple who is expecting their first child. After some small-talk on the way to our respective vehicles, we went our ways and headed home. Then came a flood of questions. I couldn’t come up with a singe question in the instructor’s presence, but in the parking lot I barraged my poor husband with questions, asking his “interpretation” of information and trying to maintain my obviously cracking facade of confidence with affirmation he remembered the things that I wasn’t certain of. I was scared and excited; it felt kind-of like high school graduation all over again, but without the cheezy pep-talk and the mandatory graduation playing of the Green Day song “Good Riddance (Time of Your life)”.

“So make the best of this test and don’t ask why”. We have a test coming up. It’s unscheduled, but is coming regardless. It will be daily (if not hourly) and will last for many, many years. The class did the best it could to prepare us, but didn’t send us home with any diploma. The “diploma” will come after the work has been put in to earn it, and we will continue to earn it for many, many years to come.