Childbirth Class

S and I spent the weekend attending an intensive childbirth education class run by the hospital at which we were originally planning to give birth.  Walking into the room, the first thing we were struck by was that the class was composed entirely of couples.  Heterosexual, cisgender, mostly white couples (identities we assumed based on cursory observation).  No single people, no identifiable queer couples, few other POCs.  I took a deep breath and tried to remain open.

The nurse leading the class asked us to introduce ourselves, our due dates, and "what we are having" (side note: can I rant here about why so many nice, well-intentioned people ask "what I'm having" when they're really inquiring about whether or not I know the sex of the baby?  It's such a weird question!  I'm too polite to answer, "well, I hope I'm not having an elephant!"  But that's what I'm thinking.  The question irks me.)  Every woman in the room introduced herself, her husband (in the style of "we are Jane and John Smith") and identified the "gender" of their baby.  I introduced myself, my "partner" S (with a different last name than mine), and said we didn't know the sex of the baby.  Simple semantic differences that immediately marked us as the weirdos in the room.  Or so I hoped.  It's rare that we are in such a homogeneous, heterosexist space, and it was heavy and uncomfortable, especially since we pass as straight and folks tend to assume that the homogeneity means we're all on the same page (in this case, that we all identify as "moms" and "dads.")  Yet short of wearing t-shirts that say "we're here, we're queer," or a real opportunity to engage in meaningful conversation, it's sometimes hard to figure out how to out ourselves and our politics in such a setting.  So we rely on little cues.  Or I should say, I do.  At the end of the class, S, who is more direct and intentional than I, went to the instructor and straight up said, "I'm transsexual and really appreciate that you used the term "partner" rather than "husband" throughout the weekend.  Because you never know who is sitting in the room."

Overall, though, the class was good.  Very good.  The nurse was very much an advocate for the fact that nature is perfect, that our bodies are designed to know what to do during pregnancy and birth, that we can and should trust ourselves, and that non-pregnant partners are capable of supporting us through the birthing process.  I learned so much from her about the stages of labor, pain management options, what to expect from the process of giving birth in a hospital, postpartum self-care, and newborn care.  At times, it was disappointing for me to hear about the differences between the approaches of our first-choice hospital (for example, providing birthing balls in the labor room and allowing for the consumption of clear food and liquids during labor) and that of other hospitals in the city (bring your own birthing ball... maybe.  and consume nothing but ice chips throughout labor).  But I tried to keep in mind that ultimately, a hospital is a hospital, and even our first-choice hospital has as high of a c-section rate (29% - or 1 in 3 births!) as many others in the city.  No hospital setting - even a supposedly "baby-friendly" one - is going to allow me a huge degree of agency or self-determination in the process, no matter how much the nurse tried to portray the experience otherwise.

I came away from the weekend feeling much more informed, confident and prepared to ask my OB specific questions and to think concretely about what I want from my labor and birth experience.  The class was exactly the catalyst I needed to shift my mind into a place of focusing on my desires.  I haven't been able to stop thinking about it all since.

In fact, I've been feeling some serious urgency to perhaps flip our current birth plan on its head and maybe take an entirely different approach to bringing our little one into the world.  My mind is spinning, spinning, spinning.  I've made some phone calls.  Perhaps the fact that our hospital is closed is actually opening up more of an opportunity in our journey to parenthood than I originally thought.