Last night we had our first Bradley Method natural childbirth class. Goodness. It all started out so innocently- seven couples in varying degrees of preggo poof. We all sat in regular chairs around the room and listened to the instructor talk about her two babies and her bradley experience and blah blah blah. We weren't forced to sit on the floor and breathe deeply or do yoga poses or anything. And when the instructor did her little speech about kegel exercises, she didn't force us to sit in a circle and practice our kegels for fifteen minutes (which would have killed me). So it seemed okay.

Then we had to go in a circle and tell our birth stories. When it came to my turn, I said I was born in a barn under the full light of moon and then I exploded. No, just kidding. I said that my mom had always said it was a positive experience and wonderful and everyone was happy (in comparison to my brother's birthday, where my dad was parking the car and my brother was rushed to the NICU for six weeks). The teacher then said something about how I needed to learn more about my birth experience, because apparently I don't know the story well enough because I can't recite what she had for breakfast that morning. Yeah, my mom doesn't even remember what time of day I was born, let alone what she had for breakfast yesterday. So I was a little annoyed, but let it go.

Then we had the lecture on the Bradley diet. Apparently this bradley fellow was a strong believer in eating crazy amounts of protein. Who knew? It's all based on the same quacky diet philosophy that all extreme diets are based on, so I won't repeat it here. It just seems so silly to have a menu that recommends I have 3 pats of butter a day, one serving of liver a week, and make sure I eat three baked potatoes. to go with my seven thousand gallons of milk. Sweets started making jokes about liver donuts and the instructor started pretending we weren't there. (meanwhile she's suggesting we not eat too much soy protein, because of all the bad health effects on the fetus. right, you know, those bad health effects of SOY?) So it's pate for dinner tonight and every night. And eggs, two a day from now until delivery. If I have a cesarian it will be really convenient, because they can just go in there and do the triple bypass at the same time from all that cholesterol.

The worst part was at the very end when she was asking who had midwives and who had OBs scheduled for their births. We made the mistake of saying we're going with our school's health plan because, well, it's where we get all our health care. Apparently, this is a BIG mistake. The school health plan must have a special demon room in the basement where they allow the OBs to sleep at night, because that's what she made them out to be. She was offering to make sure we were "specialed" so that we could have a dedicated OB instead of one of those OBs that the school likes to drag in off the streets for student births. Whatever, Mary. I like the school health plan. So when we stated that we sort of like the health plan and were satisfied with the care and that it was paid for through our tuition so we didn't have many other options, she had the nerve to say that "this might be one of those things that we should pay extra for, because what else would you pay extra for than the one-time experience of the birth of your own child." Implying that we were being cheap or something. ho-bag.

I really don't like this thing I'm finding among the birthy-birthy people in this universe who feel like they have to protect me from myself. It's like there are these women who really believe I haven't investigated the options for myself and can't come up with reasonable decisions so I NEED them to come save me.

Whatever! (snap snap.)