Childbirth 101.

Today we had an all-day class on childbirth. Jen and I were both surprised to learn that over 90 percent of the women that come to our hospital have epidurals. We would have thought that natural childbirth was a little more popular than that.

On the flip side, they also demonstrated that there are so many pain-relieving options available these days (all kinds of exotic blends of narcotics, epidurals and spinals) that it's not really necessary to go natural to "feel" like you're really into what's going on. You can just take the edge off, or get completely numb, or go almost to the end and get a boost to take you across the finish line. Jen still wants to go natural, but its a bit of a relief (for me, at least) to know that if things get too far out of hand, mommy can ask for a little chemical assist at any time, even until the baby is literally coming out. But I'd still give the odds to Jen pulling through on her own. She's quite the trooper (as you all probably already know.) Plus the "Pregnancy Yoga" classes she's been going to for the past few months are really going to help - most of the challenge is creating the right mental place to be, and I think she's a good way toward that place.

Our instructor was also a comedienne, which made the time go by quickly and pleasantly. Plus they played the old video of the Bill Cosby routine on childbirth, which never gets old (although the comment about his $17,000 Ferrari was a bit jarring, having paid well more than that a few years back for a Hyundai.) I guess I could have lived without watching the video of a woman passing her placenta, but it was really not that big a deal. All those hours of watching gruesome CSI episodes are finally paying off. Nevertheless, despite whatever intestinal fortitude the class may have had, the instructor still fast-forwarded through an explicit video of a circumcision. Even at chipmunk-speed, I think I saw more of that than I needed to.