baby on the way

My wife and I are going to hypnosis classes to help with pain management for my wife's upcoming labor. She's due in late March. We just finished the last of four classes yesterday and now we have a few months of practice ahead of us. My job is to help her visualize her safe place, get her breathing under control and achieve a level of relaxation that will allow her to allow the pain to flow through her.

Like vomitting.

Vomiting is a natural human reflex to eject poisons from the body. It hurts. It's uncomfortable. But it is completely necessary. When you fight it, all you get is puke in your mouth and throat that ends up on the floor in splatters anyway. When you allow the vomit to flow from your body, without holding any of it down, the process tends to be a lot faster and a lot less painful. And you have greater control over where the stomach acids and bits of undigested food end up.

Child birth is like throwing up. Just let it go.

Of course, I told my wife that the whole ordeal could be avoided if I was able to give birth to our second child. I could deliver no problem. When I felt the first contractions, I would go into the linen closet and close the door. My wife would hear a muffled "MOTHER-HUMPER NOW!" and ten minutes later I would emerge from the closet with my jeans on and a baby wrapped in a towel. I imagine I would ask for a Guinness after all that work. The baby would want a Guinness, too. I would have a nice bonding moment with my baby and Guinness without all that drama. We would clink pint glasses and cheer the birth and I would say "Save the drama for your Mama," and we would laugh. If it was Sunday during football season, we would watch baby's first game.

My wife seems to disagree. Unfortunately, I will never be able to prove my child-bearing abilities. DAMN MY LACK OF A UTERUS!

We have no idea what we're having. Our first child was a boy and this pregnancy is completely different from the first so we're guessing that this one is a girl. Guessing is all we can do since the last ultrasound was inconclusive. It's funny how people assume they get to find out the sex of the baby, when it is really up to some technician who may or may not be having a good day, who may or may not be patient enough to find the ding-dong or the ho-ho. Unless you're TomKat and can afford to put some serious money down for the technology, you're subjected to the whims of whoever you get at the radiology clinic.

The woman who performed the last ultrasound (the final ultrasound) did not seem to be having a good day. We sat in silence in a dark room as she mashed my wife with the paddles. She said nothing about our unborn baby's health. When we asked if everything was okay, she muttered "We'll have a radiologist look at this," and silence resumed. For us, it was a rare moment to see our baby and I was moved to see the heartbeat and the little face (my wife could see nothing from where she was laying). For the technician, it was just one portion of a long day at work. Like a band playing its number one song every night for 18 months, it loses its special-ness, I'm sure. Still, anyone in that position should respect what those moments mean to parents and try to dig down and find that last bit of patience. This isn't the return counter at Kohl's.

So we will be surprised when our new baby pops out. Some people choose not to know, but I am bummed that I can't lean close to my wife's belly and say "Hello (BABY"S NAME HERE). This is Daddy."