Classes are for amateurs!

Dear Max,

Today Daddy and I were booked to attend our antenatal classes, where we were supposed to learn about labour and the process of bringing a baby into the world and beginning to care for it. I got a little bit upset about it today. It was another reminder that this should have been an exciting milestone that meant the day of your birth was getting closer. But then I realised that it was really no more upsetting than any other day without you. It's just that the date had been burned into my mind as something we could not forget, and so I naturally built it up as a significant event.

But then I remembered that I really never wanted to go to the dumb classes in the first place and I felt a bit better. When we booked in I was really only humouring Daddy who thought it was very important to learn all the 'facts'. He's like that. It's infuriating sometimes when you'd rather just jump in and do things your own way, but its a trait that has its benefits at times. For example, we will never buy the wrong electrical appliance because Daddy will have tracked down all the specifications and reviews before ever making a decision! Sigh.

I was very determined, in contrast, not to learn too much information. Mummy has a terribly good imagination and already had a million mental pictures of how barbaric it was going to be without watching excruciating videos of other people experiencing it. I also was not keen on chit-chatting with the other pregnant folk. I never did feel the need to share the experience of pregnancy with strangers, albeit ones who were in the same boat. It's for the same reason that I never got into any of that online mothers forums that one of my friends did.

As it turns out, I was right. I didn't need the bullshit classes. I just didn't need them for different reasons than I originally thought. On the day you were born there wasn't much time to learn about what labour was like as I was already in the grips of experiencing it first hand without even realising it. Despite the shock of being in preterm labour, and having to deal with so many questions of life and death that we had not expected, I don't feel at all like I was ill-prepared for your birth. I'm usually a little low on the self esteem monitor, but I really think that I did a beautiful job of bringing you into the world and I can't see how any 'facts' I could have learned would have helped or made the experience any easier.

In fact, I'd go as far to say that I was a natural at the whole giving birth thing. I know I was very brave and I didn't cry and I didn't scream like you see on the TV. I did yell out 'fuck' at one point, and probably a few other times, but I think that's as bad as it got. Your birth was the calmest birth I could imagine, and I did not need to spend $500 to learn how to 're-frame' the labour experience in so-called 'calm-birth' classes to achieve this. Yes, I am proud of what I achieved in that room, and I hope you are proud of Mummy facing some very great fears that day.

I had a lovely midwife who sat with me explaining all the things that were happening to me as they happened. Do you remember this lady who first held you? Her name was Tamara and I think she loved you as soon as she saw your tiny face. I was quite glad to just be told a few minutes in advance what was going to happen next. This way I had no fear and no pre-conceived notions about what should be happening or how it should be. That was all the information I could take in or process at the time, so it would have done me no good whatsoever to try to recall 'facts' I should have learned in class!

I think the classes are really just to help women feel like they have some control over their bodies and their experience in labour, but I have learned the hard way that this is really not possible, no matter how many courses you undertake, books you read, or birth plans you make. Your body will do what your body will do, in spite of you and your plans for it. And how silly are we women to think it could be any other way? We have been doing this without wanky classes or birthing music playlists for thousands of years!

Today I do dearly wish that I could have experienced a few of the exciting pregnancy milestones before you came. I had not yet decorated your room. I did not get to have a baby shower and get doted on by everyone who was so excited about your birth. I did not get to pack a hospital bag. All these things seem so small, yet not being able to do them has affected me profoundly. I grieve for all those lost opportunities of happiness, as well as for you, my darling. I would trade any of those things to have just a single minute more with you, though. And when I think of you I know that none of them matter.

I love you today and always.

Love Mummy xox