Dear Peanut

Last night your Daddy and I went to a class to learn about how you are going to be born. It was very interesting and I learnt a lot about where you are living at the moment. Our Midwife/teacher Louise was very helpful.

Initially we had to go around the room and introduce ourselves, tell them all our name and 1 thing we like and 1 thing we dislike, of course I sat on an end and had to go first, "My name is Rachael and I like Pizza, and I don't like mushroom on my Pizza" and so it began the stupidity coming out of my mouth. Well we had just had Pizza for dinner and when put on the spot I couldn't think of anything else. Daddy he likes Paintball and dislikes bad drivers, this was probably top of his mind as well due to a traffic jam around the corner from the hospital and then followed my terrible parking in the dark and rainy carpark at the Hospital and my comment on thinking my driving is getting worse, I was way better when multi-tasking, like driving while smoking and eating a cheeseburger and talking on the phone, almost all at once. Of course I don't condone smoking and you will be in serious trouble if you ever start.

After our initial round of introductions Louise starts to ask us what we want to get out of these classes, I kept silent for fear of embarrassing Daddy, trying not to be the loud and annoying person in the group, and to my delight someone else took that role, she had a comment for everything, I think she was reading my mind and probably that of everyone in the room but she was the 1 who kept asking stupid yet relevant questions.


Louise went through the stages of labour, early contractions, timing, what happens to the cervix during dilation, she demonstrated the cervix with the little dolly that represented a baby and the knitted hippy type hat that represented the Cervix, she asked the question to the group "how do we measure the dilation of the cervix", I was ready to pipe up and say "der with a ruler or tape measure" and thankfully kept my mouth shut and was so wrong, she actually pokes up her pointer and middle finger spreads said 2 fingers apart and them whips them out for what I would say in engineering terms is a very inaccurate measure of how dilated the cervix actually is. Apparently they have been using this method for years and appears to be working for them so, I say lets run with it.

The next part of labour we were to learn was the transitioning, this is where the nice little mild contractions that I thought were going to break us in 2, actually get WORSE, and me your beautiful eloquent mother turns from nice mummy into Psycho Beast with turrets syndrome (you will probably meet her when you are naughty at some stage throughout your life). I fear this could be when daddy leaves the room and starts running screaming down the hallway, when in actual fact his job is to get up into my face and try to calm the BEAST. I hope he makes it, I believe he made attempts to warn that he may have to slap me across the face during this time, I don't condone domestic violence but will go so far as to say I may well need it at this point.

Next is the calm before the storm, apparently once the cervix is ready to go I get a 20 minute reprieve from the pain of the past 4-48 hours depending on individual circumstances, before pushing you out. Apparently once you pop out you are tossed onto my bare naked body for some quality skin to skin time, all gooey and slimy and you have to hang out there until you work out how to handle the sustenance of my engorged bosom. During all of this I have to also give birth to the Placenta which has been keeping you alive for the last 9 months, again the loud 1 in the group asks if this is painful, good ole' Louise says, no that is the easy part as it has no bones in it, charming I say. Whilst I get a whisper from Daddy who says "it will come out like a goon bag down a hallway", to which I almost lost my shit and tried to keep from laughing hysterically.

I won't be allowing you to read any of this until you are of the age when you won't have to ask me what a placenta or cervix or "goon bag" is, I might have to put a "goon bag" into your time capsule as I fear these may not be around for ever, they could get replaced by something less practical that will not turn into a party pillow or pool flotation device once finished.

Anyway we then got to sit through a video of about 4 different women giving birth to demonstrate all that we learnt tonight. Now this video must have been made somewhere Circa 1980, 1 of the caregivers or midwife had a hairdo that resembled the brunette out of ABBA, the harsh cut fringe and straight long hair and then the Pis ta resistance 1 lady was wearing nothing but leg warmers, WHAT THE. Well I need to go and get me some of those as that is standard birthing outfit.

Well only 5 more weeks of classes before your impending arrival in 9 weeks time, can't wait to meet you my little Peanut.