Back to School

I decided fairly early on in my pregnancy not to take a childbirth class. I figure that, with twins, I have a pretty good chance of ending up with a c-section anyways. If not, well, I figure that I will just push when the nurses say "push." How hard can it be, right?? (I know, I know. Just let me live with my head in the sand for a little while longer!) But we did decide to take a few classes offered by the hospital, the first being "Infant Care Basics." We decided to take this one because, if I'm being honest, Brian and I both needed to learn the basics. The very basics. The class turned out to be helpful and fairly uneventful, aside from the part where the perky nurse had us go around and introduce ourselves and say whether we were having a boy or a girl. Of course we answered the "boy or girl?" question with "Both", which lead to a fair amount of staring and ever-so-helpful comments such as "Twins? Good luck!" from our fellow parents-to-be. And when the class was instructed to come pick out a doll to practice swaddling, diapering, etc., we were instructed to get two dolls. But it honestly didn't seem so bad--Brian and I each handled our own baby and it started to seem like maybe we can actually do this twin thing after all!

Next up on our class schedule was Breastfeeding. On our way to the class, we were making bets on how many times during the course of the evening we would hear the word "nipple," which lead to a discussion on whether we may be a bit too immature to be raising children. Conclusion? Probably so, but it's a little too late now. We were able to handle ourselves in a fairly mature fashion throughout the class, even when the Australian lady in the 1980s video we had to watch kept saying that the baby should have a "mouthful of breast." She seriously used the phrase "mouthful of breast" about 50 times. Hee-hee. Immature humor aside, breastfeeding class was scary. When we were instructed to go get dolls to practice with, Brian knew the drill and went ahead and got two dolls. (But this time, he got one white doll and one black doll. I am not sure what he is trying to prepare himself for, but whatever.) The instructor started demonstrating the different holds, and it was around this time that reality (okay, panic) began to set in...this wasn't like diapering or swaddling, where we could each take a baby: this was all me. I sneaked a glance around the room at all the other moms-to-be holding their one baby...it looked so easy. Meanwhile, I felt like a circus side show trying to maneuver my two dolls into the "football hold." But I guess it's like anything else...practice makes perfect and all that junk. I'm sure we'll get it down eventually and the babies will be able to get a [insert Australian accent] "mouthful of breast." Hahaha!