According to the OBGYN, Gaius is pointing in the right direction (head down), and everything seems to be going along normally, both Jen and the baby are doing well. Thank goodness.
Last night, Wednesday, was our first prenatal class, which is offered through the hospital. The class was pretty good, the instructor very nice. The topics of the evening were introductions, labor, and relaxation.
Although I have read a million books about birth at this point, I still learned some new things last night. For example, the placenta looks like a rotten pumpkin covered with black veins, not a "pink pancake thing," as Jen had imagined it. Also, I learned that there is no part of the birthing process that has not been put on film, and I will be forced to watch them all in preparation for our own.
The relaxation part of the evening was very nice. During the last 15 minutes of class, the instructor had us all lay down on the floor with the blankets and pillows that we were asked to bring. She then put on a CD that combined in-utero heartbeat sounds with new age music, and walked us through a series of exercises designed to relax the body.
Hippie nonsense, you say? Perhaps, but it did relax me to the point of almost falling asleep; a nice treat at the end of a long, tiring work day.
4 comments:
Whenever they show a drawing of a baby in utero they always show the placenta as a pink pancake thing, so that makes sense to me:
http://www.robynsnest.com/images/placenta.jpg
I guess they try to hide the rotten pumpkin truth from everyone as long as possible.
A big part of my job is processing placentas from pregnancies that have "complications." So instead of rotten pumpkins covered in black veins, I have to deal with diseased rotten pumpkins covered in diseased black veins. I have to chop placentas up into thin bloody strips and look for "malformations". The hardest part of my job is to keep hippies from sneaking in and eating those strips while I'm trying to work.
You should hire Eric Cartman from South Park to work in your pathology lab.
No hippies would ever get through.
B
Also, googling for that placenta picture brought up a surprising number of references to "Tom Cruise" and "eating" as well. I hope the security at the path lab is ready--they may one day get a multi-pronged attack.
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