Some people take this parenting (or parenting-to be) lark a bit more seriously than M and I, it seems.
Last week, we tried to sign up for antenatal classes. At antenatal classes, they teach you how to breathe and how to support yourself with pillows. I am sure that there is a connection with childbirth, but I am not sure what it is. They also have a woman’s only class, where they teach the participants how to feed the baby. Suits me. Feeding the baby is a woman’s job, after all.
(The above is a joke. J-O-K-E.)
So we telephone the local branch of the National Childbirth Trust. Run by volunteers, it is a highly regarded facilitator of lots of lovely things to do with childbirth and parenting, including antenatal classes. They are so highly regarded, in fact, that the midwife at the antenatal class suggested them as possibly a more convenient alternative for us to the classes run in the hospital.
No one was available to speak with us, so we leave a message.
A few days later, a nice woman with an American accent calls back.
‘You said your wife is due in November, didn’t you?’ I can hear a little child babbling in the background. I confirm that this is so.
‘I’m really sorry,’ she begins apologetically. ‘We are now taking bookings for parents due in April.
April? APRIL! April is a bloody lifetime away. How can they be putting their names down now? I do some mental arithmetic. If women expecting their babies in April are signing up for antenatal classes now, I can only surmise that they are doing so fairly much immediately after conceiving. And I thought we were organised…
She gives me information about a few other privately run courses, and wishes us well.
Just to prove just how slack we are, the hospital, when we got round to calling them, were fully booked up as well. Fortunately, they were able to accommodate us in the neighbouring district.
That said, our failure to score tickets for the antenatal gig could be as much to do with the area we live in as anything else.
We live on the fringes of a neighbourhood commonly referred, only half-ironically, the ‘Nappy Valley’. More like a nappy mountain. Everywhere you turn, you bump into a child. Every woman you see on the street is either pregnant, or with a small child, or both pregnant and with a small child. Childbearing seems to be something of a competitive sport around here.
Now I come to think of it, my response to our inability to secure a place on a local antenatal class may be connected to the ugly competitive streak that runs through me.
For example: A couple of months ago, M and I went to visit the Natural Childbirth Unit at a local hospital. There were two other couples visiting the unit at the same time.
At some point, the woman showing us around asked how many weeks pregnant the women were. M was 16 or 17 weeks pregnant then; the other two women were clearly much further along with their pregnancies, perhaps 32 or 33 weeks.
‘You’re obviously better organised than we are,’ one of the other women commented, smiling ruefully at M’s little bump and rubbing her hillock wistfully. Shallow pillock that I am, I nodded in agreement. We are the organised parents to be, I thought to myself sagely. And continued to think so until last week.
It’s a silly thing to be competitive about, no? Also a little scary. Before I know it, I’ll become one of these ‘helicopter’ parents – so called because they constantly hover other their children, micro-managing every aspect of their lives and pushing them to goals and targets that the children have little interest in.
Actually, there’s little chance of that happening. I’m far too slack for such nonsense. My competitiveness tends to erupt in the most unusual of circumstances. Like how soon we register ourselves for antenatal classes. Or how long I can hold my breath.
Talking of madness, I seriously think my mother has lost it. We went to her house for lunch last Sunday. It was a beautiful, unseasonably warm afternoon. She told M and me all about her birth experiences, getting my younger brother and me circumcised at a time when it was impossible to do so on the NHS (solution? A Rabbi), and our respective birth weights. Really strange; I’d never had any interest at all in my mother’s birth experiences before now.
Now, I knew that she had done a bit of shopping for her first grandchild, because my brother had commented darkly about ‘all the shopping bags’ that she kept bringing home with her. How much though, I had no idea until she asked if we wanted to take them home with us.
She went upstairs, and presently we could hear her padding about in her bedroom. I absently wondered what on earth was keeping her upstairs for so long.
Then she came back down.
Her arms were full of clothes. Romper suits, pyjamas, sleeping bags, little socks, shorts. Jumpers, two-piece outfits, tee shirts and a hot water bottle encased in a cat. Her arms were so full she couldn’t see in front of her.
My mouth dropped open. M started to laugh hysterically.
One can’t complain, of course.
It’s weird though, how small things like this jolt us into the reality, that very soon we are going to be responsible for the boy that will be wearing these clothes. Scary stuff…
Back to competitiveness. I am reliably informed that it is the done thing for parents to play the unborn child soothing classical music, like Mozart and Bach. Something to do with stimulating their cognitive powers before they are born.
I’m not into this for a number of reasons. Firstly, I don’t think that the cognitive stuff is necessarily true. Secondly, it sounds more like a wheeze thought up by an ambitious marketing executive. Thirdly, I don’t want to run the risk of bringing up a classical music prodigy in my household. They tend to be high maintenance. (M pointed out that there is little danger of us producing offspring with ANY musical ability whatsoever. Nonetheless, I don’t want to run the risk.) Fourthly, I don’t like Mozart anyway.
I do like music, though. A lot. So I’m going to have a bit of a think about the ideal antenatal playlist, and I’ll post my conclusions in a day or so.
Night Night.
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