The Under-Appreciated Art of Breathing

Last night, Mrs. U and I had our first Lamaze class.

Before I tell you about our passive aggressive Lamaze teacher, let me share some incredible knowledge I picked up last night. I've put some of the trickier terms in bold so you can look them up later if I move too fast.

When you breathe in and fill your lungs with air, this is called inhaling.

When you expel that air from your lungs by breathing out, this is called exhaling.

I may not have absorbed and remembered all of this info if our teacher didn't take 30 minutes to explain this difficult concept to us. I've found that life is already so much easier now that I'm armed with this important information. Turns out, sometimes I would inhale twice in a row without exhaling. That's hard to do, unless you're a circus performer or you're in a reggae band. Other times, I would exhale twice while forgetting to inhale. Now that I know what I was doing wrong, I suspect that I'll be wheezing a lot less.

Mrs. Undaground did learn some good information about positioning herself for maximum comfort during labor. I learned how to rub her back in front of a room full of people while she assumes these positions.

The class was supposed to run from 7pm to 9pm (3 Monday nights in a row). Well, when we got there, the doctors were having a meeting in the Lamaze class room. So, we waited, and waited, and eventually the room was seized by a stampede of impatient pregnant women and their backrubbing partners. Once the class actually began at about 730pm, the teacher said she would shorten her lesson so that we'd finish on time.

I guess she really inspired herself, because somewhere in the middle of her inhaling and exhaling lecture, she decided to scrap that plan and just give us the director's cut, unedited, full 2-hour version, unbeknownst to us.

At 9pm, as people started quietly gathering their chattle to prepare for their exit, she began launching into our next exercise, which was extremely similar to the previous exercise. One Lamaze partner in the class asked, "Umm, so what time are we getting out of here?". This was apparently all it took for the battle of wills to begin.

"9:30", the teacher said proudly. She had more to tell us, and it couldn't wait til next week, or the week after.

I guess sometime between 9 and 930, Lamaze teacher decided that she was bothered by the man's question, because 930 came and she pressed on. The non-verbal cues in the room from each and every couple for her to stop were so strong that I felt like I was on the floor of the stock exchange for a moment.

Finally, at 9:40, she popped the last 1970's birth film into the VCR. We watched as "Carl" helped his wife through labor. Then, we saw what they don't show you on TLC. The one thing Mrs. U and I both took from the film is that if you feather your hair and wear polyester, labor becomes a little easier for some cosmic reason. Seriously, could somebody update those films? The children being born in them are probably going through menopause now. Are you telling me that nothing has changed in 30 years?

At about 9:45, Lamaze teacher opened it up for questions..... again. One teacher's pet asked a question as a collective groan of Monday Night Football fans hovered over the room.

Eventually, we were on our way home, where we fell right asleep and now here I am at work again. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have some homework to do. I'm trying to practice the inhale/exhale thing to the point where I can do it without thinking about it. Inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale, inhale, inhale, inhale, COUGH, COUGH, Oops. Practice makes perfect, I guess.