July 18, 2009

• Great Expectations!

  Shaun and I spent our entire day rotting away in a childbirth class called Great Expectations!.

  As most people know, Dickens wrote a book with the very same name, sans exclamation mark. The themes of the Dickens book speak to the fact that most attempts at self improvement are fruitless; social standing and money will always trump a good heart and a healthy conscience. (Also: that rich girls are pretty, but can be total bitches.) The childbirth class, Great Expectations!, did not cover any of these ideas, although I think it would be really funny if the class was named ironically, as in:

  You can try to learn all this shit to ease your childbirth pains, but really: it’s pointless. Birth is a bitch.

  ***

  Anyhow, the class started out fine enough. We introduced ourselves to the humorless cookie-cutter couple next to us. We watched a video of three different ladies giving birth. Shaun and I tried not to laugh as the instructor pushed a baby doll out of a skeleton. (Apparently, no one else in class thought there was something REALLY funny about a SKELETON giving birth to a live human.) We did breathing techniques. And then there came the visualization/relaxation portion of class. And this is where I proceeded to loose my shit.

  Before I can tell you just what happened during the visualization/relaxation lesson, I should start with The Original.

  Currently, on Chicago Avenue (between State and Michigan), there is an abandoned shop that I pass daily to go to work. I say abandoned, but it is not entirely so. For while there is no actual store or gallery per se inside the shop, there are three hideous paintings for sale, propped in the shop window.

  The first painting is my favorite. It’s about 5 feet tall and depicts a naked woman of hideous proportion and construct. She wears a feathered mask and wields a long paintbrush over her head. Her boobs are the big, perfectly round type that a thirteen-year-old boy might draw and a loose purple cape flutters around her body. The best part of this horrible thing is the price sticker, which reads:
  
  

  Original! $935

  Now, while the god-awfulness of this over-priced painting is entertaining enough as it is, I find it super funny that the artist had the instinct to clarify that it is not a forgery. In case you couldn’t tell, this painting is one-of-a-kind. This painting is The Original.

  I knew that we’d pass The Original on our way to childbirth class today and I’d been really excited to point it out to Shaun. He loved it just as much as I thought he would and we agreed to buy it and hang it in a really prominent place in our mansion if ever we hit it big (I think it was Martha Stewart who said, “there’s nothing like a horrendously wrought, big, raunchy painting to really add a touch of class a space”). 

  We’re still laughing about The Original when we get to class, but soon enough we pipe down and let the instructor tell us all about mucus plugs and perineal massage. I thought I’d all but forgotten about The Original until our visualization/relaxation lesson began.

  “Face your partner. Close your eyes. Breathe. Imagine a calm, soothing beach. It’s warm out, but not too hot. The breeze is blowing. The waves are tranquil. The sand feels good underfoot. Or perhaps you’d like to imagine an image from home, something that you find soothing…”

  Enter: The Original. She’s stepped out of the painting and is tottering about on her disproportionate, awkwardly placed legs on hot sand. In a room full of deeply breathing couples, I burst out laughing.

  “Sorry. Sorry,” I say.

  “Just relax and slip back into your visualization.”

  And there she is again, waiting for me. Tottering around in the sand. A crab chases her down the shore line. The Original builds a sand diaper and lets her sack of waters break into it. She gets up and leaves a crust of wet sand in her wake, forgetting to call her practitioner to report on the color and smell of the liquid. Instead, she races to the shore to rinse off. Her two-dimensional body swims around carefree as a person without joints can be. Suddenly, her bloody show comes gushing out into the water. A shark comes and bites her in half.  The Original flails around, trying not to get her feather mask or paintbrush wet. Everything is a disaster! She’s drifted into a nest of Portuguese Man ‘o War’s! Oh look! She’s paddling away with her one functional arm (the other one has to hold her paintbrush aloft) and has finally reached shallow ground! The Original drags her now-legless body up to shore, only to find herself caught up in a pile of sea urchins…

  Instead of breathing deeply though the exercise, my body is tense and shaking with the effort of trying to bottle up my laughter. Shaun’s pose mirrors mine; he is laughing at me laughing and we are laughing in the dark, surrounded by strangers thinking positive thoughts about their soon-to-be newborns when I whisper “The Original!” and we just about both loose our shit entirely.

  It only gets worse when the instructor has our birth partners whisper to us the things they did during our simulated contractions to make our labor easier. Shaun and I are giddy and are whispering horrible things to each other. We are quaking with stifled laugher.

  “During your last contraction, I got our divorce papers in order.”
  “During your last contraction, I gave you a Dirty Sanchez.”

  Eventually the lesson is over and we are released for our lunch break to have a good, proper laugh. Once we’d worn ourselves out during the relaxation lesson, the rest of the afternoon was deathly boring.  We had to watch more cheesy videos, full of people saying smug ass-holish classics such as:

  “Having a child is that thing in life you never knew you were missing,” and “birthing is a beautiful experience.”

  I’m happy that we went to the childbirth class—there was some helpful information in it, for sure. But I’m happier still to know that I have a birthing partner who knows me well enough to know that if there’s one thing that helps me through discomfort: it’s humor. Best of all: he’s actually funny.
  _____________________________________________________________________
  What helps you through pain?
  

  • 10:12 pm
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