Stop and Smell the People

The Baby Diaries, Pt. 2

Back by popular demand, the second installment of our “Baby Diaries.”  As with the first chapter, my wife and I write these stories together.  And by together I mean I drifted to sleep as Anna typed away.  When she was done I added my thoughts in [brackets and bold.]

Mike – “Why exactly do I have to go with you?” [I won’t lie. I was annoyed.]

Anna – “Because when I called to schedule the class, they said you have to bring your partner. And you are my partner.”

Mike – “Can’t one of your girl cousins go with you?” [This is all Oprah's fault!]

Anna – “Nope.” That last statement was final because it was the last word to make it’s way out of my mouth as I shoveled cereal into it from a bowl perched atop of my very pregnant belly. Everybody knows you don’t argue with a Preggo mid-feed.  [Pitbulls are sweet by comparison.]

And so, on one perfectly good Saturday morning, Mike and I loaded me into the car and headed out together for a half-day breastfeeding class. [I’m in hell.] We arrived just in time to take our seats amidst 75 other expecting couples.  [Suckers… all.] The instructor tapped her laptop for the power point to begin and boy did it! Flashing onto the screen the image of three 6-foot nipples side by side. No kidding. Three boobs from floor to ceiling. [These were not the boobs a man thinks about in his free time. It looked like a crack-whore line-up at the police station... "That's the one Officer! The one with the rash!"] And there we were, little ole Mike and Anna staring up at the giant bosoms. [I was wrong earlier. Now I’m in hell.]

I could feel it coming… the rumblings of a laughing fit. After all I wasn’t sitting next to just any husband, but my very own Mike Redding and you know how he can be. [Um... predictable?] I stiffened my posture, trying to steel myself against so much as a breath from his direction.

“So what kind of nipples do you have? Large?  Small? Inverted?” Pat asked the class. [Gee, no one’s ever asked me that before, Pat. Can I think about it for a minute?] You could tell Pat was excited about breastfeeding. She could talk nipples all day long. [My kind of woman.] She’d long since lost any inhibitions on the topic of boobs, including her own.  She excitedly paced the room, up and down the aisles… back and forth across the front. Even as Pat explained, “You put baby on the right side for twenty minutes, then twenty minutes on the left,” she squeezed her own boobs just in case we didn’t understand the words ‘left’ and ‘right.’ [At this point I’m trying to decide if I should fake an illness.]

Some women were taking copious notes in the margins of the extremely detailed handouts we were given. [Seriously. Booby, baby, suck. Any questions?] It was like they were worshipping at the temple of ta-ta. And God bless them, because I was so distracted by the spectacle of it all, all I could focus on was this little mantra in my head, “You are not 12 years old. You do not have to laugh. You are not 12. You do not have to laugh…” [I on the other hand…]

At this point most of my energy is being spent trying to block Mike out of my head. [It dawns on me right about now I won’t have to fain a sudden explosive bowel… I just have to sigh at exactly the right moment and Preggo will snap.] I pretended he wasn’t there because to even consider what was going on in his head would’ve shoved me violently toward disaster. [Train wreck here we come!]

But as Pat’s talk drifted to the shape a baby’s mouth should take when properly latched on… I knew it. Game over. The Reddings were about to lose. [Or in my case win!]

“You want that mouth to open 120 degrees,” she said. And you know Pat, she loves to provide a visual, using her own body. So her nervous saunter came to a dead stop in the front of the room, in the light of the video projector. A giant nipple was now perfectly projected onto Pat’s face just as she opened her mouth wide to say, “Like this.” [Too easy. I softly sighed, “Hollllllly crap!”]

Mike lost it. And like any good on-air person, I injured myself to stop from laughing (a trick to keep you from laughing on air at the wrong time.) Mike was sinking fast into a hysterical, fitful snicker. It was the kind that no one can hear except when you gasp for air or groan from the ab workout.

“You are not 12. You do not have to laugh. You are not 12. You do not have to laugh.”

“The great thing,” says Pat, “is once the baby learns how to latch on, they can do it quite easily. And I am going to show you how to break the latch because they are strong little suckers,” she says as she makes her way over to her laptop. “And a word to you men. Babies don’t know the difference between female nipples and male nipples.” [Dear lord! I might not have to fake an illness after all.]

“You men,” Pat says with a warning in her voice, “need to watch out.”

Pat hits the Power Point and the wall of boobies magically transforms into a piece of video from France. It was a French commercial. [Well, duh.]

Picture it… You hear a baby crying. Then a close up shot of Dad sleeping. His eyes pop open. He gets out of bed, wearing flannel PJ bottoms with no shirt (Dad is not in good shape – upper body is a fleshy mess.) [Groaning now.] Tight shot of crying baby in the crib and dad’s arms swooping in to pick up baby. Dad carries baby to the rocking chair and cradles baby in his arms. And the baby latches on to Dad’s man boob! He looks shocked. Then the words “GET IN SHAPE!” appear on the screen. And the lights of our lecture hall come up. [My mouth was open 120 degrees.]

I look at Michael in complete and utter shock and then freefall helplessly into a giggle fit!  [Wait for it. Waaaaait... Now!] “Hey!” he says, “I’ll take you to Bojangles if we can leave and never come back?”

We were at the Bojangles drive-thu five minutes later. [Team Redding... keeping it real.]

[As you might have guessed, as with the Birthing Class, we were not awarded the "Breastfeeding Class Certificate." We are double dropouts.

To my udder shock, our son learned how to nurse anyway!  He's a plump little lump and we're grateful beyond words.

Okay, well, this wraps up another exhausting Team Redding adventure. All this writing is hard work... yawn. Perhaps in the next Baby Diary we'll discuss the "Infant CPR Class"  which scared the crap out of me and keeps me awake to this day!

Tomorrow I'll be answering more stopandsmellthepeople.com reader vacation requests in a "Where to go... What to do... Who to smell..." entry.

Don't forget to stop and smell... MR]

P.S. if you missed the first installment of the Baby Diaries, check it out!