Read(y) or not

Our Birthworks class was very fun last night. We met 10 other people who are all expecting babies soon too. The instructor did a great job of putting us through a process to get to the heart of what some of our overall fears and thoughts are about birth and delivery.

Su and I have both read and discussed some things but we definitely learned some new and interesting things last night and look forward to the next sessions. The other folks in the class seem really nice and traditionally the group meets one last time after the final baby is born so all the parents and kids can celebrate. What a cool idea huh?

One of the things we all first individually wrote down and then debriefed were those things that relax us. Su and I both had reading listed near the very top and not surprisingly, I included on my list listening to music while Su listed listening to NPR. Oh horrors if she gives birth on a Sunday since all we get is "Stained Glass Blue Grass" which neither of us really like. I promised her I’d download some podcasts of “This American Life” we’ve not heard before just in case ;-)

Anyway, on the way home we talked about reading. We are both usually in the middle of some sort of novel or mystery and if we are smart, when one finishes a book the other one reads it next so we can quickly return it to the library or put it in the box to donate. This works pretty well except for like this weekend when we were chatting at dinner and I said something like “I don’t really like the vigilante justice sort of books—like the one where the woman CIA director poisoned the…”

“STOP!” I think I saw her eyes say this before the word came out. It turns out that this was the very book she was in the midst of and hadn’t quite gotten to the poisoning part yet. Ooops!

Anyway, I shared with Susanne that my favorite place to be in a book is in the middle of it. That’s when I feel most engaged. I don’t like starting a book because I want to be hooked right away, and that doesn’t always happen. And I don’t like when I’m nearing the end of a book because I sort of feel like I’m mourning the fact that it will be over soon. I wonder if this is analogous to anything else in my life?

Something about taking this class is making us feel more and more like our baby is almost here. I just read on the Baby Center e-mail we get that the baby is about 2 lbs now and that it should more than triple its weight in the next 3 months. Pretty amazing. And a two pound baby of course means that our baby now weighs the equivalent of 8 Quarter Pounders with Cheese!

Huh, look at that. Lunch time already. And I’ve got myself a little “lunch date” with David Baldacci. Until next time everyone. -Monica