And Voila! A Baby Burrito!
As I alluded to in my previous entry, Tim and I had our first baby class yesterday. The class was entitled "Newborn Care". It covered the basics of baby equipment, newborn behaviour and characteristics, what to expect after giving birth, and diapering and swaddling practice (with dolls! ;-)). Probably the most interesting portion of the class was the photo presentation - the teacher showed a tonne of photos of newborns - many of them only seconds or minutes old - and explained in detail what we were looking at so we could see what the little munchkins REALLY look like when they make their debut, and dispel those tv-perfect gerber baby images from our minds. But the teacher did reassure us that no matter what, our baby would be the most beautiful baby we've ever seen. Of course she will be! I already KNEW that ;-). And just as proof of that, looking at all those photos of tiny wee little babies made me quite emotional. In a good way. I just sat there beaming at picture after picture, eyes alight and brimming with tears, happy in anticipation and totally in love with our own little baby girl, who, incidentally, acknowledged this little onrush of emotion with a flurry of wiggling and kicking and squirming ;-)
Half way through class we got a diapering and swaddling demo, and then the teacher let us loose on the little baby dolls so we could practice building our own "baby burrito". Because that's essentially what you're doing ;-). I'm proud to say I diapered like a true champion (despite Tim's injection of "realism" into our little practice session by taking the baby doll's legs and making them kick at me while I attempted to fasten the diaper ;-)) and also happy to report that Tim's burrito was a fine work of art.
Next week: Part 1 of our "Labour and Birth Preparation" class. I'm thinking that class might be the one that triggers the end of the "fed-ex baby" dreams and the beginning of the real labour dreams that my mind has successfully managed to avoid thus far ;-).