Portland's Finest
Today marks the first, and possibly the last, day of our adventures in Child birthing class. After much hype, anticipation, and excitement to meet other pregnant women in the area, I have to say that I am thoroughly disappointed with the recent turn of events.
Kent and I signed up for a series of child birthing/breastfeeding/new born care classes at our hospital for a variety of reasons. Of course, the primary reason was to educate ourselves since we're as experienced as two performing circus monkeys. On the other hand, we also wanted to meet other expecting couples going through the same pregnancy/child birthing experience as us.
I had first heard about these classes through rave reviews from other young, hip co-workers with wonderful experiences such as how 'so and so and her husband are now their newest couple bff's' and how 'everyone is so close knit that they're having a big reunion BBQ after all the babies are born' or how they're all coincidentally decorating their baby nurseries with the same shabby chic fashion sense. This just added to the lure of us finally signing up for a series of classes and waiting with great anticipation all the wonderful things that lay ahead. I honestly had visions of shopping with my new post-pregnant bff I would meet in our class, strolling side-by-side with our babies snuggling quietly in their matching Orbit baby strollers. I imagined Kent paired up with the bff’s equally charming and handsome husband watching football and kicking back with a few beers.
Call me delusional, but I was really hoping for the best and preparing for the fantastic!
In reality, Kent and I arrived to a class of about 10 couples that were so far removed from what I had expected that I literally thought we had gone to the wrong classroom. We were seriously surrounded by several toothless freak shows people that encompassed a) the stereotypical FOB Taiwanese couple where the husband constantly looks like he's on the verge of back handing his super timid wife, cutting her off when she begins to talk; b) the quintessential Gresham white-t couple where the girlfriend is a500+ pound butterball who is constantly screaming at her scrawny, rail thin boyfriend wearing the ‘always classy and never out of style’ wife beater tank and a puffy black marshmallow jacket. It also doesn’t help that he was constantly massaging her neck as she's eating rice krispy treats he retrieved from the vending machine; c) a 17year old HS girl and her friend laughing, swearing, and texting on their phone (I can see how maturity plays a key role in this...) totally oblivious to the life-changing event that she’s yet to experience in the next couple of weeks; d) a nerdy older, upper class couple that's probably in their early forties asking the strangest questions and being really paranoid about the 'fetal viability'; e) a toothless mother and daughter duo that smell like Coors Light and tequila and laughs at EVERYTHING for NO apparent reason; f) a rocker chic younger couple that are either mute and angry or scared and clueless AND also give us the perfect image of what it would look like if Bo Bice from American Idol and a 70’s version of Cher were to ever get together.
And that’s just the superficial assessment I observed in my 30 seconds of scanning the room…
Further into the night is where it got really FUN. I won’t go into great detail, but I will say that highlights of the nights included the instructor using terms like ‘day old panties’, ‘earthy’, and ‘mushrooms’ in reference to a statement the Taiwanese man had asked in relation to his wife (you can put 2 and 2 together on this one…); a discussion on what amniotic fluid TASTES and SMELLS like; misspelled words and inappropriate comments during a class exercise listing pregnancy positives and negatives (think easy terms, like laber, being tiard, and hungree).
Anywho, I left the class half bummed out and half in disbelief. I don’t know what scares me the most – knowing that these people are having children, that a RESPECTABLE, NOTABLE, HIGH RANKED hospital such as ours has a demographic of such colorful people, or the mere fact that these are the people who are my fellow neighbors in Beaverton/Hillsboro! Either way, my delusional fantasy of making life-long friends with people in this class has been violently shattered and I’m still trying to keep my head up and look forward to our breastfeeding 101 and newborn care 101 classes next month. Wish us luck…
Kent and I signed up for a series of child birthing/breastfeeding/new born care classes at our hospital for a variety of reasons. Of course, the primary reason was to educate ourselves since we're as experienced as two performing circus monkeys. On the other hand, we also wanted to meet other expecting couples going through the same pregnancy/child birthing experience as us.
I had first heard about these classes through rave reviews from other young, hip co-workers with wonderful experiences such as how 'so and so and her husband are now their newest couple bff's' and how 'everyone is so close knit that they're having a big reunion BBQ after all the babies are born' or how they're all coincidentally decorating their baby nurseries with the same shabby chic fashion sense. This just added to the lure of us finally signing up for a series of classes and waiting with great anticipation all the wonderful things that lay ahead. I honestly had visions of shopping with my new post-pregnant bff I would meet in our class, strolling side-by-side with our babies snuggling quietly in their matching Orbit baby strollers. I imagined Kent paired up with the bff’s equally charming and handsome husband watching football and kicking back with a few beers.
Call me delusional, but I was really hoping for the best and preparing for the fantastic!
In reality, Kent and I arrived to a class of about 10 couples that were so far removed from what I had expected that I literally thought we had gone to the wrong classroom. We were seriously surrounded by several toothless freak shows people that encompassed a) the stereotypical FOB Taiwanese couple where the husband constantly looks like he's on the verge of back handing his super timid wife, cutting her off when she begins to talk; b) the quintessential Gresham white-t couple where the girlfriend is a500+ pound butterball who is constantly screaming at her scrawny, rail thin boyfriend wearing the ‘always classy and never out of style’ wife beater tank and a puffy black marshmallow jacket. It also doesn’t help that he was constantly massaging her neck as she's eating rice krispy treats he retrieved from the vending machine; c) a 17year old HS girl and her friend laughing, swearing, and texting on their phone (I can see how maturity plays a key role in this...) totally oblivious to the life-changing event that she’s yet to experience in the next couple of weeks; d) a nerdy older, upper class couple that's probably in their early forties asking the strangest questions and being really paranoid about the 'fetal viability'; e) a toothless mother and daughter duo that smell like Coors Light and tequila and laughs at EVERYTHING for NO apparent reason; f) a rocker chic younger couple that are either mute and angry or scared and clueless AND also give us the perfect image of what it would look like if Bo Bice from American Idol and a 70’s version of Cher were to ever get together.
And that’s just the superficial assessment I observed in my 30 seconds of scanning the room…
Further into the night is where it got really FUN. I won’t go into great detail, but I will say that highlights of the nights included the instructor using terms like ‘day old panties’, ‘earthy’, and ‘mushrooms’ in reference to a statement the Taiwanese man had asked in relation to his wife (you can put 2 and 2 together on this one…); a discussion on what amniotic fluid TASTES and SMELLS like; misspelled words and inappropriate comments during a class exercise listing pregnancy positives and negatives (think easy terms, like laber, being tiard, and hungree).
Anywho, I left the class half bummed out and half in disbelief. I don’t know what scares me the most – knowing that these people are having children, that a RESPECTABLE, NOTABLE, HIGH RANKED hospital such as ours has a demographic of such colorful people, or the mere fact that these are the people who are my fellow neighbors in Beaverton/Hillsboro! Either way, my delusional fantasy of making life-long friends with people in this class has been violently shattered and I’m still trying to keep my head up and look forward to our breastfeeding 101 and newborn care 101 classes next month. Wish us luck…
posted by dabump at
10:30 PM
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