Head of the Class

With Rachel being a teacher, and me a flight school instructor and grad school student, you'd think we would have had enough of school already. However, the two of us decided on our own regard to attend some "New Parenting" classes put on by our hospital, Baptist Health. The classes come in three sessions, each two and a half hours long, and are supposed to teach us everything we would ever want to know about being a parent. OK, OK, it is not supposed to teach us everything. But at fifteen bucks per session, I vowed that I would learn something new... or at least get a free key chain out of it.

Our lecturer of Lamaze is named Kim. She is an overly perky but very natally knowledgeable nurse who spends each session bestowing her expertise onto us. However, our sensei in scrubs does have one trait that tends to get under Rachel and my skin. Kim accentuates her vowels while drawing out the last syllable of the word and cocking her head to the side at the end of every sentence. Rachel and I have mocked our professor of pregnancy's sing-songy delivery during both our rides home from class so far.

Anyway, thus far we have learned all about the drugs that are given to mothers delivering both naturally and via Cesarean. Also, we've talked about postpartum depression, labor symptoms, massage and breathing techniques and what to bring to the delivery room. Our kiddie coach has also taught us numerous medical terms that we can use to impress our friends and neighbors, like sciatica, lanugo, prophylaxis and episiotomy (which I never want to talk about again). We got to watch a video too, but since I like to think of this as a kid friendly site, so I will only say that it was everything we had heard and more.

It is a bit amazing to me that only one-third of first time parents take these classes. Certainly, two and a half hours of Kim's trimester tutelage can make a man a bit fussy, but the information we have gotten is well worth the price of admission. Plus, I am still banking on getting that free key chain before I'm through.

While Rachel and I have grown our parental knowledge over the past few weeks, Red and Lellow have just plain grown. We have another sonogram appointment in about a week and a half, so until then we just gauge their growth based on Rachel's stomach size, which is still increasing. Here is the latest belly pic, Rachel at 32 and a half weeks.

Finally, the return of a old favorite; here are some names we will not be giving to the twins: Spencer, Heidi, or any variant of the name Sky (to include Skylar, Skye, or any other nonsense like that).