The perplexed Aunty to be - week 3!

We're here already, week 3! The third and final week of antenatal classes and boy what an experience its been. If you missed week two, here's the link.

Aran and I decided in the interim of waiting for these antenatal classes we would get some experience dressing babies for our baby sitting duty and what better way than practicing on one of the teddy bears Terri-ann had been given as a gift. I think we're going to have this cool Aunty and Uncle stuff sorted.


So, week three was apparently going to teach us how to look after a baby. I've looked after several animals in my 26 years so I was adamant I was going to have this baby-sitting duty down.

Upon arriving the midwife told us we were going to play a bit of a game. Like all these heavily pregnant women looked up for a game....but anyway, never argue with a midwife.

With that, she produced a doll and told us she was going to hand it around the group and we had to guess how much it weighed because apparently it weighed the same as a normal, healthy newborn.

And guess who she bloody passed it to first? Yup, you've got it, ME! Why me?!

Everyones eyes were on me as the midwife literally threw this doll into my arms. I did want to shout 'hey be careful|' as she tossed it towards me, but I thought better of trying to win one over on this lady, she was strict.

"Oh my god this is blooming heavy!"

...is probably not the words I should've shouted; I mean someone in this room could well give birth to a baby this heavy, right?

Anyway, I made my guess at 9 lbs and tried to get on with the rest of the class, which apparently was going to start with breast feeding.

This was our signal to turn our heads to the DVD player, where we had to endure watching 8 full whole minutes of breast feeding.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for women breast feeding, but (here's where I get opinionated...) not once during that whole 8 minutes did the video give any advice to the women who didn't want to breast feed, not once did it mention what happens if you simply can't breast feed. No, it just spoke about how perfect breast feeding was and how babies latch on quite soon after giving birth. Yeah right, because every scenario is perfect?

When the DVD finished, I couldn't help but turn to Terri-ann and ask what happens if you didn't want to breast feed, or the perfect scenario didn't happen. We were baffled..

And with that, one poor, but exceedingly brave girl put her hand up and asked "what if I want to bottle feed?" and I was mortified to see everyone immediately turn to look at her like she'd just announced the world was ending, not asked a simple question that would suit her and her baby.

Anyway, enough of my ranting.. back to the fact I'm sat in a room full of people about to burst.

After we'd had our pep talk that breast is best *cough*, it was time to learn how to swaddle a baby and what sort of clothes to dress them in given the temperature. Apparently healthy, normal weight babies shouldn't wear hats inside. Which baffles me because every American TV drama I watch, the babies are all lined up in the hospital wearing wooly hats. If you don't believe me, check out season 8 of One Tree Hill. Fact.

Everyone looked quiet this week, like they were suddenly realising how soon the impending birth was and there was actually no backing out of it now. There were endless discussions on what weight people thought their own babies would be and whether they thought they would be early or late and what they'd look like...when suddenly...

"Excuse me, my girlfriends really not feeling very well" shouted one night stand boy.

Boy, she really didn't look very well either. Which made Terri-ann screech "Oh my god is she going into labour, oh my god is she going to be sick...Sian....whats happening?!"

and with that, we were told Good Luck and ushered out the room to go and get on with having these babies and learning to look after them.

I did feel like sticking my hand up and asking if she could just teach me how to swaddle, but given the look of the one night stand girl, I decided better of it and realised we were alone now, this was it....time to just wait for the birth!

Which didn't take long at all.....

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Labels: aunty , aunty to be , baby , mummy blog , PerplexedAunty