The Last of the Red-Hot Pre-Natal Classes

Last night concluded our pre-natal classes. The theme - drugs and complications... yay! Interesting stats:

• the IWK epidural rate for first-time Moms - 90%;
• the IWK Cesarean section rate for first-time Moms - 33%; and
• Aaron's funny typo "first-time Moms" vs. "fist-time Moms" - 100%! (2/2 - lol)

The impossibly skinny nurse who ran the show tried her best not to sound so discouraged about the local epidural rate, but seeing as she has yet to have children (or so we suspect), frankly no one cared. There was a lot of scribbled note-taking and questions-posed during the epidural discussion. I had no idea that this procedure involved drilling into your spine and running a constant supply of pain medication over your nerve endings - sounds... ridiculously dangerous. You often have to wonder about the development of these medical procedures and how the first few lucky or unlucky Moms fared, although it's probably best not to think about it.

Every complication was described as "rare", "really rare" or "extremely rare". Every drug or intervention was described as "totally safe" and "not as bad as it used to be". Most were also described as "a little uncomfortable". I would describe these descriptions as "quasi-comforting".

As class broke, each of the couples shyly wished each other luck with the remainder of their pregnancy, grabbed a few handfuls of pamphlets and disappeared. There were ten Moms in attendance last night - 9 of whom I can assume will have an epidural, 3 will need a Cesarean and hopefully zero will require any other serious intervention.

Tee-hee... "fist-time".