Baby Breaths

Over the weekend, K and I officially began our pregnancy instruction with a two-hour class on Infant CPR, which was so informative. It took us forever to find the correct building - since the pregnancy, my attention to detail, particularly when traveling, has been slightly impaired, and all I had was an address for the building but no name of the building and no number to call. We wandered around the hospital halls for at least 10 minutes before being redirected to a building across the street. Once we parked at the correct building, we couldn't find the correct entrance to the building!! YIKES! Finally, we arrived in the classroom 15 minutes late, with about 7 other couples and a friendly, white-haired female instructor greeting us.

The instructor was 79 year-old nurse, Shirley. She was a wonderful instructor. I took great comfort in her no-nonsense approach and her candid recollections of motherhood over the course of almost 60 years. There was something reassuring about getting motherhood tips and anecdotes from an older woman, a great-grandmother at that. She talked about things that she did with her children that aren't done today anymore, because in her days of parenting, less was known - sleeping the babies on their stomachs, how her kids fell out of the cribs, etc. And yet, her children are all fine. That calmed me down some, because I tell you, first-time pregnancy comes with so many rules about what not to do, what not to eat, it just gets me so razzled sometimes. It takes me so long to prepare a meal because I am not sure if I can eat something, not to mention how badly my OCD has kicked in.

The class was great at giving us an increased sense of having some control in a bad situation. It was also a little scary, because you don't want to be in a situation where you need to use CPR on ANYONE, really. But still, having the basic know-how of what to do is reassuring. We had the fake babies (they should make them multi-racial!) with plastic wrap around their mouths, so as not to spread germs among the hundreds of parents-to-be who've rescued the little plastic victims. We had to learn compression points, how to compress the chest properly so that the heart squeezes against the spine, forcing oxygenated blood to the brain and back to the heart, we learned how to give the baby rescue breaths. We learned what to do when the baby is choking (the CPR is if the baby is unconscious). Shirley choked when she was 7 years old, and 72 years later, the event still traumatizes her. This is also why when she was a new mother, she never put her babies on their back, because she was afraid of them choking. She admits that experts still don't know exactly what causes SIDS, but that when studies were conducted among countries where it is customary for babies to sleep on their backs, the incidences of SIDS were much less than they are in the US. They also can tell now, by looking at the brain post-mortum, if an infant death is caused by suffocation or by SIDS; apparently the effect on the brain is different. However, more than that is unknown.

We snacked on chocolate cookies with bright orange filling, to bring in the Halloween spirit, in between rounds of practice resuscitation. It was a great class and the two hours (well more like 90 minutes since we arrived late and class ended a little early) went by very quickly. I would recommend CPR class for everyone, pregnant or not, and all types of CPR: Infant, Children, and Adult (apparently, the infant CPR techinique is only for babies up to 1 year old).