You get what you pay for ...

Because, yes, we're crazy, we're taking two childbirth classes. We thought it would be smart to take the Kaiser one in addition to the Zen one so that we can get more of a sense of what to expect at Kaiser, since that's where we'll be birthing. (I may have explained this already; apologies if I did.)

Well, since the Kaiser class is part of our membership, we get it for a pretty low price -- about 20% of what we paid for the Zen class.

And thus continues life's lesson in 'you get what you pay for'.

We started the Kaiser class last night, and the teacher, who is also a doula, is totally wacky. I can't imagine having her as a doula, coaching me through the birthing process!

First of all, her point of reference for everything is herself. While of course this is true for all of us, you'd think that, as one who is a very experienced teacher (well, let's rephrase -- has taught for many years in many locations -- she listed her experience to us), she'd have learned by now that not everyone's experience is the same. Well, okay, to her credit, she DID keep saying that everyone's birth will be different and that she can't predict how long we'll be in labor, etc. 

However, she basically started the class once the first couple, who were 20 & 21, introduced themselves, by saying that we would lose all of our friends who don't have kids because our lives will change so much and none of them will be friends with us any more.

How's that for a sweeping statement?! Of course, she talked about how she made all these parent friends when she had kids and the others went away. Therefore, same will be true for us.

She was one of the most disorganized instructors I've ever come across. I had no idea what we were discussing, and she didn't explain what the point of different things was.

For example, she asked if anyone is having back pain. Of course, Mo rose his hand -- because he always has back pain. No one else saw the mom next to him raise her hand too, so when the teacher told us to all get down on our hands and knees, everyone else thought we were doing it for the benefit of Mo's back and couldn't figure out why she was leading us through this exercise. She proceeded to teach us Cat/Cow and told us not to arch our backs (which I've never been told in any of my prenatal yoga classes) and finally about halfway through explained that this is a good exercise for getting our babies into the proper position so as to lessen the probability of back labor.

But by that point she'd already lost half the people in the class, who had written her off as nuts.

I wish I'd written some of her other gems down, as we were laughing for a good portion of the class. But then she showed a video that explained the entire process of labor/birth that was actually quite helpful -- especially for Mo, who's been confused about the cervix, dilation, perineum, etc. and how it all fits together since we've gotten a lot of it in bits and pieces.

So I guess we'll go back next week ...