"His Little Arm"
Sarah and I took a parenting class last week. It covered the basics: changing, bathing, swaddling and carrying the baby. Whenever the instructor referred to the baby, she preceded it with "his little," so foot became "his little foot" and hand became "his little hand". Although it was endearing, I did get a little uncomfortable when we started discussing certain parts of "his little" anatomy. You know you're ready for parenthood when you can sit in a roomful of strangers and ask about poop and circumcisions and aureoles without batting an eye.
Anyway, Sarah and I made a few observations about the crowd. First, we must have been the youngest in the room by a few years, and we're in our early thirties. Also, everyone was much closer to their due date than we are. We're about two months out, and most couples were a month or six weeks. Some people were less prepared than we are (no crib, for example), so we came away feeling like we were in pretty good shape.
The class consisted of about 2 hours of lecture and 30 minutes of watching videos. The first video was on newborns. They don't really look human, so this was to get us accustomed to their alien appearance and disgruntled demeanor. It's as if they'd just landed and realized that things were much better where they came from. In the video, there was lots of footage of washing birth-gunk off babies. Despite these efforts, they still didn't look human. They just looked like clean, angry aliens.
In this video, they talked about how babies could smell their mother's milk almost right away. As someone without a sense of smell, I became very much aware of this aspect of parenthood that I would be missing. Besides garlic cooking in olive oil, the smell of babies is the one that most people comment on. (Popcorn comes in third, but that's not important right now.) It seems strange that I won't be able to smell my own son, and it's an aspect of bonding that I'll miss. Will it affect my ability as a parent? I doubt it. It seems like a very little thing compared to everything else that parents and babies do to bond.
It's possible that my son will inherit this condition from me, too. Anosmia--the inability to smell--is thought to have some implications for a person's capacity to function "normally", in subtle but important ways. Some people think that people without a sense of smell struggle with food because they don't have smells to trigger hunger. (Personal experience with "sympathy pregnancy weight" points to the contrary.) Others believe that anosmics can't form deep relationships because there's a smell aspect to attraction and bonding. Anosmics know better. After nine great years of marriage, I'm inclined to believe that this is what people tell themselves as consolation for having to smell things like garbage, litter boxes, and cleaning chemicals.
The second video was about how these little aliens attempt to communicate with us by contorting their faces and making noises like malfunctioning cell phones. Much of the video offered suggestions on how to engage with babies not only through touch but by making sounds. Babies respond well to human voices, especially those of their parents, who they've been hearing for weeks while in utereo. Speaking directly to them, mimicking the sounds they make, singing, or even listening to grown-ups talk to each other have benefits for babies because it stimulates their little brains. Since they don't have full use of their eyes in the first few months of their lives, babies depend on sound to learn from their parents.
During this part of the video, there was palpable discomfort in the class because the couple sitting in front of us was deaf. Two interpreters had been taking turns translating the instructor and the video for the benefit of this couple. The emphasis on engaging with your baby through sound felt inappropriate, and focused on an aspect of parenthood that, frankly, made the smelling thing look positively trivial. In high school, I'd studied a bit of sign language, and I watched the interpreters during this part of the video. You didn't have to be fluent in sign language to understand that this was difficult for them.
Sarah and I couldn't see the deaf couple because they were sitting directly in front of us. Their body language, however, didn't indicate any awkwardness. Of everyone in the class, they may have been the most comfortable with the situation. It's ridiculous for any of us to think that either (a) this couple hadn't already thought about this from every possible angle, or (b) that they even cared about what hearing people thought was important in rearing a child. The class will come to an end, but parenthood is forever. It's only about swaddling and cooing for a year or less. The class--for us, for the deaf couple, for any of us--is just a push to get us going, an assortment of skills that we likely already have, or can easily muster. It's a glimmer that though they look like angry little aliens, they're really just little people who are desperate for the same things that we are, and don't really care how they get them: food, understanding, and affection.
Anyway, Sarah and I made a few observations about the crowd. First, we must have been the youngest in the room by a few years, and we're in our early thirties. Also, everyone was much closer to their due date than we are. We're about two months out, and most couples were a month or six weeks. Some people were less prepared than we are (no crib, for example), so we came away feeling like we were in pretty good shape.
The class consisted of about 2 hours of lecture and 30 minutes of watching videos. The first video was on newborns. They don't really look human, so this was to get us accustomed to their alien appearance and disgruntled demeanor. It's as if they'd just landed and realized that things were much better where they came from. In the video, there was lots of footage of washing birth-gunk off babies. Despite these efforts, they still didn't look human. They just looked like clean, angry aliens.
In this video, they talked about how babies could smell their mother's milk almost right away. As someone without a sense of smell, I became very much aware of this aspect of parenthood that I would be missing. Besides garlic cooking in olive oil, the smell of babies is the one that most people comment on. (Popcorn comes in third, but that's not important right now.) It seems strange that I won't be able to smell my own son, and it's an aspect of bonding that I'll miss. Will it affect my ability as a parent? I doubt it. It seems like a very little thing compared to everything else that parents and babies do to bond.
It's possible that my son will inherit this condition from me, too. Anosmia--the inability to smell--is thought to have some implications for a person's capacity to function "normally", in subtle but important ways. Some people think that people without a sense of smell struggle with food because they don't have smells to trigger hunger. (Personal experience with "sympathy pregnancy weight" points to the contrary.) Others believe that anosmics can't form deep relationships because there's a smell aspect to attraction and bonding. Anosmics know better. After nine great years of marriage, I'm inclined to believe that this is what people tell themselves as consolation for having to smell things like garbage, litter boxes, and cleaning chemicals.
The second video was about how these little aliens attempt to communicate with us by contorting their faces and making noises like malfunctioning cell phones. Much of the video offered suggestions on how to engage with babies not only through touch but by making sounds. Babies respond well to human voices, especially those of their parents, who they've been hearing for weeks while in utereo. Speaking directly to them, mimicking the sounds they make, singing, or even listening to grown-ups talk to each other have benefits for babies because it stimulates their little brains. Since they don't have full use of their eyes in the first few months of their lives, babies depend on sound to learn from their parents.
During this part of the video, there was palpable discomfort in the class because the couple sitting in front of us was deaf. Two interpreters had been taking turns translating the instructor and the video for the benefit of this couple. The emphasis on engaging with your baby through sound felt inappropriate, and focused on an aspect of parenthood that, frankly, made the smelling thing look positively trivial. In high school, I'd studied a bit of sign language, and I watched the interpreters during this part of the video. You didn't have to be fluent in sign language to understand that this was difficult for them.
Sarah and I couldn't see the deaf couple because they were sitting directly in front of us. Their body language, however, didn't indicate any awkwardness. Of everyone in the class, they may have been the most comfortable with the situation. It's ridiculous for any of us to think that either (a) this couple hadn't already thought about this from every possible angle, or (b) that they even cared about what hearing people thought was important in rearing a child. The class will come to an end, but parenthood is forever. It's only about swaddling and cooing for a year or less. The class--for us, for the deaf couple, for any of us--is just a push to get us going, an assortment of skills that we likely already have, or can easily muster. It's a glimmer that though they look like angry little aliens, they're really just little people who are desperate for the same things that we are, and don't really care how they get them: food, understanding, and affection.
posted by dan at 7:27 AM
1 Comments:
I enjoyed the educational classes we attended. Although I thought I was good at swaddling, I was no match compared to the nurse when our girls were born. She had the practice down pat - was as if she was neatly wrapping a deli sandwich.
Our girls are close to 6 months now - it is so much fun having them track you - knowing when you enter and exit the room, smiling from ear to ear when they see you. You have much to look forward to.
Oh, and I struggled with the sympathy pregnancy weight - still need to work it off. My wife was so insistent on getting protein in her diet that I was making steaks and salmon each week!
Here's a great t-shirt I should get to exemplify my struggle with the sympathy pregnancy weight.
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