Monday night, Ross and I went to the Baby Basics class which is supposed to show you how to handle a newborn. This entire experiment just proved our inadequacies which I was expecting but it didn’t make me feel any better. First, they talked about some of the classes we’d already been to (aka birthing, breastfeeding, etc). Then they got into the actual, you have an infant in your house, what the hell do you do now?

Swaddling

I felt like I had this covered. I’d done this when I was little with my cabbage patch dolls, it couldn’t be that different. I would surely remember how to do this. WRONG!

1. Ross picked the biggest baby doll they had. This thing was the size of a toddler and was built differently than every other doll in the room which had static plastic arms and legs. Ours was all squishy and pliable (like a real infant) which made me feel like everyone else was cheating and didn’t know it.

2. They gave us a blanket in the shape of a fucking rhombus when the thing is supposed to be in a square. So I spend 5 minutes trying to manipulate this thing into the shape of a square so that it will fold right but that was a futile effort. In addition, this thing is made of felt so it sticks together making the job harder.

3. We manage to get this thing to some semblance of a workable swaddle shaped blanket, folding a “corner” down for the head to rest on. Then we wrap it. Well, because this thing is a clusterfuck it doesn’t really fold right and I’m sorry, but that nurse never said to keep the arm out and fold the blanket under the arm. So, she comes around to each and every table to check their work and we’re the only ones that she has to re-swaddle completely. Awesome!

Bathing

This doesn’t seem so hard so I refused to pretend that I was bathing this gigantic doll with pretend water and a dry wash cloth. Done!

Diaper Changing

Again, I’ve seen this done a thousand times on TV and in movies. It can’t be that hard. Then again, they’re not trying to diaper a toddler with newborn size diapers which are EVER so tiny. I manage to squeeze the doll into this diaper the size of a thank you note and get my tab down. Ross, much like me, has never held a baby nor changed a diaper. He didn’t quite understand the flap mechanism to attach the two ends together. After a few tries trying to stick the diaper together without unlatching the flap, he figured it out. This made him very happy.

After the aspirator instruction, the class was pretty much over. Then this conversation happened on the way back to my car…

Ross: “Sometimes I worry about you being a parent.”

Me: “What?!?”

Ross: “Well, you’re a little rough around the edges but I know there’s going to be one area where you are really going to be great!”

Me: “Oh, yeah? You mean discipline?”

Ross: “No. This kid’s whole first year is paperwork and scheduling. When does it eat? How much? How many diapers? You’ll be great at that!”

Me: “You mean the bureaucracy of parenthood?

Ross: “Yeah!”

Me: “Ghee Whiz, Thanks.”