Prenatal Classes Begin

Tonight we attended our first prenatal class at Mt. Sinai Hospital, the esteemed medical institution that will host our youngsters' arrivals. It's a special class for expectant parents of "multiples", and of the ten couples enrolled, all but one are expecting twins (that lucky duo will hatch triplets!).

Our instructor is the wonderful Nadia Prendergast--who also works at the hospital and who is a mother herself. As couples slowly shuffled in (what's with the 6 PM start time? The era of the 9-5er is long gone), Nadia kicked off the eight-week session on an informal note by simply having us introduce ourselves, chat about our excitements and fears (about the subject of parenting--otherwise I would've gone on about the Hadron Collider, the impending financial crisis, and giant coconut crabs), and any specific subjects/queries we'd like to see addressed.

As expected, we're all pretty much on the same page, alternately worried about doing too much or too little, privy to too much information and much of it inaccurate or inconclusive, wondering what to buy and what to rent, and just wondering, in general, what the hell we're supposed to do once these little mysteries arrive and we're discharged to the cold Murray Street parking lot...

The women in the class--stuck with the bulk of the work, obviously--spent much of the evening communally sharing their strange behaviors and various bodily manifestations while the men couldn't really do much else but nod sympathetically. However, I did have a lively conversation with the triplets-people. I was blathering on and casually mentioned our cats, and they jumped right in. Seems most of us in the class are wondering what to do with our four-legged friends. I guess that sooner-than-later we'll have to kick Maggie and Minnie out of their cozy spots in the bedroom--for a few months anyway--and condition them to stay out of the babies' room unattended. Yeah, like that's gonna work--to them, a crib will be a cool new box to play in, and think of the fun they'll have with the mobiles and all those ssoft blankets! So instead of trying to train them now--really, who on this earth outside of the Moscow Cat Circus has ever trained a feline to do anything?--I figure I'll just save my strength and deal with it then as needed...unless anyone reading this has any ideas, of course.

The first class ended with a touchy-feely video on the stages of delivery, all very polite and Oprah-friendly.

A short drive and we were home with McDonalds drive-thru right on time to take in the second episode of the new sci-fi/horror series "Fringe", which began with a baby that grew into adulthood and died of old age in four hours. Weird coincidence maybe--but I thought the video in the class was scarier...