Community: Real Life

Antenatal classes for dads

Alex Matthews gets down with the beardies.

I'm looking forward to the arrival of our first baby with huge enthusiasm. I'm also under no illusion bringing up a baby is going to be easy, but harder still will be avoiding some of the big cliches of modern-day fatherhood.

Already it's been a challenge. Everywhere I look I see a startling image of fatherhood. Pick up any pregnancy handbook, flick to the birthing pictures, and you'll get my drift. It's not the labouring mums that upset me - it's the state of the blokes at their sides. These guys are nothing like me - for a start, I don't sport a beard, nor do I own a pair of cream slacks.

"Men like this don't really exist!" I scoffed recently, though I have lived to eat my words. They do. Worse still, I am being forced to get in touch with the one inside me every Wednesday evening at that mecca of impending parenthood - the antenatal class.

A wonderful thing

It started badly. Pitching up at the host's house for the first lesson, my wife and I were literally hauled in by the Play School presenter from hell. Her name wasn't Chloe, but it should have been. Robed in an authentic Camden cheesecloth smock, with Lennon glasses and porn star pigtails, she greeted us as if we were prodigal sisters. "Hi!" she squealed. "Come in. Take your shoes off."

Take my shoes off? You mean like in the Seventies? I added my trainers to the file of sensible shoes under the stairs before shuffling dutifully into the front room. And there before us, arranged comfortably upon cushions next to their blossoming partners, an annoyance of beardy-slacks said hi.

"Hi," I replied in turn, consciously stroking my shaven chin before sinking into a corner cushion. As if we had walked in on a wife-swap, Chloe introduced each couple in turn then declared that she got into teaching ante-natal because in her opinion: "childbirth is just like. . .well, kind of wonderful."

Lessons in anatomy

Her training credentials out of the way, the class commenced. It had been my intention to just sit out the session and sulk politely. Unfortunately, Chloe had other ideas and kicked off with one of those exercises designed not so much to break the ice as to vaporise it. Like an adult version of pin the tail on the donkey, she produced a laminated mat with a cross-section cutaway of the female anatomy.

"I'm sure we all know what this is!" she quipped, and placed it on the carpet like an offering. Attached along one edge, ten strips of sticky-backed paper each sporting the name of a specific part of the body. As the number of labels equalled the number of expectant parents, I elected to make my move early on - thereby sparing myself the inevitable embarrassment of being the poor sap left to locate her anus.

"Hmmm," I murmured sagely, leaning forward with her uterus clutched between thumb and forefinger. As I contemplated my move a pause fell over the room, closing in on my cool and confidence. It had seemed like a fairly easy choice. Yet under pressure the image began to waver and blur. Okay, so I knew the correct target was low down, which removed the possibility of pinning her nose, but below her breasts lay tangled folds of tubes and tunnels. With all eyes upon me, everything looked like private parts.

"I should know this," I protested quietly, feigning a momentary block. It was no good, though. In less than a minute I had been reduced to a twitching fool. One who finally identified the lower intestine as a reproductive organ. To further the humiliation, all the other men proved faultless in their knowledge of the female form.

Okay, so I should have known better. But how, exactly does this kind of thing prepare me for fatherhood? Knowing that the alimentary canal has nothing to do with Egypt is handy for the pub quiz, but it doesn't count for much when the baby won't sleep and it's three in the morning.

"What kind of sponge does mum like best at the birth?" asked one man in my group. That mum didn't turn round and smack him I found astonishing. I was gagging to suggest one with chocolate icing, but by then, a relentless two hours into the session, my sense of humour was thinner than roadkill.

Thank God it's over

Chloe closed the show by drawing upon her jaw-dropping psychic powers. "Shut your eyes," she said with the self-conviction of one who has watched too much Paul Mackenna. "Let the tension flow from your body. Relax and imagine somewhere you'd really like to be." Understandably, Chloe's front room didn't feature highly on my fantasy hideaway.

Now maybe my emotional retention stems from too much potty training as a kid, but this kind of cod bonding-therapy session makes my toes curl. Sure, I appreciate that in labour my wife faces one of life's most traumatic episodes. It's a time of uncertainty for us both, but surely I can do my bit without baring my soul. I cook. I clean. Always have. And I'm under no prehistoric illusion that child rearing is her responsibility alone. I've done the practice run to hospital, I'll muck in at the birth and if she wants a sponge she can have one, whatever her preference for fillings. But no child of mine will suffer beard rash when I wind it, nor have to bite through slacks to reach my ankles.


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