High Pressure Sales Tactics

Sunday nights over the past two weeks have gone from a relaxing evening watching Joan Rivers and Clint Black duke it out on Celebrity Apprentice to a 4 hour block of baby class. Think of it like a lecture in college but for an extended period of time. Honestly after fighting my way through the 8 hours of total teaching I wonder how in fact I made it through school in the first place. There must have been a time when my attention span was much greater and I was a better student.

Anyway, back to the class...baby express I think it was called and it involves all things baby delivery. Sure, sounds like a good idea and maybe it is but the kicker is that the ultimate result was much like a timeshare presentation.

Picture this...your staying at a resort and you want to get the free shuttle, dinner, maybe an extended happy hour for the week whatever it may be they want you to simply sit through their short 1 hour seminar about the resort. Next thing you know you really feel like you need to buy this thing and they make it hell to say no. Ultimately I suppose it's easy to win out because there is a monetary factor involved but in baby class that is not the case.

Day one consisted of roughly three and a half hours of relaxation techniques for the expectant mother. Great!! by all means let's get her relaxed have the baby...everybody wins. That's where they get you...as an expectant father it becomes apparent that you are the one that is responsible for said relaxation. Coaching, soothing, encouraging and MASSAGING!!!

Again, completely understandable come baby time and labor is in full swing. I for one am SO glad that i don't have to be in charge of that but in class I suddenly find myself rope-a-doped into giving massage after massage but we aren't really having the baby...just practicing?

Translation...my relaxing Sunday evening watching celebrity apprentice just turned into a group spa session for Carrie and all with the promise of a more comfortable birth. Now are you seeing the timeshare comparison??

In all honesty I'm making it sound worse than it was and I only tell the story because Carrie and I had fun with it and the comparison for most of the week. Glad we did it, glad it's over...the only funny thing is, I think I feel better about the child birth thing, but I'm pretty sure Carrie feels worse.

Baby Update

So once again I've been neglecting my expectant fatherly duties in recording and documenting all things pregnancy for a little while. Truth be told though it's pretty uneventful anymore and that might be a good thing.

Since the 3D ultrasound it's been a grind to the finish and we've still got a month and a half to go. Sure seems like the first few months flew by but now I think we're both just ready to meet the new baby and get going with things.

The baby room is pretty much completely setup at this point to which we owe a great deal of thanks to two baby showers for providing a multitude of wonderful gifts to help us prepare.

In addition we've gotten to purchasing some of the major things as well like a pack and play, one of those swing things and we did receive the ever important Jayhawk onesy. I do have to admit though that the excitement of my first trip to look at all the baby stuff has gradually worn off as there suddenly became a cost associated with said items.

Other than that not a whole lot of news. We took one last trip to Mexico pre-baby with Carrie's work which was fun but also very glad to be out of there right before the dreaded swine flu took hold.

After that Carrie took a trip to Quincy and I'll be doing the same at the end of this month so it's just been a busy time with doctor visits in between.

The only other thing really is that we've taken a couple of baby classes which deserve their own posting so that will come this week I promise. After that I guess we're getting down to the nitty gritty and I'll be in touch as things warrant some reference and certainly when we get down to time for the baby to come and going forward I think I'll use this as a sounding board beyond just pregnancy but to talk about all those other challenges that will certainly come along the way.

Oh and one last thing...struggling with boy names so if anyone has any good ideas feel free to sound off...we probably won't use the one you suggest but you never know :D