In the Name of the Father... Part III

Lamaze and Beyond

Hugh Grant has done more damage than you think. Apart from exponentially increasing meeting times thanks to every yuppie trying to ape his bumbling, mumbling stutter, he has acted in a super-duper box-office bonanza called Nine Months. A movie in which he starts off as a bohemian slob and then transforms into a ultra-caring super-dad who ends the movie trying to put his daughter to sleep (without waking up his wife)!
Then there is Ross Geller. This anthropologist is not the brightest light in the harbour – as borne out of the fact that he took ten years to decide that he wanted to marry Jennifer Aniston.
Bottomline – being part of the blood and gore of a normal childbirth is de rigeur for the dad-to-be. There are some misguided souls who even try to convince the nursing home to let them into a C-sec operation as well but hopefully, they wear red shirts to see bullfights.

Anyways, my wife has ordered me to be a part of the birthing process so that (according to ‘What To Expect When You Are Expecting’) greater father-child bonding can be brought about right from Hour One. No hopes of repeating the family tradition of father & son bonding over a glass of Scotch at the Saturday Club!
And to ensure that I don’t stick out like a sore thumb, I was also instructed to attend pre-natal sessions of Lamaze (pronunciation guide: rhyming with namaaz) training with her.
Given the fact that Ross attended similar sessions with his ex-wife and her lesbian partner (Friends is amazing, no?), there was not a hope in hell that I could have dodged it!

So there I was… along with two other couples – each comprising of one nos. nervous wife and one nos. sheepish husband.
The session was on breast-feeding! Obviously a topic in which a father has a pivotal role.
The session started off innocently enough… merely with a plan to put Nestle (or at least their Infant Food Division) out of business! The take-out of the first half hour was that in case you do not give a baby mother’s milk, you might as well spray Flit in its face. Because, breast-fed children have healthier constitutions, higher IQ, better life expectancy, cleaner collars and sexier girlfriends!
Then came the interesting part… the DIY instruction! The placement of two fingers around the aureole and one underneath for support had looked incredibly attractive when Shakila did it in the morning shows at Tiger Cinema Hall. But somehow, with a wife beside me and two more completely bemused couples around, it only managed to psyche me into taking copious notes. I was told that there were further actions to show how to unclasp a feeding bra and feed a baby in Borivili Fast without anybody knowing – but then, I had my nose in the note pad!

As if that was not bad enough, there was the small exercise of practicing breathing for the labour. Which starts off with long, deep breaths at the beginning building up to short, fast ones during the peak. All fine – except that the sound of the instructor’s short, fast breaths (with the tongue touching her teeth) is typically associated with clitoral stimulation in Samantha Fox starrers.
Was I only the sick man who willingly watched such movies of doubtful antecedents and equated the good doctor’s intonations with actions of depravity? Well, ALL the husbands were trying to get the brand name of the split AC. So…

The next session is on assistance during labour… Boy, am I looking forward to it?