maternity coverage, Infant CPR, lamaze, and my baby shower.

Yea! We finally worked out how my job will be covered while I'm on maternity leave! She'll start in May, so with any luck we'll have 4 weeks to work together before she's on her own. She's working part time and doing most of the work from home. She won't be covering my entire job, another co-worker is going to pick up some of it, but she'll be doing the more librarian-ish parts of it which makes me feel better. Better yet, she's a friend and we used to work together, so I have no doubts about her abilities.
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We went to Infant CPR last night. I was unimpressed. The teacher seemed very happy. In that fake-chirpy way that so many trainers seem to have. So happy I wondered what she was on and if she'd loan me some of her happy pills. We started 15 minutes late. She kept wandering off topic (yes, car seats are important, but that's not what we were there to learn). Class ended on time. I could have learned more by just watching a video online. In fact, that's pretty much what we did when she wasn't babbling - we watched a video. There was no hands-on practice. We were each given a baby doll to "practice" on, but oh no, don't put your mouth on it, they aren't sterile. And they weren't really CPR dummies. Just dolls. So they pretty much served no purpose whatsoever.  Now that I'm thinking about it more, the class is Infant CPR and Safety, so I supposed car seats aren't really off-topic. It was just that everything was presented in such a random way, skipping around, no particular order, no rhyme or reason, just tossing out random tidbits of information as they crossed her mind.

In fact, here's a video so you can learn Infant CPR online   - or learn at least as much as we know. We also covered how to help a choking infant, so here's a video to learn how to help a choking infant.

Just in case you live in Houston, I do not recommend the Infant CPR class at Cy-Fair hospital. I'm glad we only paid $10 for it, but I wish I felt I had learned more, had actually gotten to practice, and hadn't wasted an hour of my life listen to Ms. Happy babble on about whatever stray thought crossed her mind. I'm actually dreading the infant care class that we have signed up for, simply for fear that I'll have the same bubble-headed trainer babbling at us for 2 hours.
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We have our 3rd lamaze class tonight. Everyone I know seems to think I'm insane for even attempting to avoid an epidural. Of course, they also think I'm insane for wanting to use cloth diapers. And for going to La Le.che Lea.gue meetings.
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I had my baby shower on Saturday! It was very very nice. I'll have to post a pic of the cake when someone sends it to me - it was adorable and had a little baby covered in a blanket on it, in 3D. There were 2 little girls at the shower who clamoured to eat the baby's head, which was kinda cute in a cannibalistic sort of way. Anyway, there were onsies and burp cloths out on the tables and fabric paint was provided so people could decorate onsies for the baby. I think I have a pretty talented group of friends, because they made some fantastic little outfits!  The only big glitch in the weekend is that my mom's flight was cancelled on Friday night, and then her 7am flight Saturday was delayed until it was a 1pm flight and she flew into the airport on the far side of town! She ended up renting a car and driving to the shower in the clothes she'd been wearing for 2 days (good thing she wears nicer clothes to travel in than I do!). Anyway, she ended up arriving only 30 minutes late, so that was good. But the whole thing caused a lot of stress for her and for me. We did get a lot of cool stuff and some gift cards too. Mom and I went shopping Sunday and used up the gift cards - it gave me a chance to review my registries and see if I have what I need. I think I do. I think we're set - certainly with the essentials. Just need to write my thank-yous now.

lamaze

We had our first lamaze class last night. Went pretty well. I don't know that we learned a whole lot, but we'd done a lot of reading already, so some information was just old news to us. We did learn a breathing pattern and start practicing relaxation techniques, so that part was new and informative.

I'm not 100% sure I'll do this without drugs, but I'd like to. Hopefully this class will help me with that.

The teacher was interesting. She's a nurse, though I get the impression that she hasn't worked as a nurse in a very long time. She just started teaching lamaze again after not teaching it for years. She has classes in her home and they are pretty small - there are 4 couples in our class and she said that this is a very large class for her. She's also much much much cheaper than any other lamaze teacher I found even though she's teaching from the same materials they are. After going to her house, I can maybe see why - she lives in one of the biggest houses I've ever seen. She's obviously not doing this for the money. She said she's doing this because she's concerned about the amount of medical intervention that happens in births in this country - and about the high c-section rate.

She also rearranged the class schedule to work around A's school play that we plan to attend next week, so that's really great. We have a class on Thursday to make up for the one we'll miss next week.

I think I'll go to another La Leche League meeting tonight - I wasn't planning to go back, at least not until I had the baby, but tonight they're talking about slings and said they'd have a bunch of different ones there and I'd like to see them. So many are only available online, so it's hard to do a comparison and see what you might like.