warning: this is long. Here's the letter I ended up writing. My midwife, doula, husband, mother, and sister all loved it. I feel really good about having written it. I've emailed it to the head of community ed and will be mailing a copy tomorrow.
I deliberately tried not to make it about my natural-birth preferences, since I think the problems with the class were much broader. So I held back on some of that stuff (and took out the comment about the baby warmer, which isn't really such a problem compared to other stuff she said).
thanks again!
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Dear staff of community education at Hospital Name,
My husband and I recently brought our son to your Super Siblings class in anticipation of the birth of our second child. My reaction to the class was so strong, and so mixed, that I wanted to tell you about it, in the hope that you will revisit the way you conduct the class in the future, keeping what is best and discarding the parts that are harmful.
The class contained some wonderful and useful material for siblings. It's so hard for them to imagine having a new baby in the house. Some of the very concrete lessons you gave them were very effective: teaching how to hold a baby; testing the safety of different toys; making the bib as a gift. Those things certainly helped to prepare my child to be a big sibling and I would love to see many more such activities in the class.
The teacher also mentioned the "other side" of sibling feelings - jealousy and anger - but said clearly that she would not talk about those emotions. I was sorry to hear that; it could have been very helpful for a child to hear an adult explain the difference between wanting to hurt the baby and actually hurting the baby, for example, or simply expressing that it's legitimate to feel ambivalent, contradictory emotions. Big siblings will inevitably feel those things, so I don't know why they needed to be avoided – especially when the class description explicitly mentions that these issues will be addressed.
The class on the whole felt very rushed. This meant that it was hard for children, especially toddlers and preschoolers, to process all the information. It did not appear to be paced to the attention span of a child, with the slow delivery, repetition, and clarity necessary. I recognize that the teacher felt the need to fit in a great deal of diverse material and would like to suggest a way to handle this: omit, or seriously curtail, the labor room visit. From a child's perspective, it's irrelevant. Most children will never see the labor room (those who will are presumably attending your special sibling labor-prep class). The rest of the kids will first see their mothers in the recovery room. The littlest ones may know nothing more than the fact that the baby "comes out at the hospital". It's not helpful for them to undergo long explanations of the ultrasound monitors, the epidural buttons, and the ceiling mirrors that won't even be in the room when they visit. A brief visit to the nursery and recovery room is plenty, just so that the basic concepts and contours of the room look familiar later on. (Yes, the machines are pretty cool, but they don't help a child learn to be a sibling, and class time was already crunched).
A second reason to cut out the tour of the labor ward is that much of what the teacher said in the labor was deeply offensive and condescending. Above all, this part of the class, while theoretically addressed to children, seemed in fact to be full of snide asides and jokes intended for parents, and even then, inappropriate. It actually told the children almost nothing direct about what labor is. The entire episode left me, and my husband, deeply uncomfortable. I am reproducing some of those remarks below, with my specific comments.
1. "This is mom's favorite button. It's called the Epidural Button. It makes her happy."
Not all mothers get epidurals, or are happy about them when they do, but if they do, why not tell the children what the button does? Many children will have seen their mothers in the discomfort of early labor at home. It is much more respectful and reassuring to those children to hear that pain be acknowledged, to know that the pain is ultimately worth it for the end result (just as it was worth it when they were born), and to know, also, that the button gives relief for the pain. Then again, why mention it at all if the children are not present for labor?
2. "This is a soda pop machine. It goes in mommy’s arm, so the soda pop can go right in her arm. It's called an IV."
Even leaving aside the issue of how our culture does not need to glorify soda, what's the point of this joke? How does calling it soda pop explain anything? Mommy needs extra vitamins and water because it's hard work to push out a baby. This machine helps her to get them quickly.
3. "This is a mirror. It comes down from the ceiling so that mom can see herself during labor. She wants to see how pretty she is and check her lipstick."
This comment made me wonder why the teacher was afraid to say that a mother might like to watch the baby being born. What is wrong with saying that? (The kids are not imagining the same graphic details that the adults are.) Together with the previous comments, this made the entire labor-room tour seem like a big attempt to avoid all honest discussion about labor at a child's level. I see no point in taking children to the labor room to tell them false stories about the instruments. It's not even a joke that kids would understand; it was intended for the mothers, who laughed uncomfortably. It is also demeaning to imply that women always and only care about looking pretty, even during something as important as birth, which is the message those children received.
4 . “The doctor turns the spotlight on so that Mommy can be a star.”
Again, this is a missed opportunity to explain something accurately and to teach children about birth. There is nothing scary or overly intimate about saying that the spotlight helps everybody in the room to see how the baby is coming out and how he or she is doing. The “star” explanation, instead, doesn’t clarify anything.
5. "What do daddies do while mom is labor having the baby? They snore. Like this!"
This was deeply offensive to me and, I imagine, to the many fathers in the room. I watched those men carry their children, fetch water for their wives and for other women, and stand up so the pregnant people could sit. They made time to come to the class. I imagine that many of them have spent long hours of labor massaging and soothing and helping their wives, and are planning to do it again. No, it's not the same as physical labor of giving birth, but it is work. And it is not fair to the children to make jokes at their fathers' expense.
6. When the nurse talked about ice chips, one of the older siblings said, "but moms need food! Why don't you give the mom food?!"
This was the only question I heard a child ask in the labor room, and I was sorry that the teacher ignored it. It's an important question. If it’s not obvious to one child, it is undoubtedly not clear to many other people in the room.
To reiterate, this entire section of the tour had the result - intended or not - of introducing children to practices they are very unlikely to see when the time comes, at a level far removed from their comprehension, while actually teaching them nothing specific or reassuring about birth. Of course it is important for a child to know something of what a mother will go through, but not in this way and not for so long, at the expense of more fruitful activities. A simplified story about what labor and birth are actually like - with some discussion of how happy the parents are to have a new baby - would give children much more preparation and reassurance.
In addition, this part of the tour sent mocking and stereotyping messages about the attitudes and behaviors of mothers and fathers. Children are not born with those assumptions; they only learn them from adults in situations like these.
After the labor room visit, I was so reluctant to hear what the teacher had to say about recovery that I stayed in the hallway, so I cannot comment on that part of the tour.
Because the hands-on portion of the class was so helpful, I hope that you will seriously consider reorganizing the sibling class to focus more on what being a big brother or sister will be like, and less on making inappropriate jokes to children about events you have not explained clearly and which they will probably not witness.
[paragraph here about how we spent too much time walking between parts of the hospital]
Thank you for taking the time to read this letter. If you have further questions or concerns, I'd be more than happy to meet with you to discuss them.
best wishes,
Me
my email address
(thanks, guys, for reading!)
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