They teach this stuff in school?

And here I assumed pregnancy class would be, if anything, a waste of time. After all, I've been through a birth, and I'm a reasonably intelligent person, and I've now read Dr. Sears' birthing book over twice.

But the classes we're taking, four sessions of two hours each, are actually proving both valuable and kind of stressful.

First, the valuable part: The more time I spend listening to other people who clearly have no clue what childbirth is like talk about their fears and expectations, the more I think 'Hey, maybe I can do this without screaming for my mommy!' That's not to demean the other students, although it was hard not to snicker when one guy essentially asked whether seeing the baby come out of his wife might make him never want to have sex with her again. (Of course, I caught myself wondering something similar when the instructor mentioned that we moms could get a mirror brought in to watch the baby pop out.)

Now on to the stressful stuff: Apparently, childbirth hurts. A lot. The second class, we saw a video of a woman going through it naturally. Screaming, I could take. But this lady did not utter a sound, as if the pain were so intense that nothing would. Last night, our third class, we saw another video: This mother's labor began when her water broke. She went to the hospital, but they sent her home to labor more. So, as she recounted it, "I put my husband to bed, and then I sat up through the contractions. I threw up with each one."

Have we mentioned that I'm something of a hurler myself? Now I have to adopt a new strategy for the next five weeks: Eat nothing I would rather not see again.

Once again, I have never felt so attractive.