The Family *roll

Father and Mother Elk

Russian water births, thankfully, have nothing to do with moving to Northfield. However, they have come up as a topic on our journey to parenthood.

We’re enrolled in a pretty hippie childbirth preparation course at a local yoga studio, Bloom. It’s been a great course so far and the woman who leads it is a very likable doula who has managed to instill a lot of confidence in us.  And she has a collection of video tapes that will blow your mind.  For the first couple of weeks, we stuck to the expected: long reels of hairy, grunting mothers performing heroic labors with close-ups of the business. My favorite was the one of the Mexican midwife who birthed her own baby in the family’s bathtub along with her Japanese sculptor husband and gorgeous, tanned naked  children.

But that Mexican midwife video is vanilla ice cream compared to the last two videos we watched: The Elk and the Epidural and then the Russian water birth video. The Elk and the Epidural is a “whimsical” (their word) explanation of epidurals using a series of panned shots over trippy watercolors of woodland creatures getting, you know, epidurals.  In the video, “mother elk,” assisted by her “doula, the mouse,” consider the pros and cons of epidural use via a soothing voice-over.  Crazy freaking stuff. You know, though, it wasn’t half bad.  Those Elks have a lot of information and make pretty considered birthing choices.

And then there was the montage of Russian water births. There is some Russian Orthodox sect that takes the injunction in John for man to be born in water so seriously that a baptism must seem like a poor excuse for becoming a Christian to these people. These folks seem to prefer birthing in Baltic tide pools or sea-through plexiglass tubs in their Moscow apartments. It was amazing to watch: the mothers and midwives leave the babies underwater for quite some time and then gently bring them up to the air. The babies seem perfectly happy and it was all quite lovely, really.  What made the movie sort of mind-blowing was the Russian all-male choir soundtrack interspersed with 80s-style synthesizers and the occasional video clips of dolphins swimming.

I also disgraced myself during the video with a really horrific giggle fit. The video opens with a very straight-faced, heavy-set American academic saying “I have been researching Russian water births for many years and found…” and then Daniel immediately supplied “these motherfrackers are crazy”. We already feel like the least serious people in the class and my 2-3 minutes of uncontrolled giggling confirmed that we may just well be the least (or best) equipped to deal with the task ahead.

House update: We expect the final offer from our lawyer today to submit to the seller either this afternoon or Monday. Then we can proceed to the inspection.