Not your parents’ parenting book

New York Times bestselling author and award-winning comedian Mike Birbiglia shares observations on the rollercoaster ride that is being a new parent—for anyone who has ever raised a child, been a child, or refuses to stop acting like a child.

Jen and I are so nervous about her hypermobile hips that we sign up for a holistic birthing education class, which isn’t a great fit.

For starters, it involves a lot of class participation, and my beloved introvert isn’t eager to share.

The instructor opens the class with the question: “What’s the most exciting thing about HAVING BABY?!”

She looks around the room for answers.

I don’t have anything. Jen doesn’t either. I’m also thrown when people don’t use the word “the.” Apparently, they don’t say “the baby” or “a baby.”

They just say, “Baby!”

We’re so nervous that we’re thinking, We just want baby to live! We don’t have high hopes for this thing because we went to hospital and we talked to doctor who did test and it’s touch and go at moment.

That wasn’t anyone else’s answer.

One lady says, “I wanna hold baby skin to skin!”

Another lady pronounces, “I just want to see the world through baby’s eyes!”

I think, See the world through baby’s eyes? How did you make this about you? It’s another person and now you’ve invented this futuristic eye surgery? Get a hold of yourself! What happens if the baby’s blind? He feels terrible about himself, like, “My mom only had me for my baby’s eyes and they don’t even work!”

After the class empties their clichés into the cliché basket, the instructor begins a speech about “the fourth trimester.”

“The first few months of baby’s life are ‘the fourth trimester.’”

I think, I’m not sure you understand math. You can’t just make up new numbers. You can’t be like one…two…three…goat cheese.

Then the instructor says, “When baby comes out they’ll try to take her away to check her vitals, but don’t let them!”

I think, I’m pretty sure I’m gonna let ’em! They’re called vitals, not optionals! I think we might go with the grain on that one!

Then she says, “The doctors might tell you that baby’s heartbeat is slow, but don’t listen to them. This is not a medical event. This is a natural event.”

I think, Um, so is death.

Jen and I start writing notes to each other with snarky comments, like bad kids in fifth grade. I think, We should not be having a kid. We are bad kids!

Everything in birthing class feels wrong. Two hours into the class we take a break and share communal snacks — which also feels wrong but that’s a whole other topic. But this snack break feels like the moment we can mention the hypermobile hips to our instructor.

We pull her aside and I say, “Jen’s doctor says that she has hypermobile hips. We’re thinking of considering a C-section so she doesn’t break her hip during labor.”

The instructor looks at us like a dog being taught math.

To be clear, the C-section is the enemy of natural birth, though it’s a one-sided rivalry like the Red Sox and Yankees. The Red Sox hate the Yankees and the Yankees are like, “Right. We’re the Yankees.” In this case the Yankees are modern medicine and the Red Sox are natural childbirth. (This analogy is offensive to all.)

When we bring up the idea of possibly having a C-section, our birthing instructor doesn’t answer. She just gives us this look that says, Why would you do that? I hope you break your hips.

Everything in birthing class feels like something we will fail at. The instructor does a three-hour lecture on breastfeeding: “If baby doesn’t latch in the first four days of breastfeeding, don’t give up. Don’t give her formula. Keep trying.”

I think, We’ll probably give up! Is that cool too?

“If the hospital tries to give you packets of formula on the way out, don’t take them!”

Awesome! I think we’ll take them. Especially if they’re free! By the way, is there anything else that’s free?

One night we’re walking home from birthing class and Jen starts making out with me because the same hormone that causes hypermobile hips sometimes causes people to crave sex, so when we get home we have this magically pregnant sex with all these contractions and these very loose hips. It’s like having sex with Space Mountain.

I say, “Hold on!!”

We’re both so afraid that at any moment Jen might give birth into my penis, which they never discussed in birthing class:

“I just want to see penis through baby’s eyes!”

In the third trimester the bleeding stops, which is a huge relief, and the morning sickness goes away but every day contains some combination of relief and pain, sometimes both at once.

One morning Jen wakes up and says, “I didn’t sleep all night because the baby’s head was pushing into my rib cage and also through the side of my stomach and I couldn’t breathe or even really lie down.”

I say, “Clo, I’m so sorry you’re going through this.”

Jen says, “This is the greatest feeling of my life.”

Excerpted from The New One by Mike Birbiglia permission of Grand Central. Download Buzz Books 2020 to read more of this title, as well as 43 other excerpts of forthcoming books.