The key to avoiding drugs, according to natural childbirth people, is for the woman to breathe deeply. Really. The theory is that if she breathes deeply, she'll get all relaxed and won't notice that she's in a hospital delivery room wearing a truly perverted garment and having a baby. I'm not sure who came up with this theory. Whoever it was evidently believed that women have very small brains.

So, in childbirth classes, we spent a lot of time sprawled on these little mats with our pillows while the women pretended to have contractions and the men squatted around with stopwatches and pretended to time them. The North Shore couples didn't care for this part. They were not into squatting. After a couple of classes, they started to bring little backgammon sets and playing backgammon when they were supposed to be practicing breathing. I imagine they had a rough time in actual childbirth, unless they got the servants to have contractions for them.

Anyway, my wife and I traipsed along for months, breathing and timing, respectively. We had no problems whatsoever. We were a terrific team. We had a swell time. Really.

The actually delivery was slightly more difficult. I don't want to name names, but I held up my end. I had my stopwatch in good working order, and I told my wife to breathe. "Don't forget to breathe", I'd say, or "You should breathe, you know". She, on the other hand, was unusually cranky. For example, she didn't want me to use my stopwatch. Can you imagine? All that practice, all that squatting on the natural childbirth floor and she suddenly gets into this big snit about stopwatches. Also, she almost lost her sense of humor. At this point, I made an especially amusing remark and she tried to hit me. She usually has an excellent sense of humor.