CPR and All Kinds of Other Safety Related Stuff.

You want to get really freaked out about impending parenthood?
Rhetorical question, obviously.  But if you really did want to get completely freaked out about impending parenthood, take an infant CPR class.
Kate and I did this this past Tuesday night at one of the local hospitals.
Now don't get me wrong, I think infant CPR is a great idea, and I'm really glad we took the class, but...
First of all, the dolls are just creepy.  They're clearly and obviously creepy, and there was clearly and obviously no intention on the part of the manufacturer to make them not be creepy. 
The faces come off.  This is so that they can be sanitized between classes, which is a good thing, but still...
THE FACES COME OFF!!!
Creepy.
Plus, the faces have these little holes in the lower corners, right under the hinge of the jaw (or where that would be on a real baby) and a corresponding sort of flesh colored protrusion to hook into the little holes so that the faces stay on.  Neither my baby's face or Kate's was actually hooked on.  Probably because hooking the little hole over the little protuberance is a hassle.  But don't you think the instructor is secretly sort of hoping someone will do an overly aggressive chin tilt to establish and airway and accidentally pull the face completely off?
I fully acknowledge that if I were teaching this class I'd be secretly hoping for that.  Maybe not so secretly.
Can you imagine?
Instructor:  "Put your hand on the forehead and under the jaw, now tilt the head to establish and airway."
Student:  "AAAUGHHH!!! THE FACE CAME OFF!!!!" (runs screaming from the room).
Or is it just me?
Anyhow, they're creepy.
Also, the guy at the table next to ours was holding the doll like it was a real baby, and sort of fondling it's butt.
Really Creepy.
The material in the class is setup like any standard first aid/CPR class.  They're all DVD based now, which is a riot, because Heart and Lung Association CPR DVDs is clearly where you go if you have a whole lot of acting enthusiasm and no acting talent or ability whatsoever.  They present the material in "real life scenarios".  Like Grandma and Grandpa babysitting, and checking on the baby and going completely apeshit because the baby isn't breathing.  Of course, it's never a real baby, it's a CPR doll.  And the "baby" is just lying in it's crib not breathing, with no proximate cause to not be breathing.  I know that can happen, but the setup in the DVD is so improbable that it would be more realistic for Grandma to go completely apeshit about the fact that somebody snuck into the house and swapped the real baby for a CPR doll.
One of the later scenarios has someone by a pool yelling for help because the CPR doll that they just apparently fished out of the water isn't breathing.  At least that setup looked more probable.
In spite of the silly DVD presentation the CPR skills are good, and we both think they're important for anyone that's taking care of EM (that's a not-so-subtle hint to the Grandparents).  The class was interesting in another way though, which was in comparison to our own childhoods..
I'm pretty certain my parents didn't take infant CPR when I was an infant.  Kate is pretty certain her's didn't either.  Note that this isn't a critique of our parents.  I'm certain that, had it been available to take, both our parents would have taken it, but it likely wasn't.  I was absolutely born in an age where that kind of thing was considered the sole dominion of professional health care providers.  Kate was more at the tail end of that era, but her mom has told us about how she [Kate's mom] scandalized the maternity ward staff by insisting on keeping Kate with her right after she was born.  She also told us that the maternity ward nurses were really hostile to her over it, because holding and feeding the newborn infant was their province and they resented the intrusion.  My parents have similar stories about the health care industry when my brothers and I were infants.
Anyhow...
I'm pretty sure that neither my parents or Kate's took infant CPR, and we both survived infancy.  I also never wore a bicycle helmet as a kid, nor knee pads and wrist guards while rollerskating, nor wore my seat belt (until middle school at the earliest).  Our elementary school playground was covered in chipped bark called tanbark.  Tanbark was essentially designed to be simultaneously a splinter delivery system and ammunition for politically incorrect games of cowboys and Indians.  It was in pieces small enough to fit easily into elementary school age hands, but had enough weight that it could be thrown really hard.  It also provided no cushioning whatsoever for those occasions when we were bored with throwing it at each other as cowboys and Indians and took a break to see how high we could swing on the swings before jumping off to see how far towards the monkey bars we could fly (or how close to the monkey bars we went crashing into the tanbark).
My point is, by today's standards my childhood was unacceptably dangerous.  My parents and teachers would probably all be locked up as criminally negligent or worse.
The thing is, I had a pretty good childhood.  I look at the neighbor kids on their roller skates, and they're so bundled up with protective gear that they can't really move, let alone skate.  They look like sort of gliding statues of the neighbor kids.  I can't remember a single neighbor kid or classmate from when I was growing up that suffered some sort of serious consequence or injury or death from not wearing a bike helmet or seat belt or taking a piece of sidearmed tanbark upside the head. 
We walked out of the CPR class wondering what we would do if we go to check on EM in the crib and the child isn't breathing.  Or worse, if someone had snuck in and swapped EM for a CPR doll.
I'm confident that I can do the CPR if I need to, but the class got us wondering about the possible need to do it more than is probably strictly necessary.
I'm glad we took it though.