LOL so OK My wife was a midwife and naturopathic doctor in Westside LA. We're talking APEX woo. And we had a kid, and we were in with the Apex woo community, like "our friend the birth assistant was pretty much the impetus for Ricki Lake making a whole documentary about this nonsense." So the kid needed baby swim lessons. How hard could it be? Well see there's "go to the YMCA in Compton" swim lessons but then there's "I think I can get you into Dolphinsgate" swim lessons. "I think I can get you in?" Yeah. Turns out there's an interview process. You have to go to a "discovery session" with this weird Swedish or Austrian lady, at her house. And you don't get to do that unless you're vouched for. So... okay. We'll go to the "discovery session" at this lady's house. Which is in Venice, right there in the section where the houses are like two million dollars but the roads are dirt. It's fuckin' wild. You're a frickin' block off the Pacific Coast Highway and they've just never bothered to put down tarmac, and there's no parking, and there's like two dozen of you milling around because you were told to be here at ten on a Tuesday which is super convenient and it's twenty after and the weird Swedish lady opens the gate to the back yard and is that an above-ground pool? So now we're all gathered around in a tiny back yard between the yurt and the Bubba Bucket and we're standing under a fig tree and no, we're not, we've been requested to form a circle and be seated and the weird Swedish lady has this giant embroidered Hindu pillow and you don't. And the singing bowl comes out and there's some sort of weird chant that we're all expected to participate in? And she's talking about some fuckin' discovery chakra thing and now we're going to talk about our traumatic birth stories? Oh god. Yes we are. We're going 'round the circle while uncomfortable men hold their wife's hand while she nurses and tells you about how the trauma of having a baby in a room where the walls were a different color of taupe than what you had in your birth plan and we're just sort of riffing off each other and it's like noon? We've been talking about this shit for two hours? And hey, looks like we're done talking, I wonder if we can - "And you? What is your traumatic birth story?" Bitch is looking at me, not my wife? "yeah so my wife is a midwife and naturopathic doctor, we had the baby at home, it took like a couple hours, pretty much smooth sailing, sorry it sucked for everybody else?" 'cuz it's not like my wife can say shit, we've sat through 90 minutes of random strangers slagging on her competition? So I guess we drop the mic? That was some awkward fuckin' silence, and the weird Swedish or Austrian lady just sorta stares? As if I'm somehow going to draw this out? She turns to my wife who just sorta shakes her head? "So now it is time to watch the introductory video?" and she gestures us into the yurt and it's been two hours and now there's 20 of us squished into a 15-foot yurt and there's a thirteen inch CRT TV-DVD player combo in the Year of Our Lord 2014 and she slips in one of those purple "burned on my iMac" DVDs and John Tesh peals out and it's Nirvana's Nevermind cover for 20 minutes. Naked babies. Naked babies everywhere. Nothing but naked babies. Yeah see Dolphins Gate teaches your kid how to swim successfully and safely by making them swim naked, none of that swim diaper bullshit here, just John Tesh and naked frolicking babies and then the credits roll and I'm doing my level best to keep my eyes in my skull and then Color by Technicolor crawls up and I am ALMOST LOSING IT and we somehow get out of there without me ROFLING myself into oblivion and I turn to my wife and say "well at least we don't have to worry about going there" because there is no. way. in HELL they'll let us in after that and frankly isn't that really for the best? but no two days later we get an email telling us "we made the cut" and at this point I figure this is the most fuckin' LA Story experience we've had this year because fuckin' hell naked baby swimming in a bubba bucket in Venice is fuckin' amazing and since it's free because apparently my wife is all that sure this will make great stories. Color by Technicolor are you shitting me. So I take the kid to her first swim lesson. Which is super-ultra-culty because parents aren't allowed to hang out it kills the vibe? And bitch is always late and the other person who showed up early and I are talking and I compliment her baby carrier because this is what you do and we talk a little bit and I mention that my wife has been looking at stuff and there's like this weird baby carrier culture in LA where women are paying like $1800 for a frickin' used baby carrier and the lady says 'this one cost me $3500' and I really have nothing to say to that but we soldier on because she showed up in an AMG somethinghuge and i'm driving a '95 Dodge and then the gate opens 15 minutes late and i get to stay long enough to "initiate" my kid through the singing bowl dolphin chant and then I have to leave? And come back when they're done? And the kid is like 2 so you can't really ask her how things were but you try and she says "bobby pooped." And she gets an ear infection, and you treat it. And you get into this weird-ass routine of abandoning your naked baby in a bubba bucket off a dirt road in Venice in front of AMGs and hearing about someone else pooping and that can't be right, how much are they changing the damn water, that's gotta be expensive and she gets another ear infection, and you treat it, and isn't it nice that Mr. High Priced Crazy Pediatrician is comping you all your care because apparently your wife is all that and then your wife reads on Facebook That Austrian-Swedish lady is having to shut down Dolphinsgate because the Venice Health Department found dangerous levels of e.coli in the water and every time your daughter says "x pooped" plays back in your head and you take your kid to the Compton YMCA where she's one of two white people and she learns to swim and never has another ear infection ever again but goddamn your two best LA stories are Dolphinsgate and Goat Yoga and you think I'm joking about all this but Constanzia will still take your money.
I am actively resisting the urge to badge this story. fuck'n LA, man. That birth plan you linked is also phenomenal. I have a friend who's thinking of becoming a doula, and while I don't intend to discourage her, I'm tempted to send it to her just to give a bit of a warning.
I mean, look. It's easy enough to be trained as a doula that there's a joke about it in Archer. Which is amazing, by the way. Season 5 is bomb. It's also a high-attrition profession. My wife has a really good friend who has made her (meager) living as a doula for probably 15 years? She's quite disparaging of "shade tree doulas", IE, those without certification who "doula" like twice a year for a year and a half and then tell everyone about how they used to be a doula. Said friend runs a "doula collective" whereby you sign up and one of three women are at your beck and call f'n forever because that, my friend, is why my wife is a midwife and not a doula, not because the pay is better because fuckin' hell my cousin was a doula for like 3 years in Santa Monica and made like $1800 per birth but because as a midwife you don't have to show up until the woman is in active labor and once the baby is delivered, you leave. Said "doula collective" has had 15 babies in the past 16 days which basically means ass-kissing entitled women at their absolute worst for 36 hours at a stretch, five times in the past two weeks, times three different women who are all examining their life choices. There's this awesome schtick called "post-partum doula" which is basically "get paid to show up at a rich person's house, cook, and take care of a baby when it's spending 90% of its time asleep." We recommend them wholeheartedly because frankly every expectant mother who doesn't have a clue what she's doing and is freaked out about it just needs someone to copy for a few days while she figures her shit out and post-partum doulas are all about that. Those? there are a lot less of them, they make a lot more money, and they do that job into their goddamn 70s because it requires a modicum of medical training, an affinity for newborns, and a desire to perform light housekeeping for roughly 6x the going rate. We based our LA recommendations on what sort of cuisine they specialized in. There's one down there that my wife is still in awe of who basically shows up and loads you up with a couple weeks of baked goods. I think "be a doula for a while" is something plenty of women do, as is "decide being a doula is too much work." I think if she can get over the 'must be in the room when the magic happens' angle of things she could very well be set for life.
Typically, I have a small, almost secretive smile when I read your write-ups. I enjoy them, they're always informative and entertaining. The smile became a grin when I read.. "She gestures us into the yurt" It's just a line that can only be followed by something interesting. Excellent. Thank you for posting the story. Though the constant ear infections is certainly unsettling. I had them chronically as a child, though I avoided bobby poops.