Modern Life and a Hospital Pregnancy Curriculum

The local hospital has classes for expecting parents.

(I like the word "expecting". My wife is the one who is pregnant. But I'm also expecting. It sounds nicer than "increasingly impatient".)

This seems a clear sign of modern life. Our parents and grandparents live far away; they will certainly visit soon after the baby is born and in some sense stay near by phone and e-mail. But it would be irresponsible to assume they have already taught us how to parent, or will do so in the near future, or will always be reachable if we have a quick question.

As another a sign of modern life, people can register for those classes online.

I found it humorous that, as yet another sign of modern life, the online registration form has two fields to type in "name" and "support person". Since my credit card gives airline miles and my wife's does not we used my name, which was apparently to be used by the hospital for both billing and attendance. That left us a little confused about who to put as the support person since leaving out her name entirely seemed inappropriate. So we put in the field for support person both our names in the format "my name, for her name" which seemed a bit wordy but at least accurate.