I know Lamaze is, like those products they sell in men's bathrooms at truck stops, "for her pleasure" or at least "for her distraction from unbearable pain," but I find its practices quite useful even for myself.

Particularly helpful is the "cleansing breath," which most mothers don't actually take until labor is finally over or until their child finally gets a full-time job. (Any day now, Mom.)

In the technique, you inhale deeply as though you were taking a hit of marijuana-or so I've heard-except you don't get cancer or the munchies. In any case, I find myself using it quite frequently in traffic, while trying to put together baby furniture, and most recently, at the dentist.

It was a root canal, the last ditch effort treatment of filling up what is now a mere sham of a tooth. My dentist now shows videos on computer monitors of monkeys and dogs getting dental work and clowning, while in the background a monotone voiceover explains the procedures. Very comforting.

I had been to the dentist 3 times over the last few weeks of the pregnancy, and the last time he sent me home. "False alarm," he said.

But there I am in the dental chair for the real thing, the blessed event, looking over at the smiley-face pain chart. Now, I know I will only reach the face without the smile and not the top of the chart crying out in pain that my wife will experience, but I'm a delicate soul.

Plus, I'll be getting drugs drugs! Meanwhile, my wife has been accosted by birthing instructors and psycho moms in the aisles of Trader Joe's who endlessly preach that "natural" child birth is, of course, the ONLY way. And why is it natural? Because you can feel all the pain.

This is what I don't get. I mean, no one ever talks about "natural root canals" or brags about how "in touch" they were with their body when they got their last filling. Why does pain equal natural? It seems to me that putting your body through extreme agony when there are perfectly good drugs out there is about as unnatural as you get. What creature in all of nature seeks out pain, other than the occasional poet.

Speaking of pain, we return to the dental chair.

So there I am tooth clamped in place, this rubber sheet stretched across my mouth (so that's what a dental dam is for!), and I start thinking, of all things, about fatherhood. Here it comes. Diapers, rashes, colic, hormones (hers, mine, and ours), her future, the druggie friends she will have, her nervous breakdown at age five, car insurance, acne, dating, boys, my special techniques of wooing turned around against my very own child!

Cleansing breath, cleansing breath, cleansing breath.

HM-O-lord...

When you're healthy, you don't think about hospitals or even your health care plan. The answer to intellectual debates about Health Care is that you are going to move to Vancouver and start a Celine Dion cult.

When you are having a baby, especially your first, you begin to care.
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