Making Room for Baby : Families: Classes to help siblings be responsible brothers, sisters are booming as parents try to make childbirth a family experience.

Ten children spent part of a recent morning wearing surgical masks at Long Beach Memorial Medical Center. Using dolls, they learned how to hold babies properly. They donned masks and blue paper gowns and sat on hospital beds that a nurse raised and lowered electronically. Then they were ushered into the hospital’s second-floor nursery to meet the newborn babies.

“Is he alive?” asked Matthew Talbot, 3 1/2, staring intently at a wrinkled infant about the size of a football.

Matthew’s mother, Marie, assured him that the baby was alive. In fact, she said, Matthew himself would soon have a baby brother or sister who would look like that.

“I figure it will be an adjustment,” said Marie Talbot, who is 8 1/2-months pregnant. “I thought it would be good to bring him here so he knows what’s going to happen.”

Talbot and her son are attending the hospital’s twice-monthly Sibling Preparation Class, a program designed to reduce sibling rivalry and the stress of bringing home a new baby by teaching older children to be responsible big brothers and sisters. While Memorial and other area hospitals have been offering the programs for years, hospital spokesmen say, many have noticed recent upsurges in their popularity.

“The idea seems to have really blossomed,” said Heidi Clark, marketing manager at Memorial, where the number of future siblings attending the classes has grown from about five a month in 1985 to about 35 now. “People are not seeing birth as a medical thing anymore, but as a family experience.”

At nearby St. Mary Medical Center, an average of 10 families attend similar classes every other month, a hospital spokeswoman said.

And at Long Beach Community Hospital, the number of monthly participants has doubled to about 30 since last August, when the hospital began aggressively promoting the classes. Hospital spokesman Mark Scott also attributes the increased demand to higher birth rates and an increased emphasis on prenatal education. “Having a baby,” he said, “affects all aspects of the family, not just the mother and father.”

Older siblings, for example, may feel shunted aside by a new baby, according to Debbie Walker, a registered nurse who teaches the classes at Memorial. “They may not feel that they are as loved,” she said. “They may feel that they weren’t good enough and that’s why (the mother) is having another baby.”

In other cases, she said, older children may harbor frightening fantasies about what will happen to their mothers in the hospital, or unrealistic expectations that their newborn siblings can become instant playmates. Often, she said, they react to these fears and frustrations by displaying hostility toward parents and newborn babies.

“Our main focus in class,” Walker said, “is to make the kids feel more comfortable.”

Sitting on the floor with their parents looking on, the children begin the 2 1/2-hour class at Memorial by describing their feelings and ideas regarding their soon-to-be-born brothers and sisters. Later, using dolls, they practice the proper way of holding newborn babies and even learn how to change diapers. Then they don surgical masks and caps to visit hospital rooms like the ones in which their mothers will be staying. Then comes the high point of the class--the trip to the nursery to look at newborn babies.

Generally held on Saturday mornings, the classes are divided into sessions for children age 3 to 6, and for children age 6 to 12. Families pay $10 per class to cover basic costs, said Ron Yukelson, director of public relations at Memorial. In the long run, he said, the hospital benefits by having better-behaved children around the maternity wards, and by attracting more patients. “We think it’s an obligation for a major medical center that delivers 5,000 babies a year not to just deliver babies,” Yukelson said. “It’s a community service.”

Parents generally seem to like the results.

“I think it’s terrific,” said Julie Collins, 27, an expectant mother attending the class with her 5-year-old son, Austen. “Kids who know more feel better. It’s hard to find a newborn baby to show your kid.”

Cheryl Estes, 33, in class with her son Brett Yocum, 6, said she expected the experience to be beneficial. “It won’t be such a shock for him now,” she said of her impending delivery. “He’ll know where I am and it will be a familiar surrounding for him.”

Brett, on the other hand, was more critical. “I didn’t like putting the diapers on,” he complained. “It was boring.”

And the newborn baby on the second floor? “(It) had a small head,” the youngster observed soberly. “I hope our baby has the hugest head in the world.”