I did baby signs with Quinn starting when he was about 9 mos old, and he very quickly learned some helpful key ones: eat, bottle, all done, more. It's incredible how much less stressful it is for both baby and mama to be able to have an actual request. Most of the time we know when our kids are likely to be hungry, but there were times when he was in a growth spurt or upset about something, and he'd ask for a bottle and be so gratified to get what he wanted. We expanded to include "help" for when he needed help with something, "open" and some fun ones, like "snow" and "dog." In my experience, having these signs dramatically cut down on his frustrations.

Also, I don't know if you've wondered this, but I've heard that kids who learn signs as babies don't tend to talk late or anything, and certainly Quinn's verbal vocabulary is very large for his age. As he leared to say the spoken words for things, he slowly dropped the signs, though he went through a stage of using both sign as word (as I always did). Interestingly, he still uses the sign for "open," which I think is on purpose, as his spoken word sounds like "uh-oh," and without the sign, I don't know he's asking me to open something.

I'd highly recommend taking the classes! Good luck,
Annie