Anxieties

Or, Being Pregnant is Effing Crazy

Or, Or, Being in the Womb in Even Crazier

Today I held my wife's hand while a doctor hunted around inside her like a blind man looking for a nickel. This doc touched my baby's head. My baby, who is still like two weeks away from being born.

Thirteen Marches from now, we will be celebrating my daughter becoming a teenager, with the subtle implication being that exactly thirteen years before, she became a human. The lesser known fact of that day will be that actually, thirteen years and two weeks before, an actual person fuckin shoved her around in there before she was even born to try and find her mom's cervix while she continued to gestate. Jesus.

And this isn't some awful emergency scenario or macabre medical malpractice going on, either. The baby is great, and the doctor is great. This little procedure is supposed to make sure Adair doesn't go too far past 40 weeks. So that mean's that it's this lady's job to go rooting around, touchin' babies before they take their first breaths, to make things easier on their moms when they go into labor. She's pro as hell at it.

This experience has led me to a simple conclusion: Even with how much we talk, as a society, about how incredible the miracle of pregnancy is, IT'S NOT ENOUGH. I even hear a lot about how in America we treat our new mothers horribly, compared to Europe and other cool hipster places. Everyone knows that shit. WE STILL AREN'T TALKING ABOUT IT ENOUGH. The average idiot such as myself does not appreciate, in any meaningful way, how absolutely bat-shit bonkers it is to grow life and give birth.

Part of it, I think, is the fact that it's like, the most commonplace medical procedure ever (oh also, it involves vaginas, so that's also a problem for us, but that's not the point I wish to make at this juncture). Literally every one of us was born in a time when medical science was less advanced than it is today, so really what's the big deal? Glad you asked, I'll tell you: EVERYTHING'S THE BIG DEAL. THERE'S A [checks 38 weeks size chart] LEEK SIZED GROWTH INSIDE MY WIFE. Leek? Seriously babycenter.com? There has to be some other food item that is 19.5 inches long. [Goes back to Week 37 just in case there's a better vegetable/fruit size metaphor] THERE'S A GROWTH INSIDE MY WIFE AT LEAST THE SIZE OF A BUNCH OF SWISS CHARD...god dammit, forget it.

Oh, and everyone in the industry is so cavalier about it too. Don't get me wrong, our doctors, nurses, dulas, shaman, wise-women, etc., have all been awesome, but they see babies get born all the time. There is a massive disconnect between how common an occurrence this is for them, and how FUCKING MONUMENTAL an occurrence this is for us. So we, as post-Gen X'ers (call me a millennial, I fucking dare you), who have been told we are super special our whole lives (although Adair and I actually are special), are counseled against heading to the hospital too early, calling the doctor too often, offending the delicate sensibilities of the Seventh Day Adventist nurses, and even eating during labor ("you'll just poop more on people while you push, plus the on-call anesthesiologist will get pissed, Dane").

The birthing class nurse is like: "Head to the hospital when your contractions are 5 minutes apart, before that, they might send you home" and then immediately switches over to "If you waited too long, here's what the EMTs in the back of the ambulance will be doing to deliver your baby on a Portland road that has been recently reduced to rubble by multiple ice storms..."  In my head, the question is raised: "Wait, how long exactly is the gap between 'You headed to the hospital early, you spoiled alarmist tweens' and 'WHOA WHAT ARE YOU DOING WAITING THAT LONG? GENERALLY BABIES ARE BORN IN HOSPITALS YOU FETUS ABUSERS"?

Somehow Adair has maintained her prototypical chill about the whole affair (heh, "hole affair", Jesus, Dane, you are going to have a daughter, cool it), for which I owe her basically all the riches in Scotland, or something of equivalent value. And, despite my use of caps and bold above, I'm honestly not all that scared of what is happening or what's to come. All I know is that this shit be crazy, and nobody adequately prepared me for that.