Give Me Birth

Becoming a parent changes everything. Not only does that sound like a cliché but anyone who has ever parented a child is thinking, "Well, yeah." All of a sudden everyone drives too fast, is too inconsiderate, and has too much time on their hands compared with you who can barely find a minute to shower let alone e-mail, update your Facebook page, and return phone calls letting everyone know you are not only still alive but have managed to keep your newborn alive as well with very little training.

Everyone always talks about the birth. It doesn't matter who it is, man or woman, someone with or without children. Everyone has a birth story to tell you, and that birth story is bad. The woman pushed actively for 36 hours; she was in such pain that the doctor had to give her medication used for chemo patients; the baby got stuck in the birth canal and they had to use the jaws of life. You get the picture; birth is bad. Babies on the other hand are good.

Sure, you get the adage: you need to sleep when the baby sleeps, which could lead one to the idea that those first few weeks could possibly bring with them some hardships. But this also suggests that 1. the baby is going to sleep for an extended period of time 2. the baby is going to sleep in a location that allows you to sleep while the baby is sleeping 3. you will be able to do all the stuff you need to (i.e., take a shower, eat a meal) while the baby is awake. So, you think, "All I need to do is get through the birth and then I'm home free. I'll have this sweet little baby and all will be right with the world."

Well give me birth. What no one seems to tell you while they are spouting the horrors of birth is that those first few weeks home will be the true testament to your stamina, sanity, and self-awareness. Birth, although it can come with scary and even life threatening consequences, is an event where you are the focus, you hold all of the cards, and you are the determining factor in the decisions to be made. The minute you bring home your newborn, you are out of the center and the baby is in, controlling every detail from when you will sleep, eat, shower, read, or speak to other adults.

Somewhere in the delirium that only lack of sleep can bring on, you begin to find the clarity that the labor you went through was actually a breeze compared to taking orders from a pint-sized, wobbly-headed, infant who even if he knew what he wanted cannot tell you. I believe that babies smell and look the way they do out of a survival mechanism. The look and smell lends itself to creating a mindset where the parent, against all rationale thinking that points to the fact that this new phenomenon is breaking you down, sees something that needs to be protected and nurtured regardless of what the entity is doing to the health of his/her own person.

The same goes for my little one. I have told him over and over again as he stares at me wide awake at 3:45 in the morning that it's a good thing he's so cute. It is a testament to how much love you feel for your own child that you are able to survive those weeks after your little one leaves the hospital. It is also a good insight into why there are days celebrating mother's and father's every year.

Maybe we don't tell expecting parents the truth of what is really to come after the baby is born because we don't want to scare them. We stick with the birth stories, which at least offer an ending, some happier than others. There is no ending to what our children will need from us, expect from us, take from us, and require of us. The future holds many late nights waiting up to make sure they are in by curfew, back in their dorm/apartment at college after a visit home, and hopefully experiencing the miracle of birth for themselves. The elation of birth is countered by the sudden awareness of how precious and fragile life is and how as parents we have just relinquished our hearts to a tiny person who is running wild into the future with it in his hands.