yes please(14)

If delivery assistance is needed, we prefer “suction” over “forceps.” If episiotomy is needed, we prefer “buttonhole” over “backstitch.” If cesarean is needed, please inform us early so we don’t have to go through the above first.

In the event of a cesarean, the mother would like to be conscious. The mother would also not mind if you tweaked her abs while you’re down there. The father would like to be present and totally freaked out when he accidentally looks past the curtain and sees his wife’s organs stacked next to her like laundry.

The father would like to be involved in the “catching” of the baby and the “cutting” of the cord. At least that’s what he is saying right now. We’ll see. Please don’t cut the cord until it stops pulsing. Please immediately let the cord blood guy in with his titanium suitcase so he can put the cord blood in a vault and keep it fresh. It will help us during the robot apocalypse.

After birth we wish to nurse immediately. Please do not introduce formula or bottles or pacifiers or water, unless those things stop this baby from crying. Why won’t he stop crying? Wait, where is everybody going?

We prefer our stay in the hospital to be extended to the longest period our insurance will allow. We need time for our heads to catch up with our bodies. We also need to catch up on some Judge Judy. Please know we are grateful and sore and happy and scared. We will hear our baby down the hall and recognize his cry and we will realize this truly is a sci-fi miracle sent to us from G-O-D.

That being said, if people buy gifts that aren’t on the registry the mother will lose her shit.

The mother would like to take this moment to admit a few things. She thinks natural childbirth is amazing but she also likes drugs. She didn’t put baby oil on her perineum and try to stretch it because she just never felt like it. She lied when she said she completely stayed away from lunch meat. She also skipped Lamaze because sometimes she can’t stand being around other people. That’s all. We good?

Thank you in advance for your support of our choices. We look forward to a wonderful birth. We are excited but mostly scared. Have you SEEN the mother? She is TINY! How is this going to WORK exactly? Please advise.





the day i was born





I REMEMBER MANY DETAILS ABOUT THE DAYS MY SONS CAME INTO THE WORLD BUT VERY LITTLE ABOUT MY OWN BIRTHDAY. Partly because I was a newborn baby, and partly because my mother was always a little coy about how the birth went down. When people celebrate birthdays I like to have them describe the day they were born. Sometimes it’s fun to see if the birth matches the personality. Does a big baby turn into a big adult? Does a baby born at home turn into a homebody? Does a baby born on New Year’s Eve end up being a real party monster?

I was born September 16, 1971, in Newton, Massachusetts. The most popular song at the time was “Joy to the World” by Three Dog Night. All in the Family had been on for less than a year, Evel Knievel had just set a world record jumping over nineteen cars, and Disney World would open a month later. My mother was twenty-four years old and my father was about to turn twenty-five, and they had been married for a short eleven months. Mom wore yarn in her hair and claims she doesn’t remember a thing about labor. Back then there was this wonderful thing called “twilight sleep” where women were given anesthesia at the onset of labor and woke up with a baby. Today “twilight sleep” is when you pass out on your bed while looking at paparazzi photos of Robert Pattinson eating an omelet. I always pictured my mom in a deep sleep, her beautiful thick hair (that I didn’t inherit) spread out like a fan on the pillow. The Best of Bread played on the radio while some doctor pulled me out using groovy seventies fondue forks. I figure now would be a good time to ask her how that day went down.



IT WAS 1971, THE AGE OF ALMOST “UNNATURAL CHILDBIRTH.” I had no childbirth education classes, no prenatal diagnostic tests, no ultrasound. I started labor and Dad took me to the hospital. He went home to await the birth at Nana and Gunka’s house. There was no push to include fathers in the delivery room at the time, so that didn’t feel strange.

I didn’t feel afraid. My contractions stalled, so they had to break my water. Things moved pretty fast from then on. I remember the pain, being administered a “saddle block” anesthetic, and then helpful nurses and my doctor encouraging me at the moment of birth. You were slight in weight but unusually long, making for an easy delivery.

I was thrilled to have a daughter. My mother had modeled so successfully how to bring up daughters. I can still remember that first rush of motherly pride, that assurance that my child was perfect, and then that first twinge of self-doubt. Was I ready for this job? I look like a kid in the pictures, with a long ponytail, smiling and probably overly confident. Right after you were born, you were happily bottle-fed and then returned to the nursery and I was given four days in the hospital to recuperate. It all seems so separate and sterile now, so different from today’s emphasis on instant mother-child bonding. Yet I felt great and it had all gone so smoothly.

Pregnancy had been a different story. I was sick almost every day up to your birth, sometimes on the way to work. I was teaching third grade in a nearby elementary school in 1971 and the policy was that I was supposed to resign my job upon finding out I was pregnant. An understanding principal looked the other way and I made it through the school year. Over the summer, I gave up my job in preparation for stay-at-home motherhood. There were virtually no other options available. My parents were still young and working full-time. There was no day-care facility nearby. For me, it just wasn’t socially acceptable to go back to work full-time and I had always followed the rules. I was the oldest daughter in my family, the one who was working her nine-to-five shift at the bra department in our local store while her sister was at Woodstock. I studied, graduated, got a job, fell in love, got married, and had a baby. I left my job to take care of my daughter. That’s the way things were done. That’s the way all of my friends were doing it.