How Does It Feel?

Our well-executed travel plan got us to the hospital, thanks to ME - and from there it got progressively more exciting. 

After soaking up nine months of flak from other parents ("TEN!!!" shouts Tylertoes in the background) on life “ending” and “changing” and labor being “scary” and this being a “very special time” but “hard” and “kiss your sleep goodbye” I was starting to wonder if I hadn't made a terrible mistake. 

As it turns out; you have nothing to worry about - the whole process is highly entertaining. 

Many of you who don't have a baby have asked "what does it feel like to have a baby?" That's an interesting question and I've carefully considered it. I have had a number of feelings to think through on that topic, but I have finally developed an answer for you:

Recall, for a moment how it felt to believe, deep in your spirit, that THIS VERY NIGHT, a fat foreigner is going to squeeze his big butt down your chimney to leave you great stuff.  Labor and delivery feels like that mixed with the feeling you had when your Mom said “the nice lady IS going to give you a shot, but it won’t hurt a bit.”  Earlier, you saw the nurse with the huge, clammy, sausage fingers; you know it’s going to hurt like abject hell and, for the first time, you realize an adult has betrayed you. Add that feeling in to the mix. 

So all that, PLUS, the feeling you felt the first time you boarded an airplane PLUS, the feeling you get right before you puke all over someone who does not see it coming. That’s what becoming a parent feels like.

Get excited.

Many others of you (Ernee The Attornee, for instance) are more interested in the gory details of childbirth than the "feelings" aspect. That's all you want to talk about - the indelicate details. I suspect its so you finally have license to use the word "vaginal" in conversation, but either way - I get it. It is, after all, a pretty gory process. 

The whole thing has a kind of barnyard-esque quality, but once you grow accustomed to the sheer volume and variety of fluids skeeting hither and yon – it’s no big deal. At several key, explosive, points during childbirth, I clearly recall thinking “In all my years of being a person - I've never seen that fluid before."

There really is nothing like it, but the best parallel I can draw for you is simply this: being an expectant father in the Labor and Delivery room gave me a brief glimpse into the life of a garbage man: you’re right there in the midst of something weird and smelly that you don’t want to be in the midst of, but you know eventually - you get to go home.