The Longest Shortest Time

There’s a Head Sticking Out of My Best Friend

Crawling: A Father’s First Year I picked it up at the library and immediately knew I’d love it. Here’s how it starts:

There’s a head sticking out of my best friend. This is insane. Anybody who says this moment is the most precious wonderful thing in the world is delusional. This isn’t a miracle, it’s assault. I’d call 911 but we’re already in a hospital.

In the spirit of the childbirth kick I’ve been on at LST lately, here are some more good quotes on the subject. From Rahna Reiko Rizzuto’s essay, “What My Mother Never Told Me, or How I Was Blindsided by Childbirth and Survived,” in Mothers Who Think: Tales Of Real-life Parenthood:

Of course I tried to get the “truth” about childbirth. The answers were just a little bit vague. My mother-in-law: “It doesn’t hurt. You are too fascinated by what’s happening to think about pain.” One of my only friends with children: “All I remember is the sun rising over the Charles River at the same moment Sarah’s head appeared.” Then there were the friends of my friends: one who entertained visitors in her private hospital room with the brownies she had baked during labor, and the other who proclaimed, “I’ve had period pain worse than that!” But when my mother—whose mantra whole I was growing up was “I was in labor with you for forty-eight hours. The doctor said if you weren’t dead you were going to be brain damaged—suddenly changed her story to “Honey, I can’t remember. It was so long ago,” I knew I was in trouble.

And from the gorgeous and funny Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son’s First Year by Anne Lamott:

I had a few great hours of heavy but epiduralized labor. Then it became hard at the end, and everything went wrong. I couldn’t push the baby out, and Pammy and Steve stood by my feet in the labor room for an hour, exhorting, encouraging me to push, telling me how beautifully I was doing. I was in despair. I made a tiny poo on the table, which they didn’t mention at the time but which they now manage to work into about two-thirds of all our conversations. I believe that when the last nail is being hammered into my coffin, they will both be peering in, saying, “Oh, remember when she made that little poo on the table when she was having Sam?”

Got a favorite book or quote about childbirth? Post it in the comments or email me!