On Birth

Four weeks ago yesterday my son was born. There are all the pervasive messages of "miracle" and "gift" in the popular culture. There is one thing that they really don't tell you however. Giving birth is traumatic . . . for both baby and mom. The sheer number of possible complications is staggering if you've ever bothered to look into it. So many different things have to come together and work just right for a "natural" child birth. No wonder so many women and children died in childbirth before the concerted efforts of modern medicine. This opens up the possibilities for discussions on are we weakening the gene pool by intervening medically so regularly, but that is a topic for another time. Let's just say that we had some complications that have since worked themselves out that gave us quite a scare at the time.

Baby has a huge role in getting into the real world. The hours of labor are very stressful to the little one. In the process, there are numerous turns and twists that the baby makes just navigating the birth canal. They don't tell you that until you take the childbirth class. I have a bachelor's degree in Biology and I had very little real knowledge about how the whole process works in humans. It's a wonder that we've managed to subsist as a species given all the various dynamics of giving birth, feeding, and caring for a helpless newborn much less thrive and take over the entire planet. This stuff is not intuitive. For someone who's spent her entire life having things be relatively easy for her to work out, get or catch on, this process has been less than straight forward. I believe only a small part of that can be attributed to the surge of hormones that everyone talks about. Logic has very little part to play.

All I wanted before he was born was to have a healthy baby. Now that he's been in the world for 4+ weeks, all I want is a healthy baby and all that entails. It means that he gets the right vaccinations minus any harmful chemicals like Mercury as a preservative, no BPA in any plastic that he encounters in his digestive adventures, no lead in his brightly colored toys, the right safety equipment just to navigate the world . . . the list goes on and on. There are many worries or fears that have taken the forefront of my attention these days that make what I used to worry about seem so . . . trivial. I hold the little one in my arms and I know that I'm looking at the best thing I've ever done or will do. Now it's a challenge to not screw up his life too badly with all my imperfections.