We've drifted past the baby's estimated due date, and we are waiting, waiting, waiting; wondering how exactly this story will start.
*
On the day you were born, it rained buckets, and I sat with my watercolors and tried to paint a fox.
On the day that you were born, your dad read you baseball essays by Roger Angell, and you kicked like crazy whenever he mentioned the Mets.
On the day that you were born, I woke up in a bad mood and ate three pieces of toast with raspberry jam before I felt better.
*
Moving through these months, I've realized that a fair amount of information about pregnancy and labor is anecdotal. There is a lot of choosing what to believe. No one gets to A/B test any one specific pregnancy/labor/parenthood experience, and every woman and baby are individual beings with an individual relationship and set of circumstances. Correlation and causation are tricky bastards, and no one can predict how things are going to be for you. Every story is unwritten, until it isn't.
Believing X caused Y does make for a good story, though, even if it isn't exactly true, so I've made my own list of ways to induce labor. If I do any one (or several of them) and lo, the babe appears, who's to say they didn't work?
*
Buying opal rings for every finger.
Reading books about summer on islands.
Floating in chlorinated swimming pools until fingers and toes are as wrinkly as raisins.
Drinking three frozen cokes in a row.
Walking up and down the stairs seventeen times.
Getting a peck of peaches, and taking just one bite out of each.
Picking Japanese beetles off the azaleas.
Standing on the shore, and letting waves break around your knees until the sun shifts in the sky.
Eating surskullar (only the yellows) until your eyes water and tongue burns.
Sharpening a pencil to its pointiest point, and drawing a single, continuous line until the lead is completely flat.
Laying very close to the person you love best, and matching your breath to theirs.
Watching for 100 firefly flashes, then wishing.
*
Louise Bourgeois: Pregnant Woman, 2009.
Moving through these months, I've realized that a fair amount of information about pregnancy and labor is anecdotal. There is a lot of choosing what to believe. No one gets to A/B test any one specific pregnancy/labor/parenthood experience, and every woman and baby are individual beings with an individual relationship and set of circumstances. Correlation and causation are tricky bastards, and no one can predict how things are going to be for you. Every story is unwritten, until it isn't.
Believing X caused Y does make for a good story, though, even if it isn't exactly true, so I've made my own list of ways to induce labor. If I do any one (or several of them) and lo, the babe appears, who's to say they didn't work?
*
Buying opal rings for every finger.
Reading books about summer on islands.
Floating in chlorinated swimming pools until fingers and toes are as wrinkly as raisins.
Drinking three frozen cokes in a row.
Walking up and down the stairs seventeen times.
Getting a peck of peaches, and taking just one bite out of each.
Picking Japanese beetles off the azaleas.
Standing on the shore, and letting waves break around your knees until the sun shifts in the sky.
Eating surskullar (only the yellows) until your eyes water and tongue burns.
Sharpening a pencil to its pointiest point, and drawing a single, continuous line until the lead is completely flat.
Laying very close to the person you love best, and matching your breath to theirs.
Watching for 100 firefly flashes, then wishing.
*
Louise Bourgeois: Pregnant Woman, 2009.
