An Edumacation

Two or three months later, J. and D. and the wiff and I went out water-skiing. It's an hour and a half drive on the average to get to the lake so we had plenty of time to talk.

You have to understand something about my cousin, J. She's the type of anal-retentive bitch who never does anything unless she's going to damn well do it the best possible way and ONLY after all alternatives are considered first. Dammit!

There are many times when I wish I could be like her. Trust me, she's not perfect and has her share of the usual human flaws but for cryin' out loud, when she does things, she does it full-bore with no reservations. No stone goes unturned. For what it's worth, D. is the same way. Very much admirable, both.

So, along the trip to the lake, the wiff and I were regaled with all sorts of fascinating information about the way pregnancy works and more importantly, how it works best. It was intriguing to find out that once she got pregnant, she got extremely horny. Believe you me, that got my attention. Not that way, ya preverts! NO! Apparently though, it got D.'s attention too, right from the beginning! Good on them. J. and I are very close but even I didn't expect the graphic, detailed description of the new and overwhelming intensity of her orgasms. Very impressive, as you may imagine! Motivation to get pregnant, I'm sure . . . .

Yes, by now J. was actually pregnant. Something about a ready-to-get-pregnant test where she had to spit on a slide and if the bubbles were round and doing a hula dance, she's ready to get pregnant. She had gotten the hula dancing round bubbles a few weeks earlier, jumped D. and the rest is a cliche beyond epic proportions.

J. gave us a great many details about what the two of them had learned about pregnancy and childbirth. D. jumped in quite frequently and to tell the honest to god truth, I wasn't really sure which one of them knew more about it. It was apparent right from the beginning they were both in this together and they were on the same side. We could tell that this new kid was in for a great life.

I'll work backward from their conclusion which was, they were going to do a 100%natural childbirth. No epidurals. Wonderful. I've heard of plenty of mothers who have kids with no chemical, "helps." I didn't understand the need to feel you had to go without a pain reduction device but some people want to do that and I understand. Or so I thought.

They were going to have the baby in a birthing center as opposed to having it in a hospital. Well, all right, I could live with that. Some other family members have had kids without going to the hospital.

J. was going to have the baby underwater. Whaaaaat?!? Well, okay. Somewhere in the dark recesses of my brain, a memory of something like this was served up to remind me that this wasn't really a big deal either. In fact, having the kid underwater was, allegedly, a great way to have a kid. Yeah, I was at peace again.

You know what an epidural does? How 'bout a c-section? Hospitals? Nurses? Environment? By the time D. and J. were done, all of those things were the epitome of evil, insofar as having kids is concerned.

Epidurals, evidently, suppress a great many of the normal and natural processes of childbirth. The mother's physiology doesn't perform up to snuff. The epidural drugs actually enter the bloodstream and narc the baby via the placenta. The list of problems with such problems with epidurals from D. and J. was very long and horrifying.

C-sections. J. and D. proceeded onward and upward. Or downward, as the case may be. If a baby doesn't pass through the vagina at birth, other complications result. Aside from the fact that a c-section is a MAJOR abdominal (I nearly typed "abominable" right then! Ha!) surgery with all of the risks inherent with such a trauma, there is a benefit or two or a dozen which accrue to the child in a normal pregnancy which are lost in a c-section. Don't get me wrong, if a c-section is absolutely necessary, by all means, use it for what it can do in an emergency situation. But it shouldn't be the recourse it has become.

During vaginal childbirth, the baby's chest is compressed in the vagina and the fluids in the lungs are squeezed out. This isn't something that can be done as effectively by any other means. The whole process of the contractions of labor and passage through the vagina set up the baby so it can breathe real air for the first time.

It's probably likely that hospitals and doctors can charge more for a c-section than for a natural childbirth. Money a driving force behind the birth of a child? I'm appalled, assuming this is true.

The surroundings of childbirth are a factor in the process as well. Childbirth, for some reason, is now seen as a medical process. There the mom is. In the hospital delivery room. Bright lights and noisy machinery everywhere. She's trapped on the delivery table for the most part. Her knees up in the air and sheet over her. She can't even see everything that's going on. Once in a while someone she can't see and likely doesn't know prods her uncomfortably. There is a virtual army of people staring at her poor naked body, something that only her husband should be able to do.

Well, okay, it probably isn't that bad! Anymore . . . . Hospitals are coming around, apparently and trying to avoid the sterilization of the process. It's an effort to return to the values of a time when childbirth was a special, spiritual, even sacred event. A time when family and loved ones can be a part of, from the next room, if necessary, but certainly outside the sterility of a hospital's cold, granite hardness. I doubt the hospitals will succeed, actually.

J. and D. weren't suggesting they should have the family reunion in an auditorium while she had the baby on stage with big-screen monitors. (Watch. Now some celebrity is going to do exactly that!) No, they were suggesting that a childbirth is a time for closeness with loved ones. While they intended to have the baby at a "birthing center" the fact is, that center is in a house as ordinary as any other, from all appearances. Sure, they have a preponderance of baby stuff and delivery equipment but the bottom line is, having a baby there was going to be pretty much like having it at home. Except they have a bigger tub, of course!

By the time we reached the lake, we had gotten an education on childbirth like no other. I was truly impressed. I was enthralled and could have listened to them for hours on end as they told us what they had learned. They were not justifying themselves in any way, they really understood what they were doing and they were doing everything in their power to make sure their child came into the world healthy and happy and with no problems whatsoever.

Last, but not least, they gave my wife and I our greatest gift we have ever and will ever receive. They invited us to attend the birth of their first child.

The generosity in that invitation can never be fully comprehended. I know I never will. J. and D. most likely understand it but no other human on the earth, I think, can fully appreciate the depth and breadth of that generosity.

--Wag--

The Real Conception

My wife's cell phone rang one day a couple of years ago and this is what I heard on my end:

"Hello?"

Slight pause.

"SQUEEEEEEEAALLLLLL!!!!!"

My wife is about as even-tempered as they come. It took about half of our 16 years of marriage to get her trained that way and with the unfortunate help of some medical maladies, she's about as level-headed as a real woman can get. I count my lucky stars. So, when she squeals at someone on the phone at top volume, it gets my attention in a big way. In addition to scaring the ever-living hell outta me, it makes me wonder what on earth is so scary, thrilling or exciting as to get her to squeal like a banshee.

After scraping the shredded remains of myself off the wall, I looked over to see that it was a squeal of happy excitement and not one of pain and suffering. There have been other squeals from time to time during our marriage from either of us but this is not one of THOSE stories. Some other time, I promise.

The conversation continued, my wife dancing in place as she spoke. It looked like a version of the pee-pee dance on cocaine. Or what I would imagine such a dance to look like!

"That's SO INCREDIBELY AWESOME!! We're so happy for you!"

She already had my undivided attention but this really took the cake. She was telling someone how happy *I* was but I still had no clue as to what I should be so happy about. In an attempt to answer a bunch of questions, I gave her an ASL sign to ask, "Who the HELL is THAT?" (The nice thing about ASL is that you can communicate very effectively very quickly from across the room.) My wife fingerspelled back, "Godzilla." Well, that's what it looked like in the middle of the dance she was doing. (The bad thing about ASL is that it doesn't work well when someone has temporarily lost nearly all motor control.) I figured the, "Godzilla," interpretation of her signing was probably due to my own ineptitude with ASL. I'd just have to wait.

"Ohhhhh, you guys are so awesome! We can't believe you've actually decided to do it!"

I raised a questioning eyebrow and directed it at my wife, only be ignored. "Do it?" The first thing that came to mind was that someone was about to have sex. But out of the 1,000 or more people I know, all of them are already having sex on a regular basis, at least the ones who should be, and besides, that first squeal was not the kind of thing I would expect to hear when there is news of other people having sex. Only when *I'm* having sex. Again, I digress. I wondered if someone were buying a house, or a car or going on a trip. Nah, couldn't be. They don't merit that kind of squeal either. Getting married? Closer but still . . . . I felt like I was losing ground and sat there squirming, irritated that I couldn't figure out who was talking to my wife and what they were talking about that was so truly wonderful.

Girlish banter went back and forth for going on 30 minutes. I gave up listening intently after 4.736 seconds and went back to surfing the web, listening with half an ear at my wife's half of the conversation. An intermittent squeal would issue forth from time to time, twanging my already irritated nerves.

I perked up right away when I heard her say, "Goodbye." She squealed again as if she thought she needed to get more of my attention. This time, it hurt my ears. I suspect she just had some leftover squealing that had to wait until she was off the phone. This squeal was even more unnatural because she was trying to talk to me as she squealed. I waited for that long, painful ordeal to be over. A century went by in those few moments. I sprouted the first few gray hairs of my life. (They still haven't gone away.) My hearing ability declined by 25 decibels. My mind began to shiver and quake in it's bunker. Brain cells began to retreat by the millions. The spectre of a mental institution began to loom before me in a hazy vision of a future living amongst white-suited nurses and drooling, dopey-eyed cell mates.

(Hey, I had to suffer, you have to suffer!)

I told my dearly beloved to take a deep breath and try again. She did. FINALLY, I get the picture. "D. and J. have decided to try to have a baby!" (J. is my cousin and D. is her husband.)

"Oh, really?" I replied.

"Yes, isn't it GREAT?!!" She was getting close to squealing again. She took some more deep breaths while I coached her. I was nearly qualified to start teaching LaMaze classes by now.

"Wow!. That's cool." I turned to surf the web some more. A moment later, I was peeling myself off the wall again. This time, I had a bloody lip and a black eye.

"What the hell did you do THAT for?"

"Aren't you excited for them?" She glared at me.

"Of course I am, my dear. I just don't think I can get in a squeal like you did. Besides, you've kinda cornered the market on squeals for the day. Or the year."

This time, I was able to successfully duck. How is it that a man can take a perfectly happy wife and turn her into a raging troll in a microsecond? I've done it many times but damned if I could actually explain how it works to another man, assuming said man would WANT to do it. Somehow, it just happens on occasion and no clue as to how.

I grabbed my wife's flailing arms. "Honey, don't be mad. I'm happy for them. I look forward to having another little nephew or niece in my life. Best of all, they live close enough for us to spoil the crap outta the little tyke and give it back to terrorize his or her parents!"

"You're an ass," she said and tore herself away from my grasp.

"Yes, honey. That's why you married me," I said with the usual laugh. The joke usually made her smile. Not this time, however. Bummer. She must be really pissed.

After a couple of weeks, she finally cooled off. Things were good again. J. came and visited us one day. She hadn't gotten knocked up yet but she said they were trying. I offered to loan her my, "Loose Sorority Babes on Campus," video in case they needed suggestions. She declined. Strange. I would have thought that would be high on her list of educational material on how to make babies. Oh, well. Of course, my wife and I were jazzed to chat with her about the whole thing. She was excited. My wife was excited. I was excited. I assumed D. was excited, though he wasn't there that day. Excitement abounding everywhere. I swear, I could hear the harps and see the winged cherubs in the background.

At least the squealing was over. For the moment.

--Wag--