Don't look at me, kid, I was ready!
My son is fuming because he has to wait until Saturday to turn 7. This is unfair. He doesn't understand why he couldn't have been born a week earlier. I am so prepared for this question, because I had spent the 10th month of my pregnancy asking myself the same thing. I did everything--I even went to a massage therapist who specialized in inducing labor.
I went to her house, where she put me on a massage table and spread towels on the floor "in case your water breaks". Then, levitating her hands above my stomach, she started to chant-hum, "Hansel, your mommy is ready to come down her cervix and come out now." Really, they should prepare people for this crap. I was worried that I had torn something internal trying not to laugh. After a few more minutes that passed like hours, she stopped and told me that I should probably go straight to the hospital to start labor. I took her advice, except that instead of going to the hospital to labor, I went to Starbucks and had a drink with caramel and whipped cream.
Fortunately, my parents had advice from the Old Country. "Remember when Nadia carried the refrigerator up four flights of stairs? That got the labor started!" I think that if I carried a refrigerator up any number of stairs, it would have gotten my labor started whether or not I was pregnant. I took matters into my own hands. I googled and googled and came up with a recipe designed to induce labor. I remember watercress and some kind of nuts being involved. And gorganzola cheese. I remember making the salad for me and my parents and all of us eating it and my father saying, "I don't know, I don't feel anything."
Nothing worked. I was sure that my son was going to attend college in utero.
"So, it's all your fault," I sum up for him. "If you'd been born on time, you'd be enjoying your birthday gifts and playing your Wii by now. You have no one but yourself to blame."
He seems unconvinced.
"You were the one in charge of when I had to be born," he tells me, "and you waited too long."
That's the thing about kids today--they don't accept responsibility.
I went to her house, where she put me on a massage table and spread towels on the floor "in case your water breaks". Then, levitating her hands above my stomach, she started to chant-hum, "Hansel, your mommy is ready to come down her cervix and come out now." Really, they should prepare people for this crap. I was worried that I had torn something internal trying not to laugh. After a few more minutes that passed like hours, she stopped and told me that I should probably go straight to the hospital to start labor. I took her advice, except that instead of going to the hospital to labor, I went to Starbucks and had a drink with caramel and whipped cream.
Fortunately, my parents had advice from the Old Country. "Remember when Nadia carried the refrigerator up four flights of stairs? That got the labor started!" I think that if I carried a refrigerator up any number of stairs, it would have gotten my labor started whether or not I was pregnant. I took matters into my own hands. I googled and googled and came up with a recipe designed to induce labor. I remember watercress and some kind of nuts being involved. And gorganzola cheese. I remember making the salad for me and my parents and all of us eating it and my father saying, "I don't know, I don't feel anything."
Nothing worked. I was sure that my son was going to attend college in utero.
"So, it's all your fault," I sum up for him. "If you'd been born on time, you'd be enjoying your birthday gifts and playing your Wii by now. You have no one but yourself to blame."
He seems unconvinced.
"You were the one in charge of when I had to be born," he tells me, "and you waited too long."
That's the thing about kids today--they don't accept responsibility.
posted by Marinka at
3:19 PM
1 Comments:
Dare I say...this sounds like something David Sedaris might write?
If of course you substitute "kidney stone" for "son," and something else for "labor."
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