In the Company of Women by Kate Christie

I’m not saying the experience wasn’t magical, or life-altering, or deeply moving. In fact, when the 34 hours of labor were over and my wife was lying in her hospital bed spent and thankfully painless due to the epidural she finally allowed us to convince her at hour 30.5 to have, I looked around at the room full of people who had assisted in Alex’s birth and wondered aloud, “Why the ?#$% would you want to go through this every day?” One thing I know after my daughter’s birth: I am not a birth junkie. She would impatiently allow said listeners to share the story of their birth experience, waiting for the moment when she could launch into a full-blown, dramatic, too-much-information recounting of her child’s entry into the world while her audience looked on, a polite smile masking their slightly horrified expression. Well, that blessed event has happened–my wife Kris gave birth to our daughter Alexandra on 2-23-11 at 10:07 AM, and the two moms have been blissed out, sleep-deprived, foggy, and mildly alarmed (“Is that what baby poop is supposed to look like?” “Do all babies bray like a goat?” “Could her head fall off if I don’t support it properly?”) ever since.Īt our initial childbirth class a couple of months ago, our instructor described herself as a “birth junkie.” After she had her first daughter ten years ago, she said, she walked the streets of our small city seeking out listeners to whom she could tell her birth story. A few weeks ago I blogged about the changes to Washington state birth certificates that would allow my name to go on our daughter’s birth certificate as a “natural” parent from day one.

In the Company of Women by Kate Christie