honestly, COME ON

Last night I stole some time away from the house to Starbucks to do some more work on my paper. (It’s getting there, by the way!) After about 15 minutes, the café began to get a little busy and a number of middle-aged ladies sat down just behind me. No sooner had I successfully tuned them out, my consciousness was yanked right back to the centre of their lattes when I couldn’t help overhearing one woman’s account of her daughter’s birth story. She went into detail about the dramas in the labour room and how her “natural childbirth” dream was taken away from her when she began to hemorrhage and her daughter ended up being delivered by forceps and she, oh more drama, had to be placed under general anaesthetic for the procedure. Oh, and they didn’t know if she was going to make it and then she didn’t get to see her baby for a few days.

Her female chirpy acquaintances sat perched on the edge of their seats like a bunch of finches fighting over a wiggly worm. “Oh, ah, oh no, I was scared you were going to tell us the baby didn’t make it, oh dear.”

“Oh heavens no,” she says, “The nurses called her the little Madonna, she was and is still perfect in every way.” They also sympathized that she never got to experience that natural childbirth she had dreamed about. “Oh that, well I had 6 other children, I didn’t need to worry about that!”

That, madam, is NOT a birth story. Give me 30 seconds of your time, I will tell you a birth story worth repeating which will leave you with a need to either throw up or quickly get home to hold your 6 kids.

And forgive me if this rant seems at all trite. Imagine the physiological response my brain and body manifested while I sat there taking it all in with nowhere to go; I bit my tongue to keep from either telling her to shut her cake-hole or tearing all over my laptop.