Birthday Baby
It is Saturday afternoon, and I am parked in a hospital waiting room… waiting. One floor below my daughter, the only girl of my four children, is in labor. I am here because I can’t not be here. Though I respect she and her husband’s desire to experience the miracle of birth solo, I am calmed by the proximity of sharing the same building, albeit a rather large one. Oh, and it’s my birthday. Baby Girl was due eight days ago, but you know how that goes. They come when they are good and ready. All four of mine were stubborn about meeting the world. Hannah, my daughter, was the most reluctant to leave the womb of the four. Fifteen days past my due date, I still had to be induced. Five days before her eventual birth, my husband cut off two fingertips to the bone in his circular saw. I sat beside him in the ER, measuring roughly the size of a Beluga whale, fighting to keep from passing out from the gore. My labor for Hannah was unremarkable, and t...