Babyzilla Attacks!
Pregnancy turned me into a micromanaging monster.
by Kim Brooks
November 19, 2007
For me, this insight hit home during a conversation with a friend. I was second-guessing my decision to change from an O.B. to a midwife, agonizing over the option of a water birth, wondering if I was really natural childbirth material, when my friend interrupted and said, "You know, no matter what you decide about all this, when the time comes, it's probably going to suck. No one thinks labor is fun. But you'll live through it, and when it's over, you'll get to meet your baby."
Not so long after this conversation, I experienced another epiphany, and this one came in my midwife's office when I found myself laughing at the woman who was going to preside over my delivery. I laughed because in reminding us to turn in our birth plan to the practice, she said, "All that we ask is that you keep it under ten pages." Under ten pages? Was she referring, I wondered, to standard sheets of paper? What was the minimum requirement in that case? I was suddenly transported to my"You know, no matter what you decide about all this, when the time comes, it's probably going to suck." undergraduate days, wondering how I might fudge the font and margins, because after eight months of obsessing over every detail of my impending labor experience, staying awake more nights than I care to admit, weighing and re-weighing big decisions like the kind of provider I would use, and small ones, such as which songs belonged on my labor playlist, every preference and impending choice somehow leading to five more, I had finally determined that my birth planning days were over.
Four weeks away from the big day, utterly enormous and more than ready to meet and hold and fuss over the little person who up until now I've known mostly by the jab of his heel, I'm feeling more confident than ever about my decision to stop deciding. I'm beginning to think that the second I see my baby, all the decisions about doulas and epidurals will seem as important as that five-hundred-dollar wedding cake fondant, which melted into goo while I was busy dancing.
©2007 Kim Brooks and Nerve Media
About the Author
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Kim Brooks has written for Glimmer Train, One Story, Epoch
and the Missouri Review. She also writes non-fiction for
The Crier. She lives in Chicago with her husband and son. |
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