Deanne Delivers

7/9 on 7/9. (weight/birthdate)

He joined the world this past evening around 7:30, happy, healthy, after a 2 hour labor by a 43-year-old third-time mom. Textbook flawless, and I was there to watch my first ever non-c-section birth.

Three of us lady friends stayed in the birthing room with her (never mind the story about the husband--I'll tell you all in person one day), one of us with no children, one of us with three, and me, the scheduled c-section mom of one sweet daughter.

It amazes me, as complicated as my friend's situation is right now personally, as old of a mom as she is starting over, mostly on her own, that it never really entered her mind that anything would go wrong. It just doesn't happen that way in their family. These things go along fine.

Me? I would have had myself dead on the table six times and the baby born with eight heads if I had been in her situation. There's something to those folks who take life as it comes instead of attempting to envision every anomaly (read: catastrophe) that might possibly occur one in eighty-thousand times.

As I sit here now, back at home, I'm still looking for something more than, something deeper, some unseen concern, some untold shoe on high. And I'm telling myself to cut it the fuck out.

It couldn't have been more simple. We stopped by the doctor around 5 p.m., who said, "Oh dear, you're at 5 cm--get over to the hospital," and we put the kids in the van and drove the two blocks to the hospital, where she got her epidural, then we gabbed for a couple of hours while we watched the magic arches on the monitor go up and down, tuned into CNN for a little bit, until the nurse stopped by and said, "Lemme check you again," followed by, "Okay we're gonna push now." So it was one-two-three pushes and out he came, full of hair and full of life, cheesy and pretty darn mad at all the poking and prodding that ensued.

For me, the overwhelming complexity of what it means to be human is to let things be simple, to perceive as deep what seems so very uncomplicated.

My challenge is to be still of mind and heart long enough to notice.

Some things are taken care of before we even get there.

Sometimes we just walk in, laugh for a while, and kiss a baby hello.