Nyataimori

congratulations auntie!! i can’t wait to meet him!

AHH! So exciting. Congrats to the family! He is a big boy. Jeez. 9 pounds. Poor Erin. I love babies.

How long was she in labor?

You know what I like about this kid, he’s very shiny. And you know how I feel about shiny stuff. I hope he can carry this trait forward into adulthood. Maybe they can have him lacquered or something.

she started having contractions around 2pm on thursday and went to the hospital around 8:30. she then actually started pushing him out around 11ish and he was born around 1:30. my times are a little vague because she and adam weren’t paying attentions to clocks and the nurses were highly uncommunicative to those of us in the waiting room. but so that’s approximately 12 hours total but only 2.5 hours of actual birthing.

Wait, why does everyone always ask and/or tell exactly how long somebody was in labor? I’ve never really understood this.

in order to gauge how awful it must have been for her and to remind oneself never to get pregnant.

at least that’s why i ask. because i want to have clutching sympathy pains (because i’m nice) and then go buy a truckload of condoms (because i’m smart).

Oh, okay. Far be it from me to argue with that plan. Do they sell them by the truckload? Because that would be awesome.

Ambitious, possibly unrealistic, but awesome.

Yeah, it’s mostly morbid curiosity for me, with a small helping of data gathering. I feel like if I can get a respectable sample set going I can average the labor times and figure out whether it’s something I would be willing to go for. This is mathematical, and will almost certainly yield completely inaccurate results in re: my own potential labor.

Wait, where do you two stand on the okay-to-disclose-about-others issue? Because I just realized the part that weirds me out is when people are talking in detail and the third person about someone else (rather than the person who had the baby talking about it). It seems kind of mean and intrusive, like spying on someone’s medical files when they’re not around.

I got really upset about this in September when a male department chair at my school announced labor details about one of his department’s female faculty members at a meeting of the entire grad school. Maybe I’m just overreacting.

Huh, I never actually thought about it. My mom says when you’re pregnant your whole body becomes fair game, and strangers start touching your stomach in the supermarket.

I guess I think of labor like running a marathon. It’s a huge physical accomplishment that I assume people are proud of and want to share details on. Maybe it feels different if it’s your labor. Something to think about.

Strangers touching my stomach in the supermarket would drive me fucking insane. In fact, there are very few ways to continue a sentence beginning “strangers touching my” without having it end with “drive me insane”.

Good thing I’m not planning on having kids, all things considered.