Oh, The Abuse You Will Know
Posted on 02 20, 2008 under Predad by foodad | 2 Comments
Remember the time you were walking down the street, minding your own business, and you stepped on an errant rollerskate and went sliding out of control towards a the subway station stairway where you then proceeded to fall down 40 steps and land on a yak? or in some yak? the technicolor yawn kind! Even if that was succeeded by a piano landing on your head, that day was child”s play compared to the mental abuse you are going to experience in the delivery room.
We all remember the scene from Alien where the alien larvae busts through the guy”s stomach. That was AWESOME. Well this isn”t like that, it IS that. The baby wants out, she wants it out and it”s more painful than 20 consecutive “humilating kicks in the crotch” to do so.
The great Bill Cosby talks about how his wife stood up in the middle of labor and announced that his parents were never married. In order to descibe the pain, she also opted to grab his bottom lip and pull it up over his forehead. My wife kindly explained to me that if I did not do everything she requested, she would strangle me with the umbilical cord or any available cord, cable or wire.
If your wife is pregnant and it still hasn't hit you, the ultrasound marks the instance in which the world falls out from under your feet. What once was just the idea of a living breathing kid in an instant becomes a living breathing thing that you see with your own eyes.
Racial equality is a hot topic in my household. Maybe it's because my neighbor's dog is racist. He never barks at anyone else except me. I, of course, am the only person that is not white in my entire neighborhood. If I were to decipher his angry bark I would no doubt hear, "Go back to where you come from, you foreigner." 
My wife is luckier than my mother. The proof? My wife was just a few feet away when our son dropped the glass penny jar. When he fell on the glass the resulting cuts required only three stitches. My mother, on the other end of the luck extreme, had just stepped into the shower about the time that a neighbor kid pushed me into a metal box fan at the end of a hallway in her house. The fan was missing its grill and my little hand hit the spinning blades like carrot sticks in a Cuisinart. I ran home with an index finger split like a peeled banana. My mom’s relaxing bathing ritual was interrupted in a moment reminiscent of the shower scene in Psycho. 
I admit it. I probably am pretty close to the "scared of everything" noodad that Noodad refers to in part 1. Still, I thought birthing class was going to be a waste of time. I mean, I was born once, so I felt like I could use the wisdom of my past experience to guide me through it. Even though we were both sort of dreading it, my wife and I convinced each other that it would be a good thing. We went to one 10 hour session at the hospital where she was going to deliver our son for we could not bear the thought of multiple sessions. Afterwards, I felt as though I had spent the day with Pai Mei unlocking the secrets of the praying mantis style. Yes, I was greatly enlightened but it was extraordinarily painful.
This article was originally published in March 2006. If you haven't read it, it's new to you!
