on ants and laboring

I've got a joke for you: What do ants and laboring have in common? Well, yes, ants labor...to build ant piles. And to invade perfectly undisturbed domiciles in Texas via tiny crevices in the floor, wall, etc. Yes, we have ants. Not at the moment because my endeavoring husband poisoned them all last night. But before he did so, 'twas the meeting of the Great Ant Assembly upon our bathroom countertops and the kitchen floor. It's lovely, really. And I'm sure it will end up costing us some non-insignificant sum of money paid by check to Terminex. But, I digress. Laboring, did somebody say laboring? Yes, on this day a year ago I was LABORING, I would guess, much more deliberatly than an ant constructing a pile of soft dirt. Not that I have anything against the willpower of an ant, except when they're on my countertops.

It's elevenish (pm) as I'm writing this, so as I remember, at this time a year ago, SD and I were just transferring from the birthing center (where I had already labored for about 24 hours) to the hospital, where I would receive a humongous needle in my spine from the god Anesthesis.

"You must remain still for this," I remember him saying. Maybe those weren't his exact words, but I remember thinking, "Oh, okay, that's an easy one. I mean, I will just instruct the labor contraction to hold off until the cold, silver rod delivers the numbing agent to my already jacked-up nervous system. Yes, that will be a piece of freakin' birthday cake."

As luck would have it, the needle slipped in before the next contraction did, and before I could say, "Could I have some ice chips with that?" I felt my legs and pelvis float away, like cotton puffs on the nurse's cart as it rolled out of the room. Oh, and I should also mention that by this point, SD was almost horizontal himself. I think we focus on how hard it is for a woman to endure childbirth but forget how difficult it is for a partner to witness. I mean, we're talking, BIG STEEL NEEDLES here, people.

After that, we just waited for more dilation, which was hard-won. I forget precisely when it was that we made the decision to do the C-section, but it was, of course, not the outcome we wanted. In that moment, we were disappointed, relieved, anxious, and strangely calm. And then, at 2:34 in the afternoon, our first child was born, perfectly pink and puffy and ready to upset the relative tranquility of our sleep-indulged existence. TLT (Total Labor Time): 42 1/2 hours.

Pretty amazing stuff. We thought so, at least. And now, also amazing and much more hilarious than his actual birth itself is this, a little something we like to call A Tribute to David Bowie and the 80s on the Eve of Eli's First Birthday: