Nesting precedes some babies

Mid-February, I e-mailed my son, “Many mothers-to-be nest like a momma bird a few days before labor begins: Cleaning, cooking, preparing for the expected child.”
The last week of February, his wife cleaned their two-story duplex top to bottom, not once, but twice, She scrubbed the floors, dusted and re-arranged.
Mark pounced on her, “Ah, ha! you are nesting, preparing for our little bird. Mom said you might nest before labor sets in.”
She e-mailed me, not once, but three time to protest, “I am not nesting, the landlord has been repairing the bathroom. I have just been cleaning up afterwards. And all I am going to do today is wash the kitchen floor again.”
Her kitchen floor is 600 square feet of white space. I haven’t washed a floor that big in years. After the third letter, I e-mailed back, “me thinks the lady doth protest too much.”
That weekend she mentioned a repeated tightening of the lower abdomen.
“You could be in the early stages of labor,” I said.
“No, I can’t. The pains don’t wrap around from front to back like the books says.”
“Labor pains don’t always settle into a textbook description. Some mothers only feel them in the back, others only in the stomach.”
I could tell she did not believe me.
A few days later, she had her pre-natal weekly check-up. As the obstetrician finished the exam, she said, “Your body is getting ready to deliver. Have you been having any labor pains?”
“No labor pains, only some tightening in the abdomen.”
“That is labor pain.”
I received this e-mailed assessment of her doctor: “Just goes to show you what that doctor knows..”
the expectant mother was convince that labor was dramatic, fierce and painful from beginning to end.
Early Saturday morning her body hinted at meeting her expectations. I was studying the newspaper listing of garage sales when my son called. “We are heading to the hospital.” We wished them the best and I left to go garage sale-ing.
I was paying for a book at a sale in the northwest part of town when a woman taking my money asked, “Has the grandbaby arrived yet?” I looked at her. I was pretty sure we had never met before in my life.
“I read your column every week,” she explained. “I was wondering if your son’s baby had been born yet.”
“Ohh,” I said shifting gears mentally. “Thank you for asking. My son phoned this morning to say that they were on their way to the hospital.”
She smiled, happy to know the latest as it happened, “we’ll be waiting to hear.”
At 3:30 p.m. the new father called, “It’s a girl, born at 2:31 p.m. She weighed 5 pounds 14 ounces and s 19 inches long.” The new mother was ecstatic. “It was a good birthing experience, between the epidural and the understanding nurses and doctors.”
My son broke in. “Hey, Mom, know what she said right after the baby was born?”
“What?”
“The doctor asked, ‘that wasn’t too bad, was it?’ and she said, no I could do that again.”
We’ll let her have a year or two to think about that one.


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