What is it with women?

Seriously. What is it with women? I just spent the past hour and a half (while watching the last Canadian Idol show only because I feel like I have to because I've watched since the Top 10 shows started, and certainly not because there are any talented singers left) looking up "birth stories" on the internet. It started at Dooce -- which just PROVES my insanity, because I've already read her birth story -- but before I had really started reading her website, so I thought I would see it in a new light (I thought it was too crude the first time I read it -- for a little baby's birth, after all) because now I know more about her. Then I went to another birth story that was linked through Dooce. Then I was at a loss and wanting more birth stories... must read about transition... crowning... episiotomies... (cue the drooling, glazed-eye Homer Simpson... and I suppose it would be appropriate for him to say "boobies" here, even).

So I Googled "labour stories". I got a bunch of sites about labour (as in work) disputes. Not quite what I was looking for. No dilating cervixes on those sites. So I figured "birth stories" would work. Jackpot! And here's where the absurdity of all women who have birthed children begins. I spent a good 45 minutes at a site that not only has birth stories written out, but has corresponding pictures! Thank goodness they had the "decency" (literally) to categorize the stories into "very modest", "modest", and "very graphic". I started with the very modest, but I couldn't be satiated and delved into the "modest". I had to squint a few times and scroll a bit quicker, because as much as I love childbirth and hearing people's stories, there's only so much I want to see (especially since I'm planning on doing it one or two more times!).

I began to think about the strange connection that all women who have given birth share -- why before I got married all I cared about on TLC daytime was "A Wedding Story", but upon being married for more than 6 months, I couldn't care less about that and was obsessed with "A Baby Story" from then until I'm done having kids and TLC finally starts to mimic Fox and ABC's "nanny" type shows and begins "A Toddler's Story", and consequently leading to "A First Day of Kindergarten Story", "My Daughter's First Period Story", and so on and so forth (feel free to make up your own). What makes us care about how bad (though "never as bad as I did, and I didn't even need pain medication!") other woman had it, how long their labour lasted, how long they had to push for, how many stitches they had, whether or not their babies latched on right away, and on it goes?

But, still more than that, after looking at these birth stories (usually only the home birth ones), I began to ask myself, why do women feel the need to give birth completely naked? Do bare "buhzies" really make the baby come out that much easier? Even with Madeline, after 18 hours of labour, I still had the presence of mind to throw on a tank top before getting into the bathtub to try and relax! I just don't get it. I imagine it's some kind of "I am woman hear me roar"-empowerment thing, that makes you feel more "in tune" with womanhood -- as if women throughout the centuries stopped to take their tops off before getting on the birthing stool or squatting in the forest to birth their children. The last picture of one of the births was a women with her husband, her new baby and her toddler son, and both of the children were nursing. Now I'm not going to judge. But really...

There were only two "very graphic" births, I did not venture into one of them (I've birthed enough Vanderheads to not want to see what major damage in the undercarriage looks like). But the other one was about a little baby born at 23 weeks who weighed only 1lb 2oz, and who died two days later. I didn't look at all of the pictures -- seeing the baby just begin to pale with approaching death was enough for me. But one picture really got to me. The moment that the mother got to kiss her little baby, just before they took the baby to the incubator where her short life would be lived out.

And then I got it. As much as the birth obsession is about the pain and the length of the pain and the medicinal relief of the pain, more than that, it's about the miracle that birth and new life is. How precious it is. How precarious it is. How fragile these new lives are. How the line between taking a baby home and taking a baby to a funeral home is so fine -- a cord too tight, a heart beat too slow, a bit of bleeding... And it's when we look at these other stories that we are reminded of this -- that it's all a miracle. It's all given and it can all be taken away in a moment.

So look at this picture of the mom and the baby that she only heard give two faint little cries. See the look on her face and the love in heart because she knows that this moment is fleeting. But really... it's all fleeting. Our lives are collections of fleeting moments, fleeting acquintances, fleeting feelings -- everything is fleeting. For as much pain as there is in that woman's face, there is so much love, so much cherishing, so much meaning, so much fulfillment. And there is so much in that tiny moment, because she knows that it's the only moment she has. I wish I could bottle up the feelings of that woman in that moment and carry it with me all the time so I would recognize and love all the good that surrounds me everyday. But I'm resigned to try my best to cherish the lives that I have around me that aren't so fleeting and to be glad for the moments of love that I've had in those moments and with those people that were fleeting. Look at it once more.