Childbirth: A Barbarian Absurdity That Must Be Eliminated

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Illustration by Elizabeth Kairys

When my mother was pregnant with my sister, I was almost ten years old. I already knew everything there was to know about sex and biology and was tragically bored by both subjects. Nevertheless, my mother, in yet another fit of ruthless misunderstanding, requested that I watch an "after school special" called "My Mom's Havin' A Baby," which she felt would clarify any further questions I might have on either subject. The ending of this show promised a live birth, wherein an actual child would be shown emerging out of the actually pregnant actress. If nothing else, I was curious to see how the network would handle this raunch.

The show dribbled with Christian claymation dialogue like "Do you think mommy still loves me as much, now that I'm gettin' a little brother or sister?" and moments of sentimental family pornography involving the mother having her older child touch her great misshapen abdomen to feel the jostling of the sinister fetus within.

I sneered through most of the viewing and waited around for the big nudie climax. It was extremely disappointing. The mother was surrounded by some kind of papery medical tent which obscured everything but the anatomical part itself, which was completely trimmed and shaved and powdered for maximum attractive pre-teen viewability. During labor, the actress, unflappable, with perfect hair and makeup, seemed to be "Havin' "a minimum of strain while "Havin' " the baby, engaging in perfectly civil dialogue with all of the participants in the delivery ward. The emerging head of the child glowed a healthy Revlon peach tone, and was presented in its first moments of life as completely scrubbed, with no attached tubes or unsightly effluvia. I expected the assembled cast to break into a song like the welcoming number in "Annie," with acrobatic nurse puppets spinning the newborn out on a large lacquered plate where it would spring to life in a spangling red, white and blue diaper and weep with musical joy for being born American.

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