Hobson's Choice

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Wait three months, please

Wait three months, please
Got an email the other day from someone announcing that she's going to have a grandchild in around 9 months, and I've decided that I have become a complete Victorian. I cannot bring myself to reply until all is safe.

I think now I understand completely the Victorians and their silence about pregnancy. It's so fraught, so iffy,so tenuous, and so dangerous. Were they really afraid of mentioning anything related to sex in polite company? Or was it instead the fear of all that could go wrong that kept them quiet and kept them from tempting fate?

In this post-modern day and age, I had a coworker, an acquaintance, who did not buy a single baby thing or decorate the nursery until the baby was born. At the time, I thought that this was completely neurotic. So few babies are lost now that it seemed strange not to prepare for the arrival of a child. Home-birth folks would have us believe that most of us can give birth in the barn with no problems, post-modern Mary and Jesus.

Looking back now, I realize that this woman must have lost a child or been close to a lost baby. Statistics about the safety of pregnancy and childbirth in 21st century America do not seem so comforting when you have become one of the statistics.

9:27 a.m. - 2006-03-23
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