I'm having his baby

During this entry, I will embrace my inner “Yakov Smirnoff of Colorado” one more time. God, even he finally dropped that shtick.

In North Carolina, when it came time to birth your baby, people would ask you, “Which hospital are you going to?” This seems like a logical question, yes? But here in Colorado, people ask you, “Where are you planning to have your baby?” (Vatta state!)
This is a different question, because the alternatives are a) in one of about 10 hospitals or b) at home. And here in the Denver area, most people I know choose the latter. Home births, and midwives, are extremely popular here. The only person I knew in North Carolina who had a baby at home did it by accident, because she couldn’t get to the hospital quickly enough.
For me, this is not a possibility (my first was an emergency C-section – she almost died – and I ended up stuck with them for time eternal). I find myself feeling defensive because people will ask me The Question; I tell them first that I’m going to such-and-such hospital; they ask me, “Why aren’t you having the baby at home?”; I tell them I have to have a C-section; and I watch their faces fall. I imagine the judgments flitting through their heads – “She’s not a good mother. She’s not having her children the natural way.”
My defense always has been that birth is a means to an end, that end being a healthy baby. Whether your baby comes out of the hole the good Lord gave you or out of one the doctor makes, it’s what you do for the next 18 years that counts. The whole brouhaha about “natural” birthing seems like just one more divisive mechanism to keep us from all getting along.
As you can see, it’s frighteningly early, so much so that I’m afraid I might just teeter and fall off my soapbox, so I’m getting down now. A woman three weeks from birthing is not the most elegant thing. Kathleen, who is still lithe and fit and childless, needs to help me out here.