This morning, I woke up to the phone ringing.  It was my mother calling, wanting to know if I had the baby yet or not.  Fortunately, my dd answered the phone because I don’t appreciate calls like this.  I explained to my mother on Friday when she called to check that as my mother, she’ll be the first to know and there’s no benefit to calling to find out.  If I haven’t called, either: 1) I didn’t have the baby and I don’t have any news to share, or 2) I did have the baby, and haven’t called yet because it’s too soon, so her call would be intrusive.  I don’t think she clearly understood my point though, since she called again today – I had to remind myself that she’s doing it to show me that she cares about me, not to be nosy.

It’s a funny thing – until a month ago when I finally asked her if she cared at all about me being pregnant, she hardly mentioned it, and my mother in law hasn’t mentioned anything – literally not a word since we told her and even when we told her – and suddenly I get calls from them.  And fortunately again, my dd answered the call this morning from my mil, because I am feeling hurt about being totally ignored for months and suddenly because the baby is set to arrive, I’m worth noticing.  It reminds me of the feeling in the hospital, that you’re the body that delivers the baby, but not worth much notice as your own self. 🙁  Yes, we all have our issues. 🙂

Lest you think that I’m oversensitive about friends checking in, I don’t mind at all when anyone but our parents call to see where I’m holding.  In fact, I think it’s sweet that people are thinking about me and care, and know that they have no way of finding out in a timely way unless they call us.  Our parents will be notified right away, but for everyone else there naturally is a longer amount of time they have to wait until the news gets around.  When I answer the phone, I just laugh and tell people, “I’m still pregnant!” 

Because almost all of our children were early, I’ve rarely had this experience of being checked up on, and to avoid it from the get go, I used to tell people my due date was a week or two after the actual due date.  But when I was pregnant with my oldest, I was ten days overdue (one other child was born the day after his due date).  My mother woke up to fireworks in the very early hours of the morning (it was the 4th of July), and thought it must mean I was having a baby.  She called me (I was living overseas at the time) at a time when I would have been at work, and when I didn’t answer, panicked and called a friend to find out what was happening.  The friend didn’t know anything, but called the hospital where she knew I was registered, and the nurse tersely picked up the phone, said, “Congratulations, Avivah X had a boy” and hung up.  So the friend called my mother back and told her the message.  I must have literally just delivered, because as soon as possible afterwards, we called our parents to share our surprise.  My mother pretended to be surprised, and asked what we had (as if she didn’t already know!).  There was something disappointing about her response that felt flat to me at the time, but until I found out about what had happened behind the scenes, I didn’t understand why that was.  She just couldn’t fake being totally surprised and excited about her first grandchild, and I’ve always felt it was a loss, that she and this friend took things into their own hands instead of waiting for us to share the news when we were ready to. (I was only at the hospital for 2 hours before I gave birth and we called within a short time of the birth, so it wouldn’t have been a long wait!).

My other memory regarding this wasn’t a child who was late, but actually a little early, maybe 2 or 3 days.  It was my fifth birth, and by far my most difficult labor.  A difficult labor would be putting in mildly, actually.  My inlaws called that morning, and my dh told them I was in labor (which he really shouldn’t have, because I don’t like these details being shared unless I want to).  They called later in the day to find out what was happening because we hadn’t yet called.  It was a very long and intense labor, with ten hours of transition (contractions every 1 – 2 minutes, lasting 60 – 90 seconds each) following eight hours of active labor (I only consider it active labor when contractions are at least 5 minutes apart) because the baby was asynclitic and ‘stuck’ in the birth canal.  As a result, I had a pretty serious hemorrage afterwards (because the uterus was overstimulated by contractions for so long that it couldn’t contract effectively after birth).  My midwife handled things very efficiently and I was fine, though I lost consciousness when they were dealing with the hemorrage (my midwife later said I probably blacked out from the pain more than actual blood loss, because the body shuts down when it experiences more than it can take).  My husband was outside of the room when all of this happened and didn’t know what was taking place inside – the midwife called him in a half hour or so later, when the bleeding was stopped and everything was cleaned up.  He had just come into the room to see how I was – he hadn’t yet spoken to me – when the phone rang.  It was his parents, wanting to get the news.  I still remember hearing him answer them in a cheery voice, that we had a baby girl and “Avivah is doing fine”.  And I was there, feeling like I had walked through the valley of death (the pictures after this birth are probably the only time in my life I’ve looked pale) and it felt all wrong, hearing it like that – yes, I was alive, but I didn’t feel like saying everything was fine was quite accurate, you know?  It was like all that I went through didn’t matter to anyone but me. 

So that’s my history with this issue and our parents, and why calls from them checking in seem invasive.  But for the rest of you, don’t worry – keep calling or checking in here, and it’s just fine!  :))

Avivah