He simply did not want to come out. It was like running a 10K marathon and just when you get to the finish line, they move it another ten yards, and when you get there, they move it another ten yards… and they do that 12 times! I have never run a marathon, and most likely never will, but I imagine that would almost be as frustrating as having an over-due baby. I had a belly the size of a large kickball that weighed as much as 1.5 gallons of milk, maybe 2, and was told that it would all be gone by New Year’s Eve. Maybe the fireworks scared him off, because midnight came and went and no baby showed up, and no tax break for 1995 either.

I did all the things. I drank coffee, did squats, took baths, had … never mind. We even hiked up to Neuschwanstein, the famous Disney castle prototype, in three feet of snow with my brother, who needed this thing to come out before catching his plane back to the USA. Nada. Finally the doctors gave him an ultimatum, let the hostage go by January 11th, or they would come in, guns blazing, and induce labor.

He called their bluff.

The morning of the 11th, they gave me a mild suppository to induce and told me to walk around. By that evening I had a google-worthy mental map of the entire hospital, sore feet, and a bad mood, but no baby. Turns out that twelve hours of being rolled over by a rhythmic wave of intense cramps doesn’t necessarily convince little human hijackers to come out of hiding! They let me have a rest that night and gave me a bed in a room with two other women who already had their babies. I hated on them all night long. I’ll skip over Nurse Ratchet and the false alarm in the middle of the night that caused my husband to drive off the road and almost hit a forest. The next morning the doctors came with bigger guns: an intravenous drip. That got things rolling for real, but my little hijacker still held out for another TWELVE hours! All the while, I was not allowed to eat or drink, but was given ice cubes to suck on instead. It was the longest, and most arduous ten centimeters of my life.

Finally, at 8pm on January 12th, three shifts of nurses after I first arrived and long after the hospital kitchen had closed, my little hijacker surrendered and Jonathan Baily Fischer was born.

The nurses ordered out and we all had a little pizza party together.

None of my three children were in a hurry to move out of their mama’s cozy Bed ‘n Breakfast. And why would they be? Their every need was met without ever even experiencing they had a need. They were fed without being hungry. They were hydrated without ever experiencing thirst. They were sheltered from the elements, never knowing anything but a perfect climate. They didn’t even have to get out of bed in the morning to go to the bathroom. For nine months (and a half!), they never had to get out of bed at all. They didn’t have to work for a living, make any decisions, or deal with any part of the world that was not just like them, or rather, that was not them.

No painful needs, no effort, no responsibility, no conflict of interests. No costs. What a life! Who would want to leave a set up like that? The writers’ den of my dreams! It is a miracle that any of us ever come out of this ultimate comfort zone.

So it falls to us mothers to gather all of our strength, bite our lips, suck on our ice-cubes, and in great agony push with all our might to force little humans into a world where they will now experience the pain of their needs, the true cost of their agency, and the frustration of their limitations. No wonder they come out screaming. They – we- were gods, and the moment we pass through that ten centimeter portal, we are mere mortals who can do nothing but scream, suck and shit. In no time at all we feel the pangs of hunger, the discomfort of a wet and cold diaper, the anxiety of being alone, the restlessness of boredom. We begin to move through the world and must pay the high price of trial and error to discover that not everything is edible, useful, or worthy of our time and attention. Our little humans, we humans, must run headlong into the hard fact of our own finiteness, that we cannot be everything, have everything, do everything, or even live forever. No matter how careful we mothers are or quick to respond, our little humans are bound to contend with the scandalous conundrum of feeling the pain of their needs while their own finiteness leaves them powerless to alleviate it: the humiliation of being entirely dependent on another.

But it is exactly this brazen enigma that gives us our greatest gift. That our children should be thrust into a world where they must experience both the pain of their needs and their inability to address those needs in and of themselves are the very two needles necessary to knit them into community. At this very juncture, we mothers, if we have survived the ordeal of giving birth, take them to ourselves, hold them firmly against us, nurse them, and have sweet communion. Not until this moment did I know what love was.

As sweet and adorable as he was, though, I was not made to nurse forever. At some point, one begins to feel that same kind of “overdue” feeling, my resources running low, feeling like this is getting too big to carry around all the time, my own life being engulfed by someone else’s. So another kind of labor is induced which thrusts this little human into a greater arena of his own resources, where he will again experience the pain of his needs, the true cost of his agency, and the frustration of his limitations. We then find a new way to commune, a new way to take care of those needs he cannot yet meet himself, and find concessions to my own needs and limitations. This pattern has repeated itself over and over for 26 years now. Each birth and rebirth a crises of its own for both of us. Each time the reward of more space for each of us and more intimacy between us awaiting when we pull through it.

I love you Jonathan. Happy Birthday!