Subtle Glow

I recently attended a baby shower, and looking back I think it was the first baby shower I have attended - since my own baby shower…  almost a decade ago.

Some things never change.

I do think I nearly missed being pelted with twenty tiny plastic baby figurines (part of a game… oy the baby shower games. don’t ask.) at one point where we (naturally) talked about our own labor and delivery stories.

First, a question.  Why do people insist on telling the most horrid and scary stories about their own experience with something (typically medical, typically physical, typically painful) to people who are past the point of choosing NOT to go through the same experience/procedure in the very near future?

It is not limited to pregnancy/labor/childbirth either.  Wisdom teeth, gall bladders, kidney stones, etc.

Are these the same people who don’t understand how to watch sad movies with others?

But, back to the near-pelting.  In my attempt to tell a less scary, less horrifying rendition of labor and delivery stories, I shared that my labor was about 6 hours start to finish - with barely a contraction that registered at all, much less anything painful.  My son was breech, and my water broke before any other labor began (I was asleep in bed - it was all very tv sitcom with the sudden sitting up and exclaiming “I think my water broke!”), so that’s pretty much all the laboring I did.

Some people would see that as the green flag of easy labor to be had.  But me?  I figured why tempt fate?  Why push the universe for a repeat performance?  Why test the waters to see just HOW BAD it could get?  I certainly didn’t feel the need to prove anything, and if I got a pass this time, maybe I’ll just take that and keep going on about my own business, thankyouverymuch.
But from the looks of steel across the table - I swear I could literally hear ‘YOU BITCH!’ hurtling through the crackled air between me and the others who overheard - I should have told a more horrifying version of the tale.

I might be exaggerating a little bit, but there was definitely a double-take as I recounted my experience.  I guess I’m out of practice for these things.
Oh well. I hope that the mother-to-be overheard, and if she did I hope it helped make her feel a little more at ease - even if it was just for that instant.  Not everyone has scary stories to tell, and those that do need to keep their sharing to a minimum.  Or wait until the woman has her own story to tell already.