God Bless the Mothers

God Bless the Mothers, for they are about to drive us fucking crazy.

Ever since I’ve told my Mother about my pregnancy, which was back in January, we’ve spoken about once a week. Not a major thing, but she can’t be on the phone for less than thirty minutes. This is probably why she’ll never get on line…she likes to talk too much. She’s a hairdresser, so it’s part of her job to talk.

Because we speak once a week and we’re on the phone for 30 – 60 minutes at a time, she knows a lot about what’s happening with my pregnancy, Baby Kaos, our childbirth ed classes, and the fact that we’ve hired a doula.

The other day, my Mother told me that she was going to get her haircut before she and my Dad come up. But, she said that the baby talked to her and the baby said not to. Not sure what she’s smoking, so I let that one go. But, she’s not coming until the third week of September, so I bet she breaks down and gets a trim beforehand.

We were getting questions from both of our Mothers about what we’re naming the baby. We told them both early on that we would tell them the gender of the baby, but that we were not telling anyone the name of the baby.

We don’t want to hear about Uncle so-and-so who was a total a-hole alcoholic and that he’s better off dead. We don’t want to hear about ex-boyfriend what’s-his-name that left her best girlfriend in high school as soon as he went away to college. We wouldn’t get this from just family. Oh no, we’d get this shit from everyone.

Besides, what if he’s a she? We met a woman who was expecting a little boy, which was confirmed by two ultrasounds, and everything they had was blue. And when baby was born, the doctor announced that he was indeed a she.

I mentioned this to my Mother. She said, “Well, how can the test be wrong?”

Really. She said this. I can’t make this shit up.

Zel’s Mother calls about every other week. Except for the last month, she now calls weekly. Zel spoke with his Mom today. Today, her request was that the child be born before September 1. Because if he’s born after September 1, then he’ll miss the cut-off date for starting kindergarten and have to start a year later. I’m not exactly sure how she knows what the cut-off date is for the school district in Our Little Town, but nonetheless, this is her request.

Never mind the fact that we don’t know if we’re even going to put the kid in public school. Home schooling is an interesting option. Furthermore, since Baby Kaos is going to be so goddamned smart he’ll be doing calculus by the age of 5, he may be able to test out of kindergarten.

Zel told her we don’t want the baby born on Labor Day. We can hear the comments from lots of different people now: “Oh…you went into labor on Labor Day! That’s so funny!” or “You labored on Labor Day weekend! That’s so appropriate!”

We also would prefer Baby Kaos is not born on September 11, for obvious reasons. We did chat with our doc about this one. He said not to worry, because at that point, we’re looking at being 2 weeks over-due and he’ll induce labor by then.

We’re very selective with what we tell either set of parents. We don’t want to have a slew of questions.

Both sets of parents said they want to be called when we’re on the way to the hospital.

Like good children, we said we’d call.

But, because it takes 10 minutes to get to the hospital, we’re not going to call.

We don’t want to deal with questions such as:

“How long have you been in labor?”

“How far apart are the contractions?”

“Did your water break?”

“Why didn’t you call when you started labor/when your water broke?”

“Are you in pain?”

“How much further is it till you get to the hospital?”

“Who’s driving?”

Since neither Mother can be on the phone for less than five minutes, we’re making one phone call. That’ll be to some good friends, who will come over to take care of Flof.