Was it Worth It?

I asked my newly babied friend. We had discussed just days earlier in our running cars, smoking our cigarettes, whether or not the love of a baby would cancel out labour pains. Never, she said. I'll be glad to get out of the house when it's born, she said.

"It hurts, don't get me wrong," she said, cradling the new life with a sickeningly sweet smile on her face, "but look what you get out of it. It's worth it. I'd do it again."

Ugh. She promised me she wouldn't say those things. She promised she'd be completely honest with me when the time came, and would steer clear of the whole new mommy cliche comments. And there she was, swimming in them.

Look what you get out of it. I looked at the baby. I saw a baby. Nothing more, nothing less. I was hungry and stressed, and I wanted to get out of the stuffy hospital room. She didn't even hate her significant other, who sat there with her, claiming the young one as his own too. If I had to go through labour, be stuck in a hospital room by myself all night, deal with the soreness and the cramping and the feeding and the added weight, ain't no man gonna claim my baby as his own. It would be mine. And he could watch it while I slept if he wanted. But that's it. I didn't understand the love she had all of a sudden acquired.

She spent 9 months being nervous about having the mother role. She didn't want it. She didn't feel it. I had to drag her into maternity stores. Now all of a sudden, after I sympathized and nodded and cringed and smoked, her opinion of the entire situation changed completely. I felt lost. Like I'd been consoling my friend for the better part of a year, only to be tossed aside for the one thing she'd been complaining and crying about.

I hoped that this kid would finally click my ovaries into gear.
But I didn't even want to hold him.