Labor

So the other day, Carly and I are out on break talking about the kid she gave up for adoption and how she's glad she gets to see him a lot and how cute he is, when I find the guts to ask,

"I can't imagine how women can go into labor. Does it hurt?"

Pause. Carly tips the ash on her cigarette and takes another deep drag.

"Maybe it's too personal a question," I hedge.

"No, no. It's not that. It's just...it does hurt. But I hate saying that to women who haven't done it yet because it scares them. What I hate the most is when everybody says, 'Oh yeah, it hurts but you forget about it.' No you don't. I mean, I would do it again, but you never forget that kind of pain."

I have never smoked in my life, but kind of wish I had a cigarette at that point. And my legs have unconciously crossed themselves, tightly.

But Carly says she had a particularly bad labor experience. She had to be enduced twice, the drugs the docotrs gave her wore off early, and her son ended up weighing 9 lbs. The nurses had to cut (I didn't ask for specifics) and manually break her water.

Chris' mom, too, was fond of mentioning what a big head Chris had and how it was difficult to get him out.

But as far as I know, my mom's labors were pretty easy.

All of which prompted Chris to say,

"I wonder if there is a boob to labor ratio? You know, the bigger the boobs, the harder the labor."

Both Carly and his mom are well-endowed.

"This is going to sound crazy, but what size bra does your mom wear?"

Then he remembered that other than his "big head" his mom's labor wasn't so bad. He was out in time for her to catch Scooby Doo on the Cartoon Network.

Scratch that theory. And I would also like you to know, folks, that Chris is considering medical school.

Edit: Chris read this and said no, his mom actually did have a pretty rough labor despite getting to watch cartoons afterwards.