A birth story.

Parenting, I’m realizing, is an exercise in self-annihilation. You take the you you were before having a baby, and you murder it a little. Some part has to go to make room for the new parts. This is an ongoing process.

When they tell you early in pregnancy that your due date is merely a window, the two weeks on either side wide with potential, you nod: Of course, babies aren’t alarm clocks, you laugh, can’t expect them to be punctual! But then my due date came and went and I was supposed to have a baby, and I didn’t, and I went a little crazy.

At many American hospitals they induce on your due date, despite there being little medical benefit to doing so. Our OB was described to us as “a doctor who practices like a midwife,” a compromise — I had wanted a midwife and Vic had insisted on a doctor — but it turned out not to be a compromise at all. This OB is revered in Boston, somewhat mythical. We were lucky. And since she sees so many women of “advanced maternal age” (a gentler term than “geriatric pregnancy,” but still precipitously insulting), she was fine with me, a 35-year-old with a fairly uncomplicated pregnancy, waiting until what she called her “magic window” for delivery, roughly 10 days after the due date. She brought me in for ultrasounds every three days or so, and there the baby was, head-down but serene, we actually saw her yawn once, totally unbothered that she was now four, seven, 10 days past-due.

“You’ve made it too comfortable for her,” the ultrasound techs joked.