a happy birth story

The first time it happened, I nervously perched on the love seat in my aunt's house. The baby had a penis, which I sort of made out in the ultrasound photo, and therefore all decor came in powder blue - bears, cars, fucking footballs, tangled up in a haze of our cultures' baby boy. The women were gathered to play the baby shower Super Bowl - the worst was the tootsie roll in the diaper game. Surprise! Luckily there was alcohol for the women like myself, who weren't sure they would ever have kids and were horrified by the women who had. Many looked sexless, as though the birth of their child had caused all sexual inclinations to perish and Winnie the Pooh to set seige on their vaginas.
I set to get drunk quick and that's when the stories began. "Look honey, your boobs will never be the same after you breastfeed this kid. If I don't wear a bra it's like there are two pancakes hanging off my chest." Not to mention, "I was in labor for 36 hours until I screamed to the Doctor to get this thing out of me and he got out the vacuum thingy to suck his huge head through ..."  There wasn't enough alcohol to make this a party and I felt terrible for my cousin, who sat silently on the sideline opening box after box of the same onesie 3 piece outfit ready to burst with child and anguish.
I wondered why. Why would anyone have children if this is what birth and parenting reflected? Why would we celebrate life and womanhood in such a perverted and dogmatic way? Why did having children seem to strip these women of their power? And why wasn't the booze taking away the pain or at least speeding up the show?
It would be several years later that I found myself seeking the answers to these grand wonderments but let me tell you, this is a story about birth that you won't hear at most baby showers and it is one that will leave you in awe of your own beauty, strength, and vagina. So please join me in this happy birthing story - it's about a woman (that's me) who found her truth between contractions and discovered what the hell love really is and isn't through birthing two incredible beings.