I like my babies like I like my chicken.

A few weeks ago, I was working from home, preparing to take my bestie, Joe, to his neurology appointment.  When I work from home, I often have the television on in the background but I actually get a ton of work done.  Have you ever watched daytime TV?  It's mindless.

I'm a news junkie but by the 17th hour of The Today Show, when Kathie Lee and Hoda were drunk on Bourbon during a segment titled, "Identifying Your Monthly Discharge", I started flipping around, desperate to find anything else.  I stumbled upon A Baby Story and decided that was fine.

My mother is obsessed with this show but, then again, she is obsessed with babies.  My mother can't stand people but she loooooves babies.  I think she secretly wishes her children were all still spitting up and needing a diaper change.  She'd rather play peek-a-boo with me than discuss my financial situation.

I should have known that I wasn't going to like this show.  My mother and I are polar opposites.  I mean, I like babies.  They're cute and they never belong to me, which means I get to leave when there's a meltdown.  But I don't want to spend endless hours with babies.  It's boring.

On that day's episode of A Baby Story, a woman was having her second child, a boy.  What she didn't know (or maybe she did; I don't know how this shit works) is that she was trying to push out a giant, fat watermelon.  She writhed in pain, surrounded by midwives and Douala's and vegans and lesbians (I can only assume).  They put her in a bathtub, which seemed to make the situation worse.  "Get her out of that tub!" I found myself yelling at the television.  I was also hugging my laptop to my chest, my shoulders hunched up into my ears, holding my breath.  This was awful. 

Finally, the Natural Home Birth Squad got her out of the tub and on a table on her hands and knees.  She pooped the baby out, doggy style.  I felt the same way I felt when the villain in Pan's Labyrinth bashed that guys head in with a bottle or whatever it was.  "Ohmygodohmygodohmygod!" 

Completely destroyed, I went to get coffee, with an icky, terrified feeling in the pit of my stomach.  I have known many pregnant women and I love them.  I love feeling their tightly stretched bellies, watching them waddle and making them laugh so they pee in their pants.  The miracle of life or whatever is fantastic and I love babies: they are sweet and cuddly and they smell like macaroni and cheese.  But I do not--DO NOT--want to hear your birth story.

The first birth story I ever heard was when my half sister was born.  I was 12 at the time.  Her mother is hilarious, super intelligent, a little wacky at times and I love her. But she told me details about pushing my sister out of her body that haunted me for the rest of my life. You have to understand: I have never done that and therefore, I cannot imagine doing it.  I sometimes picture myself with a baby that's mine, which I most definitely plan to dress up like a little bear in the winter because that's so fucking cute.  But how it got here, I have no idea. 

It's like chicken.  I like chicken.  It's delicious.  But if I had to go to the store, wring a chicken's neck, chop its head off, remove its feathers, gut it, cut it into appropriate sections and then debone it, I bet I wouldn't eat chicken ever again.  That's kind of how I feel about babies.  They're cute and fun but I'd feel better about it if the stork delivered them.

My opinion is not popular; in fact, women who have had babies may be offended, outraged that I would find the birthing process totally disgusting.  But it is disgusting.  You are not disgusting; your baby is not disgusting.  But all that schlocka and schmitzva?  Let's keep that to ourselves, shall we?