Happy Birthing Day, Mom

On my kids’ birthdays, the family joke is that I threaten to tell them the story of their births, labor pains and all.  The joke is it wasn’t something I dreamed up.  On my birthday, my mom and I would always go to the stories of what having a baby was like in her day.  

 Sixty three years ago, if you were lucky enough to have a hospital birth (as my mother was), women were given a general anesthesia, put to sleep, and woke up the next day with a new baby in their arms.  Everyone else knew if it was a boy or girl long before the mother.  New moms stayed in the hospital up to 10 days, “dangling” their legs over the side of the bed on day three or four, finally to walk almost a week after the birth.

How things have changed!! I thank the angels every day for the daily help and counsel my mother gave me after my first child was born.  Even though she was working full time, my mother came over every single evening to help with Neen’s bath and answer questions I wrote down during the day.  A new mother at only 21, I was totally green, and having her near was a necessity, not a luxury for me.  

So today, my birthday, I remember you and miss you, mom, and as my friend Gab would say, “Happy Birthing Day, mom” because my birthday celebration begins with you.  xoxo
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"Motherhood has a very humanizing effect.  Everything gets reduced to essentials." 
~Meryl Streep