Some Thoughts on Giving Birth

The term “giving birth” is pretty bizarre when you think about it. Do we really give birth, like it was some sort of Christmas present? And if we’re giving birth, does that mean that infants are getting birth? Are they supposed to say “thanks for the birth” as they enter this world? Perhaps a nice card would suffice: “Dear Mom, thanks for the birth. I put it on my bookshelf next to the Dr. Seuss books Aunt Linda gave me.” And if it’s better to give than to receive, should we all feel ashamed that we’ve received birth and that we are, in fact, alive? And should men feel even worse knowing that they aren’t capable of giving birth; that they can’t say, “here, I got you some birth for our anniversary”? I suppose the phrase “giving birth” seems so strange to me because it all just sounds a little too simple when you put it like that, like we can all just go to Big Lots and pick out some babies: “I’ll take two of the redheads.” There’s a lot of effort in actually giving birth. Never, at least in my experience, has giving anything been accompanied by screams of pain, a string of expletives and bloody…stuff. We should all really rethink the phrase “giving birth.” It’s a bit misleading.