Month Nine: Your LaborEvery book will tell you that every labor is unique. This is true, but all labors are unique in their own awful way. Except for one point: during labor, if you take away the epidural and give the woman a gun, she will always use it to kill herself rather than endure the pain. This is not an official study, but who needs official?At first, you will be appalled that women go through this. The pain will seem unreal, or at least unfair. You will hate the world for not telling you how bad things are. You will not be coo-coo-cooing when you see the baby. You will be in shock from the pain. But no one remembers the pain. Really, ask a woman how labor was and she'll smile and say it was awful. She smiles because she remembers that it was intolerable but can't remember why. The first night, when the new baby is in your hospital room, red and screaming and squooshed from your pelvis, that night you will remember the pain. And the next night, you will only sort of remember the pain. Later, you will barely even remember the ardors of the nine-month pregnancy, let alone the pain of labor. And soon you'll get pregnant again. Because your memory of the pregnancy will be short, disjointed pictures of things gone bad, and those memories will not add up to anything substantial.
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