The "Beauty" of Birth

I can go ahead and tell you: there is nothing - absolutely nothing - quite as baffling as seeing a human body emerge from another human body. Nothing.

Go ahead. Convince me that I'm wrong. I dare you. Until then, just trust me. THIS IS NOT THE WAY THIS IS SUPPOSED TO HAPPEN.

Now, I understand human biology on an elementary level. I know that, as mammals, females carry other humans around in their stomachs for some time. Their hormones get all bugged out and their moods often change. Sometimes they want to eat some weird stuff. When the kid's ready to come out, the kid comes out. And then you have a kid.

So, tell me why I looked down in the delivery room to see my kid's head hanging out of my wife's lady parts, gasping for air. Do you understand what I am saying to you? Of all the crazy mammalian features my wife inherited and has kept secret from me for so long, this is the one I'm privileged to witness?

Birth, they say, is a beautiful thing. But I want to tickle your imagination with something I think is just as grotesquely odd: A child, Bobby, is born into this world in a completely normal fashion. Let's say a stork flew him in wrapped in a towel. He grows up and lives a normal life, going to school, getting a steady job, supporting a family, and growing old. Just before dying, Bob goes to see his mother, who is still living. After hours of beating her until she can take no more, he commences to crawl inside her, completely engulfing his body with hers. Then he passes on.

If that was the natural way of life, would you call it a beautiful thing? I wouldn't either. In fact, I bet you are thinking I'm a sick person for even thinking this up.

And just for the record, I didn't think my kid's birth was necessarily ugly or anything. I wasn't grossed out. It was so far off the map of reasoning and logic and reality that it fell outside the realm of attractiveness.

Look. My point is, birth is incredible. It is the culmination of the miracle of conception. And maybe therein lies the beauty. Or maybe I'm missing something. Perhaps a tiny human head appearing between a woman's legs is beautiful. But if it makes me a crazy person to think otherwise, I don't want to be sane.