Success! My Baby Wasn't Born on Donald Trump's Birthday
Some final thoughts before I have this baby
Good news: the fetus I’ve been carrying for the last nine months does not share a birthday with Donald Trump. In the words of the Vice President: We did it, Joe!
This isn’t a birth announcement. I haven’t given birth to her yet. That will probably happen within the next 24-48 hours. But what’s important is that I’ve evaded the Big Boss of contemporary bad birthday twins.
We’ve all got bad birthday twins. History has produced too many bad people and there are not enough days in the calendar year for any birthday to be exempt. My sister Mary and I recently played a game called “Who Has The Worse Birthday Twin?” to beat boredom on a family trip and discovered that she shares a birthday with Osama Bin Laden, James Earl Ray, and corrupt former FIFA head Sepp Blatter. My worst birthday twins are famed sex pest Kevin Spacey and former (very short-time) conservative British PM Liz Truss. My brother shares a birthday with Yevgheny Prigozhin, the Russian oligarch head of the mercenary Wagner Group, and Brigham Young. Mary wins.
Still, when I found out that my due date for this pregnancy was smack in the middle of June, the first two things I thought were: oh great, a Gemini to join the Scorpio child I already have and oh no, this kid better not be born on June 14, Trump’s birthday and also Flag Day, an objectively silly holiday given how much Independence Day, at its best, kicks ass.
But we’re out of the woods now. Flag Day is over. I’m now 40 weeks pregnant. And not to brag, but I’m pretty sure I’m one of the most pregnant people in the entire world right now.
My feelings around what will have to happen over the next weeks– labor, birth, taking a newborn home and dealing with the fact that it still thinks it’s one of my organs– are more complicated this time around. Maybe because I know more about what I’m getting myself into. With my older daughter, I had no concept of how truly self-nullifying the act of birthing and mothering a newborn feels. I didn’t know just how much the postpartum period sucks. Being excited to give birth feels a little bit like being excited to get into a serious but survivable car accident.
Last time my body was this round and uncomfortable, I didn’t have another kid around who I’ve been raising and caring for these last two and a half years, on the cusp of having most of my attention taken away by some baby I’ve never even met. I look at my two and a half year old daughter and I feel guilty, although ultimately, one of the main reasons that I wanted to have another child was because I wanted her to have somebody to sit next to at her parents’ funerals. I wanted somebody to share the burden of going through my clothes when I die. I wanted her to have somebody to conspire alongside.
But I have no idea if they’ll even like each other. I’m just being hopeful.
Everybody warns me that kids regress when there’s a new baby around. Juniper has shown some signs of it that seem normal, but still break my heart a little. I invited her to help me sort the baby’s secondhand clothes, and my daughter tried to fit a size NB onesie over her head. “No, I said,” that’s for the baby.
“I can be a baby again,” she said.
It’s hard not to feel maudlin about all this, but also know that there’s no path forward from here that isn’t emotional. If I were not going to have a second child, I’d be mourning them and the sibling my daughter would never have. Since I’m not having a boy, I’m mourning the fact that I’ll never have a son. If I were having a boy, I’d mourn the fact that I was not giving Juniper a sister. I’m mourning the freedom that we won’t have for the next few years, the fact that we’re starting all over again just as things with Juniper were starting to feel a little bit less desperate-chaotic and a little more funny-chaotic.
There are two things that I’m looking forward to with pure joy, though: eating oysters again, and sleeping on my stomach.
See you all on the other side.