Yesterday I called my sister to complain that my son insists on lying so his head is sticking out my side.  If I lay on my side, he stands up inside of me.  His head comes out one end and his little feet stand on the bed.  OK, I actually called to see at what point I should worry that he isn't in the right position.  My sister, of course, got all freaky and mystical on me.

J:  He'll turn.  Maybe you just need to light a candle and tell him to turn.

My sister then asked me if I could see the baby being born, actually coming from my body.  Although we were on the phone, I could see her making the flowing motion with her hands from the top of her body to out her vagina. 
I told this to my husband.  He wanted to know if this was the same as being picked to do the half-court shot at the NBA playoffs halftime that nets you a million if you make it. 

D:  Is this like seeing the ball go into the basket is what helps you make the basket?
K:  Kinda.  But without the million dollars at the other end.  Just a 15 1/2 inch head coming out a hole the size of a Sharpie. 

I decided to go the honest route with my sister. 

K:  Uh, no. 
J:  That's OK.  With your Myers-Briggs letters, it's amazing you will even allow me to engage in this kind of conversation, let alone actually foreseeing your child being born.

Shit.  I can't even remember my MB's letters.  Which to my sister, if you need a correlation, is like a nun owning a Maplethorpe original.  I vaguely remember that I'm almost the total opposite of my husband, I'm an extrovert (that's a tough one to call, huh), but other than that I'm lost.  I figure now is NOT a good time to tell her that not only can I not envision my son's birth, he is almost exclusively a girl in my dreams.  Dear Lord, that would kill her.  What I could envision is myself lying on her couch with my feet propped up being shrunk for hours. 

I'm fascinated by this whole "giving your body permission to do something" line of crap.  I remember being in labor for 22 hours and my sister telling me that maybe I just needed to give myself permission to give birth.  At that point if someone had told me to kill a goat's calf and roll around in its blood in order to give birth to the Ted Kennedy bobble-headed baby, I would have done it.  I'm sure his delay in arrival had nothing to do with his little hand by his head, the umbilical cord wrapped around his neck or the fact that his collosal head, I don't know, WAS TRYING TO COME OUT THE FAT SIDE RATHER THAN THE SKINNY SIDE. 

Don't get me wrong.  For the Type A's out there, I think it is all about permission.  I knew a girl that had a To-Do list of things that absolutely, positively HAD TO GET DONE before she gave birth.  Five days late, I think she finished the last thing on her list--something really important like alphabetizing and chronicalizing her utility bills.  Poof, she went into labor and had a baby.   

Needless to say, I was desperate and told The Boy to come out right now because if they had to cut me open to get his FAT HEAD out after 25 hours of contractions every 90 seconds (you read that right), I was never going to forgive him.  Never going to forgive him in a "and did you know that Ethan wet his bed until he was 5" after the introduction to the first girlfriend kind of lack of forgiveness.  True to the personality that he is today, he listened to me in the same half-assed fashion then as he does now--hours later and rather painfully. 

What's your guess his brother is going to be just as accomodating?  I'll tell you what I envision.  9:30 pm curfews all around.  Payback is a bitch.