As I write this, I'm witnessing one of the strangest things I've yet seen. Apparently, a woman with whom I am Facebook friends is giving birth right now, and she, and her entire birth-giving-entourage are all in the hospital, updating their Facebook statuses.
First, I noticed her husband's status update, which seems to have also occurred first chronologically. "[Husband] is helping his wife give birth. Yea." Now, a few things. I immediately noticed that he wrote "Yea," instead of "Yeah," which, I guess, means he's trying to speak all biblical, you know, "Yea, verily, I say unto thee, my wife is currently releasing an infant, whilst I update you upon my current activities." But that's just because I always notice when people say "yea" instead of "yeah." Second, his wife is giving birth, and he's somewhere else on a computer leaving a digital note to all his friends. It's not necessarily bad, but it's very, very weird. Now, though I've never been present for the miracle of life [edit: except for that one time], movies and television tell me that the current trend is for the husband to be incredibly involved in the process, with the givings of encouragement and so forth, but television also tells me that this was not always so. It might be the case that he is not even in the delivery room, at the moment, and, perhaps, he's taking a break from pacing back and forth in the waiting room, stroking cigar box. It's sort of a cute blending of the old American tradition of leaving that gross child-birth stuff to the professionals, and the modern American trend of telling everyone every little thing you're doing at every possible moment, via the internet, which I think works through lasers.
But then I noticed the next status update on my feed. "[Wife] is giving brith to her second." Again, I noticed "brith" before anything else, but, I guess I'm willing to excuse the typo, since she's probably dilating to about the size of a toilet seat. But what am I supposed to believe here? Did she actually write this while in labor, or is the husband sitting in another room just logging in back and forth between his and his wife's Facebook accounts, updating their statuses and checking their messages? The second situation seems more likely to me, than a woman in contractions typing on a laptop. But then again, I hear the second child is a lot easier, so maybe they're just hangin' out in the living room, smokin' a joint, updating their Facebooks, and watching some Scooby Doo. At the very least, I like to imagine this to be the case.
But it's not done, yet! "[Friend of Couple] is training to be a Doula - at the hospital with [Wife]." Well, I would have preferred a full dash, not just a hyphen, but, finally, we're getting there. Leave it to the woman to have a cool head in this kind of situation – at least, the woman not currently emitting a child. I actually had to look up the word "doula," which means midwife, and, once I found out what it meant, I was immediately struck by the lie. No, [Friend of Couple], you're not training to be a Doula. You're updating your Facebook status. On that note, I don't know why everyone's Facebook status doesn't read "[Name] is updating his/her Facebook status." You're all a bunch of lying scum, you know that?
Anyway, training? If I were [Wife], I'd like to hope that when my child decides to erupt from my genitals, that my midwife isn't batting with a tee, writing on wide-ruled paper, and riding on a two-wheeler with training wheels. How about a professional?
But, honestly, what the hell is going on? Are they passing a laptop back and forth in the delivery room? What's the doctor's name? I want to friend him, so I can get status updates like "[Doctor] is proceeding with Caesarian presently." I don't know how anyone can be writing Facebook updates while a birth is going on. How can you focus long enough to type out a coherent sentence? They must've hired a stenographer. Is that a new business of which I wasn't aware? Facebook-stenographers?
I feel like this has to say something really meaningful about how our generation is too involved in the internet, or social networking sites, or electricity... we're too involved in something. Or not involved enough. I don't know.
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