If you ask me, there are just a handful of things that are “better” done outside. S’mores. Water balloon fights. Running. Picnics.
If I spent 10 years adding to this list, I promise you “giving birth” would still not make the cut. Because that’s fucking crazy.
Have you heard of the Lifetime reality show, Born in the Wild? These women have scanned the horizon of what’s trendy in birthing (holistic, drug-free bravery that I respect eternally) and thought, NAW.
NAW, MAN.
For me, ME, this is what’s going to happen. I’m going to pump this kid out in front of many crew members who will never eat rare beef again. My shit is going to make Jane Goodall look like Kim Kardashian. I’m going to thump my chest and say NO THANK YOU to clean linens and cool washcloths.
I’m going to crouch down and let my wrinkled screaming newborn gently slam down into the raw earth that they will again become one with when they die. Circle of LIFE, motherfuckers!
The question everyone will ask is why do this?
You don’t do this in a void.
You don’t crouch with the moistest part of you (aka every bug’s manna) throbbing just inches away from the Earth and then never speak of it again.
Just like the tree falling in a forest needs an audience to verify it’s thunderous move from the sky down to the dirt, you don’t just expel a wet human from your loins into a soaked spot of dank and save the story for your journal. You regale EVERYONE YOU EVER MEET with this tale, PVR’d for the ages.
This is your story to top all stories of all time ever.
A Mommy Wars meets Humble Brag (MomBle Brag if you will) that takes all prisoners.
That part of the evening where chairs get pushed back, cloth napkins catch the crumbs off the side of your wine-rouged mouths, legs cross and uncross, and you gently bide your time. Nodding with a whisper of a smile on your face. Waiting until that perceptible gap in the conversation where you casually drop in, “Well, that one time I SHIT OUT A KID IN THE WOODS…blah blah Montessori blah blah weather blah blah cloth diapers…”
You have a never-ending supply of rebukes, shut downs and one-upmanship that will go a little something like this:
Them: “Juniper is reading! At just 6 months old! She can’t get enough of the Fountainhead!”
You: “Ah. Just delightful. That time I gave birth IN THE WOODS, we used an actual piece of a decaying fountain to scoop the placenta out of some moss and directly into our chia salad!”
Them: “Sidney has opened an Etsy shop to sell her rainbow loom tourniquets!”
You: “Remember that time a family of ladybugs and silkworms spun a tie-dyed web net to catch my kid when I gooshed it out IN THE WOODS?”
Them: “Sherman is graduating head of his class – Sylvan really is great at making nerds!”
You: “How wonderful! We just received a Graduation Letter, illegibly written and hand-delivered by a one-eyed crow, from the six generations of robin red breasts that attended the birth of my kid IN THE WOODS.”
Them: “I think I want to use Songza for my birthing playlist – they just get me.”
You: (Delighted chortle): Great idea! The sweet yodelling serenade Tarzan bestowed upon us when I GAVE BIRTH IN THE WOODS will be stuck in my head forever.”
One thing these vagina Amazons may not have considered is the butterfly effect. Bringing your birth story into a meadow near a stream disturbs that piece of nature and every wildlife creature nearby, now hugging itself and rocking back and forth. There is a good chance your actions could severely alter everything we know and hold true. The badgers and foxes and beetles and salmon and mosquitoes that hear your deep guttural wails have a new marker in their DNA. Feel that? That’s a perceptible shift. That’s risky business, wild women.
All I’m saying is that if you’re okay with a new world where a raccoon can be President, then keep on keeping on. But if you ask me, that’s fucking crazy.