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29 At Lamaze “In older times, one in seven mothers died. Today, it’s one in seven hundred,” Nurse Laura states with pride. That means our new friend Lynn, veteran of two C-sections, would have been a skeleton in older times. Mary with gestational diabetes, Sam and her breech baby rot before my eyes. Their husbands mourn, then remarry, if smallpox doesn’t snuff them— or TB, pneumonia, gangrene from a stinkbug bite. The whole thing makes me ache to hug every doctor in sight. Let’s throw a party—prime rib, pastries, open bar—for all pharmaceutical companies. Go ahead and gouge us. Thank you anyway. Let’s chant a hallelujah chorus to biologists who scour the Amazon for wonder drugs. Forget global warming and overpopulation. Forget loss of privacy, confiscatory taxes, infantilization of the nation by The Law. Forget my childhood dream of being Robin Hood. In his twelfth century, I, a breech, C-section baby, wouldn’t have lived to be a father, wife beside me, son inside her, odds great for us all. I adore my privileged American life! I adore my yoga class, executive boxing, electric garage door, security system with its ululating false alarms. I adore my insurance agent, my mortgage company, even the cop who busts me for a bad taillight. I adore sitcoms I never watch, and newscasts full of horrors I survived. We’ll drive our baby home to the crib bought by grandparents who, in older times, 30 would be mold and slime by now. We’ll feed vitamins and Bach to that big brain that makes BIG birth problems, and may solve them all and more some day. Spurred by my boy, I’ll soon damn bills and taxes louder than before. I’ll swear the country rewards sponging, and sucker-punches hard workers like me. Still, even as I declare, “I’m drowning in a sea of lies, pettiness, idiocy,” I’ll know for sure I’ve won life’s lottery. ...

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