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I'm a sucker for a happy story. Stop laughing! It's true; even though on my own blog I'm more apt to tell you about the annoying, or the mystifying, or the funny-in-a-horrible-way, I am, deep down, a woman with a heart of marshmallow, particularly when it comes to building families.
I'm the woman who wants to hear -- in detail -- everything you remember about the day you gave birth to your son or when your daughter's foster mother placed her in your arms for the first time. These stories make me happy. These stories make me hopeful that the human race really is worth saving, despite our stupidity about so many things.
Call me sentimental, call me a fool, but I believe there's no greater testament to the human capacity to love than stories of how our children came to us and what we felt when they did.
Understand that I'm talking about the happy and truthful stories, here. I'm not talking about the woman who wants to tell you how she was in labor with Junior for 58 hours and started hallucinating flying monkeys right before they sliced her chin-to-crotch to extract her 15-pound offspring, or the tired old just adopt and then you'll get pregnant tale, either. Good stories.
So. You can understand, then, that I was filled with delight to see that Formula Fed and Flexible Parenting has issued a call for posts to be included in a "Happy Birth Days Carnival," set to run June 21st - 27th. Author Alex Elliot says:
I'm encouraging anyone who wants to participate to share your birth day stories. It can be for any child. It can be a birth or it can be an adoption. It can be the birth of your grandchildren, your nieces, or your nephews. It's up to you. Our stories are all different. Some are sheer happiness, some are pain and happiness, some are funny and some are sad. We all have stories though.
Here's how it works. On June 21 I will put up my birth day post and I'll include a Mr. Linky at the bottom of it. The carnival will be open for a full week. At the end of the week, I will use random.org to draw two gift certificates for $10 each to your choice of Dunkin Donuts or Starbucks. You can mentally picture yourself enjoying a cup of coffee and a good pastry on me while all of us in the blogosphere are sitting on virtual couches in a coffee shop reflecting on the birth story that you've shared. Please email me if you are considering participating and would like the code for the button.
I think the enticement of possible gift certificates is somewhat superfluous, myself. Most moms I know are only too happy to cater to a willing audience when it comes to recounting the details of those memorable days. Why, my daughter will happily tell you -- with great glee, of course, because I am not a fast food kind of person -- that after the hospital declared me to be "not really in active labor" and sent me home, her father tried to quell my tears by driving through Burger King and getting me some french toast sticks. (Yes, I ate them. We went home and I got into bed, and about five minutes later my water broke. Good times.)
I marked the carnival on my calendar, then did a bit of poking around on the web for some tales to warm me up for the main event.
20 Years of Birth Stories is a collection of stories by a midwife who's seen all sort of births. Poignant tales, here, many with pictures included (not for the squeamish).
The Dream Continues... is pondering the differences in her two daughters' adoption stories, and what that might mean to them as they grow up.
The Shetty's Adoption Story chronicles their journey to India for their son Ajay, and I dare you to read that entry without grinning ear to ear.
And finally, I have to share this excerpt from Creative Homeschooling is... Thinking Out-of-the-Box!'s "About Me" page, because I just love how it's stuck in there all matter-of-fact:
I have the most unusual birth stories of anyone I know. Child #1 was born at home with a midwife. Child #2 delivered in the Alaskan wilderness with my husband as the midwife…yes, it was planned (long story). Child #3 was born at the Luxor Hotel on the Las Vegas
