Friday Night

There are reasons why I don’t watch YouTube and they are myriad and well thought out, and thoroughly supported by the following story.

Friday night, being exhausted from my long week of being awesome, I turned in to bed, flannel p.j’s and all around 8:45. I thought it would be a good time to check my twitter feed and clicked on a link, which took me to a YouTube video. I can’t for the life of me remember what the initial video was, but the video underneath was, “See a giraffe give birth.” I thought this was a worthy follow up, so I watched a giraffe give birth. As a side note, giraffes make it look very easy and despite the 100 plus pounds of baby, the mama giraffe quickly birthed and went on about her business.  I think it took about 5 minutes total, to which time-wise was the point where I was screaming ,”You did this to me, I hate you!” and “Find the anesthesiologist!!” to my husband.

The video right under the giraffe birthing was one of an elephant birthing (wow, do they have a lot of amniotic fluid) and they are also very no nonsense and quick. The best part; to rouse the baby elephant, the mother kicks it around until it stands up.  I am interested in trying this technique retroactively on my teenagers- I’ll let you know how it works.

 But you see now how my night was rapidly deteriorating. Below the elephant birth, was the NATURAL childbirth of triplets by a very cheeky, earthy mum in Australia, who is now my hero.  I can’t even describe it except to just tip my hat and say, “wow.” I had one and a half natural births and I cannot recommend an epidural highly enough.

Under the triplet birth, was a page titled “In memory of our little angel” which was a memorial to a stillborn baby. I watched 3 more memorials and then I was sobbing.  The hubs and I lost twins early in our marriage and it still hurts to be reminded about it no matter how it happens.

He had joined me around 9:30 and lay happily watching March Madness on his iPad, and I was determined to not let him know I was crying over YouTube, so I strengthened my quivery voice, with lip trembling, and said ,”Babe, how old would our twins be if they were still alive?”  As I said the word “alive,” my voice broke and I started loudly sobbing and he just looked at me, completely taken aback and totally not sure what to say. He said, “What is wrong??” and I told him that I watched a sad video on YouTube and he said, “What are you watching??” 

I then bawled out, “An elephant giving birth…and a baby memorial” to which he said, “Babe, you have fallen down the rabbit hole, why in the world would you watch that??” He did laugh at me a bit on the elephant part, but he helped me calculate that the twins would be almost 18 and I reminded him that I knew they were girls based on a dream I'd had. I cried a bit more and he got me a tissue and scratched my back and I felt better and sort of relieved that I didn't have almost 18 year old twin girls, as that would be hard work. Laters.