January 8, 2026
Dear Sophie-to-be,
Your very pregnant mother was feeling unfamiliar pain last night, and that made her anxious. Just because she didn’t know what was happening. She felt it again in the middle of the night but she didn’t wake me up. And again this morning. She didn’t want me to leave – not even the room – without telling her where I was going.
“I think I’m mostly afraid of feeling alone in this,” she said.
I skipped the yoga class I’d been planning to attend, and most of the work I’d had planned for the day too.
From what I have read, feeling supported, especially by one’s partner, is the most important predictor of being able to give birth without complications, to start breastfeeding successfully, and to bond with the baby. All of which, in turn, leads to a healthier, happier, smarter, more resilient child.
It’s a no-brainer, those of you partnered with a pregnant woman:
Show the hell up.
I can’t even imagine what my mother went through. By the time I was born, she had felt months of abandonment by the man who’d proposed to her, and terror for our future.
During the pandemic I read the letters, her desperate letters to him, in the spring and summer of 1966, as something that would become an I gestated within her.
Your mom’s doula texts me at just before 8am, asking if your mother was okay, saying she had texted her but had not heard back. I answer:
She seems to be. Her main concern has been psychological, I think. She is worrying that if she makes too much of this pain, she’ll end up “feeling stupid” if it turns out not to be labor.
I told her there’s nothing to feel stupid about because she’s just describing what is happening, not shouting, “I’m having a baby now!”
Later, after doing the Miles circuit (a series of postures and exercises that may help to induce labor) and taking a nap, your mom says she’s tired of waiting. Wants the baby out now. She’s frustrated!
I mansplain and Buddhasplain that the baby isn’t late and that your lovely mother simply got attached to a meaningless number, January 6. We’ve already blown through that date.
Lifting up one leg at the angle of a very pregnant woman delivering a karate kick, your mother offers to give me that vasectomy we’ve talked about, right here and now, at home.
