Planning for the arrival of a baby during the holidays is not easy. Especially since you can’t exactly plan. We tried. Twice.

Our first was due on Christmas eve but arrived a week later. Our second was due on Christmas day but came a week early.

With Zoe, it was December 2003 and we were living in Scottsdale, Az. I grew up in Malaysia, which is as green and humid as Arizona is brown and dry. Everyday, I walked the manicured paths that snaked through our endless suburb, past identical sand-colored houses that looked like nobody lived in them. It was strange to be in a place so barren when I was literally going through the most fertile time of my life. On the surface, everything was brown, brown, brown, including my swelling belly, a giant wedge poking out of my bikini at the pool.

My family flew in from Malaysia on Christmas eve. We had various contingency plans involving picking them up from the airport - if the baby came early, if she was late, if I was in labor. It was my parents’ first grandchild and the anticipation was thick.

They arrived and the baby still hadn’t. We joined my husband’s family in a subdued, restless version of Christmas, as if everyone was holding their breath. I don’t remember much but pictures from Christmas eve show me beached like a whale on the couch, heaving myself up now and then to join in a game of charades. The glass doors reflected overlapping images of Christmas tree and fairy lights inside, cacti and pebbles outside.

My obstetrician was about to go on vacation. My brother had to fly home to work. We induced her on December 30. The family ate New Year’s dinner at the Applebee’s next to the hospital. Afterwards, we toasted with sparkling apple juice around my hospital bed. People still ask us if we rushed the baby for the tax break.

With Maya, it was December 2005 and we had moved to Minneapolis. No bikinis this time, just big wool coats that barely skirted my circumference.

She was breeched. My obstetrician kneaded my belly like a big mound of dough and rotated her counter-clockwise 270 degrees (yes, she tried clockwise first…) as I gripped the railing of the bed. My husband turned pale, grabbed the toddler and fled, mumbling something about not wanting to frighten the child.

The next day, the left side of my face stopped working. I couldn’t shut my left eyelid; my smile was lopsided. I had Bell’s Palsy, a temporary affliction that pregnant women are apparently more susceptible to.

This time, my family arranged to fly in a week after the baby’s due date. 

Maybe because of the steroids I took for the Bell’s Palsy, Maya came a week early. My husband walked me slowly up to the maternity wing of Methodist Hospital, past a Christmas tree. As I huffed my way through a contraction while filling out insurance details, the woman behind the counter grimaced and told me not to blow at her.

Luckily, there were others at the hospital who were more festive. Somebody donated Christmas stockings and roses to every new mother in the hospital. Each baby got a fruit hat knitted by volunteers. The nursery was a riot of fruits and vegetables - oranges, eggplants, apples atop tiny, scrunched-up faces in clear plastic cribs. Maya was a strawberry.

By the time my family arrived, we’d been home for more than a week. My smile though, was still crooked.

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 21st, 2006 at 10:24 pm and is filed under Holidays, Main. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.