For the love of everything holy, don’t have a holiday baby

StayAtHomies May 22, 2018

I, Emily, am a holiday baby. I came blazing into this world on the back of a bottle rocket on the 4th of July in the city of brotherly love (or you know, the more traditional way- pried from my morphine-dosed mother in a hospital room full of medical personnel and my father wondering why his child had a full head of black hair).

Things were good at first. I had the grand delusion that it was all for me – the fireworks, the cookouts, the car sales. But then I went to grade school, made friends during the school year, and come time to have them all over for some birthday festivities, realized I had to compete against a holiday much bigger than I. Thus began a string of disappointments what would continue well into my adult life.

My childhood was full of low attendance parties until I made the smart decision to break away from the actual day of my birth and celebrate on one of the adjoining Saturdays.

For my 21st birthday, I was stranded without a liquor store opened in sight for not just the Sunday my birthday fell on (thanks, blue laws), but also the following Monday. What joy is there in buying your first flavored vodka in a plastic bottle from the bottom shelf when you are 21 years and 2 days old? None, I tell you. The momentousness of the occasion is gone.

Throw on top of that marrying a man who, without fail, runs the Peachtree Road Race on July 4th every single year. I selfishly and silently keep my fingers crossed for a minor sports injury to temporarily flair up on July 3rd because I dare not break a tradition 17 years in the making myself, I’d rather let a Charlie horse take care of it for me.

“Why not go yourself?” you ask. Do you want to stay overnight in a hotel with two small children, wake up at the crack of dawn, cram your double stroller on a train, and wait in a large crowd of people in the Atlanta heat to watch the worst parade ever go by? I didn’t think so. I love and support my husband, but that’s stretching it a little too far.

It boils down to this – if you find yourself in labor in a hospital room, your bedroom, or in a cab on the side of the freeway and it’s the day before a holiday, push with a little more gusto. It’s 11:55 pm on Christmas and your baby is crowning? Slip the doctor the Washington twins so she can put 12:01 am on December 26th on the delivery record, then enjoy a mediocre cappuccino from the hospital cafeteria on you. Your child will thank you.

And if you can’t make it happen and you bring that child into the world on Easter? They can join my holiday baby support group that meets biweekly at the local YMCA. We have coffee and donuts.

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