What If Our Baby Is Overdue?
What if our baby is overdue and just doesn't seem to want to come out?
I have no idea what I would do if Baby's due date came and went and I was still sitting here twiddling my thumbs nine days later. I mean, really, I know it's not that uncommon, but it would still be totally crazy. Right?
...And here we are. Baby was due to be born on April 3, and it's now April 12, with no imminent signs of labour. We've been into the hospital a couple of times for ultrasounds, to make sure everything's okay, and all of the signs are good, so the waiting continues.
It's begun to feel like this Baby isn't actually ever going to come out. We're just going to go on indefinitely, with Larissa having difficulty standing up from the couch and me giving her back massages.
Despite that feeling, we have another ultrasound tomorrow, and then we're on the induction list for this weekend, pending the results of the ultrasound. So one way or another, this baby is coming out sooner rather than later!
And when our baby comes out, no matter what professions or hobbies it engages in once it grows up, I know it's going to be my favourite baby I've ever met.
What If Our Baby Grows Up To Be An Astronaut?
What if our baby grows up to be an astronaut?
Awesome. Seriously. Astronauts are so super cool. Our baby could be the first human to set foot on Mars! If reading science fiction novels has taught me anything, it's that colonizing Mars is a vital and inevitable "next step" for human development, and there's no possible complication or danger involved with pursuing that goal.
Er, right. Maybe that's not the case. I think I may be misremembering Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy. Never mind.
I guess one downside to having an astronaut in the family--especially if they flew to Mars--would be that they would be gone for long stretches of time. That would be quite the sacrifice! I want to have my babies close to me all the time and forever. That's a viable plan, right?
Regardless of the downsides, having a child grow up to be an astronaut would be really great. Not only would it mean tons of boasting privileges, but it would also mean that NASA got its act together and started being cool again. The fact that they aren't doing any more manned space flights makes me sad...
If you were an astronaut, where would you most want to travel to?
What If Our Baby Grows Up To Be Prime Minister?
Personally, I find politics very frustrating and unappealing. Don't get me wrong: I think politicians are important people, and we need to have good people out there who aspire to be great politicians. For myself, though, I find the partisanship, hostility, and negative campaigning tactics really exhausting.
But if our baby decides to go into politics, then I'm going to do everything I can to help him be a good politician and to become Prime Minister! Because if our baby grows up to be Prime Minister, I'll probably get to meet lots of famous people, and that's always fun.
I'll help our baby run straightforward election campaigns and never stoop to smearing his opponents or trying to dig up their personal histories to make them look bad, like all the other politicians out there do. I'll advise our Prime Minister baby to do what he knows is good and right, regardless of the public outcry.
Then I'll get him to declare my birthday a national holiday, of course. Hooray!
What If Our Baby Grows Up To Be A Coal Miner?
Oh man. What if our baby grows up to be a coal miner?
Here's a job that would really worry me. It's scary, dirty, and dangerous. Plus the burning of coal is really bad for the environment! It's hard to imagine a more nerve-wracking job that our baby could grow up to have.
Okay, maybe it isn't that hard. I have a pretty good imagination. Our baby could be a test subject for poison research, or a body double for the Pope, or a soccer referee in South America, or a rodeo clown. Actually, a couple of those would be pretty awesome. I'd definitely rather have a rodeo clown than a coal miner.
If our baby was a coal miner, I'd buy her lots and lots of canaries to test for poisonous gases in the tunnels. She'd basically go to work every day surrounded by a solid bubble of canaries, so they could breathe all the black lung around her, like a filter system.
Aw, poor little canaries. They'd be dropping like flies, I bet. Maybe we shouldn't let our baby become a coal miner. I'm not sure I could have so many canary murders on my conscience.
What If Our Baby Grows Up To Be A Volcanologist
What if Larissa's and my baby grows up to be a volcanologist? It's a very real possibility!
I think I'd really like having a volcanologist in the family, if for no other reason than that I would get to say "volcanologist" a lot. The word's even fun to type, let alone speak out loud. Try this out: insert "volcanologist" into one conversation and see how much it improves your entire day. Add the word "eruption" on top of that, and you've got endless funtimes.
I'm not much of a worrier, but I think I'd probably get a little tense if I knew that my baby was staring into the mouths of volcanoes all day. I wouldn't want to hear that my kid was playing the starring role in a real-life disaster movie. And lava may be one of the most compellingly imaginative substances in the entire world (major props to God for inventing it, by the way), but it's also super scary. If there's one thing I've learned from classic video games, it's that touching lava will kill you instantly. And it destroys magic rings, too.
I think I could get over all that, especially if we continue to live in the Ring of Fire. Here on the west coast it would certainly be useful to have some inside connections with earthquake- and volcano-predicting agencies... That would be a definite plus!
As with anything, there would be positives and negatives to having a child who was a volcanologist.
Volcanologist. Tee hee.
Thanks to @meaganhogg, who suggested that I do a What If Our Baby post about being a geologist. I liked the suggestion, but I hope you don't mind that I decided to take it a step further.
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