Baby-Making Music?

I worked really hard on my labor playlist. It's really lovely. Probably not for anyone but me, though. I listened to it a lot in the days and weeks leading up to Tycho's birthday. It helped me get to a happy, calm, zen kind of place, which was especially important when I was approaching that 42 week deadline.

But I didn't actually listen to it in labor. When I was hanging out at home I felt very content with the normal sounds of a peaceful summer Friday on our quiet dead-end street, so no music. And by the time we got to the birth center, all I wanted was to get into the damn tub, and no one even thought to plug in the iPod, so no music. Tycho was born into silence. Well, silence, plus all my screaming and moaning, of course.

I'm not at all upset about that. It turns out my labor playlist also makes an excellent mellow evening breastfeeding playlist. One night we were listening, and my mom came over to cuddle Tycho. She asked me why I was playing Cat Stevens, as Cat Stevens is not really my usual fare. I told her about the playlist. "This was on mine, too," she said.

We listened longer, and maybe half the songs I had chosen for my labor were on the mix tapes my dad made 26 years ago, that he and my mother listened to while I was being born. Lovely.