Here’s the announcement a hypothetical mama might send:

The Naptime Writing Family blissfully welcome Hazelnut Nutella Naptime to the world! He made his entrance March 23 weighing 7 pounds 3 ounces and measuring 19 1/4 inches. Mom, Dad, Peanut, and Hazelnut are all doing well and can’t wait to get to know each other.

But here’s the announcement a hypothetical mama really wants to send:

The Naptime Writing Family joyously announce the arrival of Hazelnut Nutella Naptime! He reluctantly joined our family March 23 after 41-plus weeks of gestation and 47 hours of labor. His mama made it through 41 hours of unmedicated labor and arrived at 10 cm dilation just in time to pull a muscle in her back. She lost all ability to cope and sobbed for two hours about acquiescing to an epidural. Hazelnut’s ginormous melon was facing posterior and get stuck under mama’s skeletal structure, so five hours of pushing wasn’t enough to get him to join the air-breathing lot of us. Mama Nappy’s doc offered several unacceptable options and Hazelnut got forced into reality with heroic pushing and expert, though traumatic, vacuuming.

Unfortunately, that mode of birthing left mama in shambles, and she bursts into tears every time someone says, “well, at least he’s healthy” or “you’ll heal” because she knows that and really wishes you’d say something supportive instead of dismissive (unless you, too, are currently sporting more than two dozen stitches in your lower body, twenty pounds of active volcanic rock on your upper body, and have made it seven days on approximately 20 hours of sleep).

Mama and Hazelnut are resting at home, where Peanut is as sweet as can be to his baby brother, and as terrible as he can be to his parents. Hazelnut is perfectly delicious, opinionated, and ravenous. His doting family are surviving just on nips of his sweet breath and heavenly sounds and hoping things get a bit easier.

But we’re not holding our breath.