Baby, You Can Drive My Car

On September 21, I gave birth to my third child.

Because I wanted to keep thing relaxed yet upbeat, I listened to my Beatles mix throughout labor. The music kept me happy and calm, and I looked forward to seeing what song my baby would be born to.

At one point things got very intense, and I knew it would be time to start pushing soon. What would the next song be? Something optimistic, like “Here Comes the Sun”? Something sentimental, like “In My Life”? Something soothing, like “Let it Be”?

No. It was “Drive My Car,” which, if you’re not familiar with it, is not sentimental, soothing, or particularly optimistic. In fact, it’s downright goofy, about an up-and-coming starlet looking for someone to drive a car she doesn’t yet own.

It’s not that I don’t like this song. It is, after all, on my playlist. But it was not a song I wanted my baby born to.

At that moment, however, the last thing I wanted to do was move, not even to fast-forward my iPod. So I resigned myself to the fact that my baby might be born to that ridiculous song.

But then it occurred to me that we were smack-dab in the middle of National Child Passenger Safety Week. What better time for a CPST to have a baby, and what better song to give birth to?

As it happened, the baby wasn’t born until two songs later. (That song, by the way, was “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds,” which I’m still trying to justify somehow.)

However, I just wanted you all to know that even in the midst of transition, I was thinking about car seats. But is anyone really surprised?