Giving Bean his due (date)

We didn't plan this...
Not just this pregnancy, but the due date.
It's a date that has become a three-digit abbreviation for terrorism attacks.
Our baby boy is due on 9/11.

I have to admit, I mischieviously love cataloging the reactions I get whenever someone asks me. No one, of course, is prepared, so everyone hastens to a "consoling" retort.
Even our doctor beat me to the punch, assuring me that only 5 percent of all babies are born on their due date.
Ever since, the reactions have reached from a helpless raise-the-white-flag, I'm-stumped "oh, my" to the ever defiant, but still patriotic "it's not such a bad day, after all." I'm perfecting a tight look as I anxously stutter the three numbers, just to see the askers struggle...I know, it's bad, but it is too much fun...I do tell people pretty quickly that I'm OK if he is born on 9/11.

To us it means nothing. Not to belittle what happened on 9/11, but if it happens to become our baby boy's birthday, that will take first priority - for us. When he is old enough we'll try to explain why his birthday holds such significance to people outside of his circle of family and friends but mostly we'll be busy blowing out candles, eating fistfuls of cake, and holding the noisiest little-boy birthday party on the block...I don't think anyone can fault us for that. After all, a baby born on that day, signifies that we as a nation push on, move on, live on, and make ammends, and hopefully have learned something along the way.

Just out of curiosity, I "researched" what "disasters" befell mine and Jacob's birthdays, and this is what I found: On my birthday in 1883, Alfred Packer was convicted of cannibalism (not a pretty thought), while 1,198 people drowned in the icy waters of the Celtic Sea in 1915 when a German submarine successfully torpedoed the Lusitania on Jacob's birthday...

...but to our mothers those headlines meant nothing when the water broke (at least we hope so)

Anyways, I can promise you that I will not tip-toe around or hold my breath or otherwise try to avoid labor on 9/11 this year...if I haven't delivered by then, I'll be so big that neither will be possible.