milk and cookies

i was watching a rerun of ‘picket fences’ on friday afternoon, you know, one of david e. kelly’s many emmy award-winning tv series in the 90’s.

what’s that, too old for you to recall? ah, perhaps you remember ally mcbeal better. but i liked picket fences too, for their quirky characters and provoking storylines.

well, anyway, it was a really intriguing episode that day. see, what happened was, a doctor assisted a cow to deliver a human baby. and no, i’m not euphemising the cow as a fat woman, but yes, a REAL cow, those bovine creatures that go moo and chew cud.

apparently, an infertile couple had paid a fertility doctor to artificially inseminate the cow, which they’d bought and owned, with their own embryo. according to ’science’, cows, like humans, have a full-term pregnancy of nine months, and the couple was merely using the cow’s womb as a surrogate. and the baby came out, well, as healthy and bouncy as a human baby would.

now, isn’t that absofreakinglutely mind-blowing or what?!

so anyway, the district attorney brought them to court, saying it’s illegal and all, though there really wasn’t anything in the law to say that it was. the couple’s defense was, getting a cow to carry their baby was less of a hassle in paperwork, they could control the cow’s diet, and there was no risk of the cow changing its mind to keep the baby afterwards. hah!

the judge ruled the baby farm to close down, but in a twist of events, there were a few more cows awaiting to give birth to other couples’ babies. the DA tried to get the babies aborted, but the judge allowed them to be born, seeing that they were human babies with human rights after all.

but he reminded the stupid humans that animals have rights too.

i know it’s just a show on teevee, and it’s all made-up, and i really can’t imagine anyone saying that their child was actually given birth by a COW. i mean, eww! sure, that made breastfeeding the baby oh so much easier (ha ha!) but the idea of a baby coming out from a cow’s privates is just too… icky. (it’s bad enough with female privates!)

then again, it IS america we’re talking about, and well, things stranger than fiction do happen there. all the time. i wouldn’t be surprised if someone really attempted it.

in any case, it left me with something to ruminate (hurhur) over for the next few hours. like, how would grass be nutritionally sufficient for a growing foetus? and since the only sounds the baby hears while inside the womb would be moos and hooves, wouldn’t that affect his language development later? and wouldn’t the blood streaming into the foetus be, well, cow’s blood? would that make the baby, a half cow or a human-cow mutant? and what would happen after the cow gave birth, would it be sent to the slaughterhouse to be turned into wagyu beef burger patties? well, you get the point. i’m sure you have many other concerns, humane or otherwise, to add here…

but now, let’s all thank our lucky stars that our mothers carried us in human wombs and we were squeezed out through human birth canals in time-honoured tradition, just as God intended it.

*****

later that day, i’m reminded of the little things that make mother’s day special.

like, getting that first mother’s day artwork from your child.

no no, aniq didn’t do that! haha!

it was dadam, actually. something he produced during playschool. i mean, you GOTTA go “awwww…”

if you look closely, one of his thumb prints came out clearer than the other coz…

it was his precious thumb! ha ha!

they also made cookies for their mommies. nevermind that the mommy was a little sceptical of her child’s hygiene during the making of the cookie and the child ended up eating the cookie himself, hehee.

i may only be his aunty, but i can’t help feeling all maternal and proud of him (smelly thumbsucking and ear twiddling habit aside). when he talks – and oh my word, can he talk! – it never fails to amaze and delight me.

i can only hope my little one will translate his thought bubbles to speech bubbles just as well some day soon. oh, and my own cookie would be nice too.

“please mak long, can i have some of that cookie? i’ll exchange you for abang dadam’s artwork in one piece…”