(A shorter version of the following column can be found in the October issue of Central Penn Parent. I thought I’d post the whole thing here, at the risk of annoying a handful of very good friends and lovely women who wanted, asked for and received ‘push presents.’ I love you ladies, with or without the baby bling.)

The first time I heard the phrase “push present” I thought it was a joke. Surely women don’t need a present in addition to the newborn baby in their arms after having been such an intimate party to the miracle of life. Right?

I was sure no woman I knew would ask for, hint at or demand her husband buy her a necklace or diamond earrings as what seemed to me like the world’s weirdest thank you gift. Who are these “push present” women? I wondered. In their pregnancy-brain-frazzled state do they fail to realize they’ll be able to take the baby home with them? It’s theirs to keep! The coolest gift anyone could ask for! The gift that keeps on giving (and needing and crying and pooping, but that’s not currently important let’s just focus on the miracle of human life)!

Come to find out, not only do I know a few of these women, I know a lot of them. They’re sane, intelligent women and wonderful mothers who happen to like presents and feel entitled to one (well, two, counting the baby) after having just sweated through 40 weeks of pregnancy and umpteen hours of labor. And I completely disagree with them.

Now thanks to parenting magazines and baby-related websites, marketing efforts by the jewelry industry, and celebrity “news” outlets, the “push present” has taken on a life of its own. There is now at least one website dedicated to the push present (www.needapushpresent.com), and online “push present” registries have sprung up as well. Jennifer Lopez reportedly was given $2.5 million custom-made diamond earrings engraved with the initials of the couple’s twins as a “push present” from her husband, Marc Anthony. (He also gave her a $300,000 canary diamond ring. What? It’s twice as hard having twins. I wonder who gets a “push present” after a large and expensive divorce.)

I get that the 21st century in-touch-with-his-feelings metrosexual father-to-be is now more involved in the whole process than ever before, and that’s awesome. He’s reading the weekly “Your baby’s the size of a papaya” emails and he’s daydreaming about wearing the baby in a man-sized Baby Bjorn. If he’s as savvy and sentimental as his partner believes him to be, then he’s been making the midnight grocery store runs for cravings, massaging her swollen feet and listening to her daily litany of pregnancy-related complaints without even a hint of an “Oh God not this again” eye roll.

But he’s still a man, which means unless you show him an article about the concept of the “push present,” or at least bring it up to him (repeatedly), or send him direct links to the gifts you’d like, the chance is very, very slim that he’ll have the foresight to buy, wrap and bring a present to the delivery room. (Because who would think that’s necessary??) Or that he’ll even be able to find and purchase, all on his own, the diamond stud earrings of your dreams, or the silver pendant necklace engraved with the baby’s name and birthstone in the style you really want. My husband is a caring, thoughtful spouse and a doting dad, and the thing he was most concerned about packing in his hospital overnight bag was an adequate supply of snacks and pocket change for vending machines. And yes, he did know I wouldn’t be able to eat during labor and delivery.

I think instead of a sweet gesture orchestrated entirely by the new father, the “push present” is often like the “Valentine’s Day present” in that it has little to do with surprise and initiative and more to do with coercion and guilt. Valentine’s Day, as we all know, is no longer solely a day to express one’s love for another, but a commercialized racket with expectations and hints and demands and resentment. (Incidentally, we already have a “holiday” dedicated to mother-pampering gifts of jewelry and whatnot. It’s called something crazy like oh yeah Mother’s Day.)

I understand that labor and delivery is a frightening marathon of trying to “manage” pain, often heaped with unexpected complications and on-the-spot decision-making. I’ve done it, twice. The thing is, labor is supposed to be hard. It’s LABOR. They don’t call it “party and delivery.” And in a weird way, I like that it’s hard. A woman’s body is absolutely amazing, and never is this fact proven more efficiently than during childbirth. Despite the soft exterior and the way we cry at commercials, we women are tough as nails. When we waddle into that delivery room, we’ve already displayed nine-plus months of strength and selflessness to have succumbed to a process that ravages our energy, our brain power, our food and beverage choices, our waistlines and changes nearly everything about us inside and out.

And that’s before we even start to push.

Which is exactly why I think the “push present” — besides giving women a bad name — cheapens the event and our role in it (even if it costs $2.5 million). Because I GREW A HUMAN and pushed it out of my uterus so that it might draw its first breath, dammit. Getting a bracelet in return seems to lessen the power of that. Telling my husband I expect a token of appreciation in the form of a spa gift certificate for such unspeakable awesomeness feels sort of like assigning retail value to a miracle.