Quote of the Day: Paper Trail of a New Life

"Under the page headed, 'Rywalt, Dawn' was a truly mind blowing page: the one headed, 'Rywalt, Baby'. This was a sudden and sharp reminder that we were not just sitting in a plush room filling out form after form; we were starting the paper trail of a new life who would one day have forms of their own to fill out. In a strange way, I found that seeing the tentacles of the relentless bureaucracy of America reach out for our baby was more stunningly solid proof of what we were getting into than feeling the baby move. It was almost as if this baby wouldn't be a person until the government said they were, and here we were filling out the forms to ensure that recognition in the form of the baby's birth certificate. And now I recognized the baby's personhood, too." Christopher Rywalt, It's Just Another Baby