Two-Legged or Four-, Most Moms-to-Be Want the Same Thing: Some Relief

I counted at least three heavily pregnant women hanging around the Birthing Center at the Maryland State Fair over the weekend, trying, I think, to pick up a little maternal mojo.

Katie Trumbauer was one of them. The Baltimore 29-year-old isn't due till the end of September, but it looked like she couldn't get much bigger. Her brown cotton dress seemed to be fighting a losing battle with a smuggled medicine ball.

"I wish I was where they are," Katie said, looking toward a Holstein dairy cow whose water had just broken and a 500-pound sow that for the past hour had been squirting out piglets like candies from a Pez dispenser.

I'm pretty sure Katie meant she wished she didn't have to wait another month to have her baby, not that she wished she was flat on her back surrounded by people in shorts and T-shirts eating the sort of foods you can only get at a state fair. (One booth was selling deep-fried peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.)

The Birthing Center is one of the Timonium fair's most popular attractions. Thanks to some timely breeding many months ago, fairgoers can sit in the bleachers and watch farm animals being born.

If everything's been timed right two cows and two sows will give birth every Saturday and Sunday during the fair. (And on Labor Day, of course.) There's a tape recording you can call -- 410-561-5695 -- to see who's due when.

"I have it programmed in my phone," said Lisa Parsons, who was at the fair with her daughters Giulia, 9, and Sophia, 7. Last year they saw a calf being born. "It was . . . interesting," Giulia said. "I didn't like the bubble."

"The bubble," apparently, was the placenta.

Look, I'm not going to sugarcoat this: Birth is a messy process. The cow's water might have broken already, but lots of other stuff seemed to be coming out before the calf made its appearance. After one especially sanguinary display, another mother yelled to her two sons sitting in the front row: "Ethan! Cody! Come on! You're gonna get sprayed."

In the way of all expectant mothers who are heavily pregnant during the hot summer months, the cow -- No. 743, according to a tag affixed to her ear -- was trying get comfortable. She rested on her bed of hay. She stood up. She walked around a bit. She laid down again. We watched her every move.

The sow, meanwhile, was on her side, 10 glistening piglets lined up nose-in beside her like buses at a refueling station.

"Piglets slide out like a wet bar of soap flying out of your hand, whereas with a cow it'll be a very slow process," said Tom Hartsock. The retired University of Maryland animal science professor oversees the Birthing Center. Clad in red overalls and sporting a wireless microphone, he served as the master of ceremonies.