{"id":278,"date":"2025-01-31T08:50:41","date_gmt":"2025-01-31T08:50:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thejournalingmagazine.com\/?p=278"},"modified":"2025-01-31T08:50:42","modified_gmt":"2025-01-31T08:50:42","slug":"the-day-i-gave-birth-to-an-octopus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thejournalingmagazine.com\/index.php\/2025\/01\/31\/the-day-i-gave-birth-to-an-octopus\/","title":{"rendered":"The Day I Gave Birth to an Octopus"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image alignleft size-full is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"500\" height=\"325\" src=\"https:\/\/thejournalingmagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/ripley-feat-500.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-279\" style=\"width:382px;height:auto\" srcset=\"https:\/\/thejournalingmagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/ripley-feat-500.jpg 500w, https:\/\/thejournalingmagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/ripley-feat-500-300x195.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>It sounds absurd, doesn\u2019t it? Giving birth to an octopus? Yet here I am, telling you it totally happened.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Not metaphorically. Not in a dream. A real, flesh-and-tentacles octopus emerged from me.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Sort of.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The kind with eight limbs that multitask better than any human ever could; though, to be fair, they do lose their phone mid-task just like the rest of us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>When it moves like an octopus, it looks like an octopus; it must be an octopus right? I mean, what even are those limbs? Arms? Legs? Something in between?&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Whatever they are, they\u2019re capable of cooking dinner, brushing teeth and drawing and painting 10 different realistic artworks with all those hands and feet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>As you probably suspected, the whole giving-birth thing was like being drop-kicked into the ninth circle of hell, then clawing my way back up, only to realize I left my dignity somewhere between having NOOOO contractions at all, a nurse staff that was only busy watching world championship ice-skating and my mom and husband attacking them to force them to help me after 3 days of birth hell.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>(Also, I\u2019m working on a book about it. Translating it into English takes forever when you\u2019re also managing life post-octopus.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Now this very octopus-person-daughter is documented in the worldfsmous \u2018<a href=\"https:\/\/www.rajacenna.com\/multi-task-queen-in-ripleys-believe-it-or-not\/\">Ripley\u2019s Believe It or Not<\/a>\u2019 book. How about that; big eyes emoji here.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>If they hadn\u2019t, I\u2019d still be just as proud; because surviving the absolute disaster that was her birth, felt like a world record in itself.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It sounds absurd, doesn\u2019t it? Giving birth to an octopus? Yet here I am, telling<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":281,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[100,52],"tags":[118,120,119,121,117],"class_list":["post-278","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-artspirationals","category-journal-tales","tag-birth-to-an-octopus","tag-mom-stories","tag-octopus","tag-octopus-story","tag-rajacenna"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>The Day I Gave Birth to an Octopus - The Journaling Magazine<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"It sounds absurd, doesn\u2019t it? Giving birth to an octopus? 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