Not everyone can be an Earth Mother

The Fates tell me my life story one hot summer night, in a brightly-lit operating theatre.
‘Oh, thank you,’ I say, panicked, ‘but I really must decline. I’m not worthy of the honor.’
‘Ha!’ chuckles the nurse. ‘Lovie, this is no big thing. Cows do it. Cats do it. Mice can do it hundreds of times.’
‘But not with such sensitivity, surely,’ I protest. ‘I’m very well-read.’
‘Everyone in this room has seen your uterus,’ the paediatrician says from his corner, where he sits ready to measure and weigh, measure and weigh.
‘It’s too much,’ I say. ‘It’s a life sentence!’
‘Oh no,’ says the obstetrician, cutting the cord. ‘Right now, she’s just a clause.’
‘Dependent,’ I say.
‘Relative,’ says the nurse, putting my daughter my daughter my daughter into my arms. ‘She will modify you.’