On his deathbed, a wealthy man in Toronto decides to make some trouble. Hundreds of babies are involved. Stephanie Foo tells the story.

MaryEllen Bowman tells Ira about celebrating her 22-year-old daughter Rachel Hala’s baby shower this week. A year ago, she says, she was planning her daughter’s funeral instead.

Gloria Harrison was pregnant and in labor when she decided that the thing she needed to do before heading to the hospital, was go to the Nissan dealership and buy a new car.

Ira Glass explains that, like the rest of America, we at This American Life are not tired of those stories of women who have no idea they're pregnant and then—poof—one day a baby pops out. Ira and several of our producers speak with Jennifer Lyne, who found out just a few days before giving birth and even appeared on the TV show I Didn't Know I Was Pregnant.

Jonathan Menjivar has been thinking a lot about 2010 lately, especially about one upcoming event: The birth of his daughter. Jonathan's one of the producers of NPR's Fresh Air.

Jonathan Goldstein retells the classic Christmas story, trying to understand what exactly goes through the mind of a man about to become surrogate father to The Lord. Jonathan's the author of Ladies and Gentlemen, The Bible!.

A lot of life's inevitability is hazy; it'll happen some time, but you're not sure when. But with pregnancy, it's on an invariable schedule: forty weeks.