Giving Birth Is Super Glamorous And Other Lies I Won't Tell You

Warning: This is going to be a very open description of giving birth with all the love, gore and humor involved. So, if you don’t want details about the rearranging of my lady parts, back quickly away…you pansy.

Before giving birth I thought I was very wise. I was educated. We’d done our reading, our classes and a lot of talking to people who have been down this road before.  I was very “I know better than to think I can plan for this, things happen, go with the flow. I’m cool and mellow.”

At the same time, I was also a pretentious know-it-all who thought I could “handle the pain” and wanted to “do it naturally”, but in the hospital to be safe. One of my sisters didn’t need anything for her three kids and we share genetics, so I was gonna put those birthing hips to use…blah, blah, blah.

 I am an asshole and I ate all of my words.

We’ll get there, but just know that when you spend ten months (pregnancy is not nine months it is ten and everything you know is a LIE) saying, “Anything but an epidural. I will never have an epidural”…there is a very good chance you will end up praying at the almighty altar of the epidural who died for the sins of your uterus.  All hail Epidural forever and ever, amen.

But let’s start at the beginning, which, in the most Los Angeles way imaginable, was a ridiculous salad.

Well, actually, the beginning was a week before, when our doctor told us that things were moving along quickly and I would probably deliver earlier than my January 21^st due date. We called Cat’s mom and gave her the update and she rescheduled her flight to come a week earlier. Then, the following Wednesday (the 14^th) we went back for a check up and things had barely moved…I’d gone from one centimeter dilated to “almost two.” Boo and boring and maybe all this rearranging of plans was for nothing. So the next day, we decided to go out and walk around to help things along. In the morning we went to the Hollywood Costume Exhibit.

Side note: If you are in Los Angeles, go check it out. Beyond the gorgeous costumes and craftsmanship, it is probably the best use of multimedia in an exhibit I have ever seen, the way it has been curated is beyond amazing and very, very worth your time.

After the exhibit, we went home, grabbed the dog and went to Echo Park Lake where we walked some more laps. Then came “the” salad.

It is actually called “’the’ salad”. A famed dish at Cafe Caioti  in Studio City, which apparently has been helping women go into labor for years and years. I heard about it at my friend Meghan’s party a month earlier and thought it would be fun and funny to go eat it while we waited for the baby. So we went. I ordered “the” salad while my wife and her mom got “normal” food and we filled out one of the many notebooks they had where people put their stories and due dates while trying to get this very basic, “magical” salad to open their vaginas.  

 This salad is BASIC. If it was a white girl, it would be wearing Uggs and drinking a PSL, while co-opting the twerk and listening to Iggy Izaela. It’s seriously just lettuce and balsamic, but…

I ate “the” salad at 5pm Thursday night an entire week before I was due, a day after the doctor told me my lady parts were holding fast. It is the last thing I ate before becoming a mother.

I went to bed and did not get to sleep. I was having what I thought might be contractions, but maybe Braxton Hicks? They were irregular and not super painful, so I waited…at 1am they were getting more intense. I got Cat up and told her if they started getting more regular we would start timing them. At 2:30am they were making me PAY ATTENTION. Cat started timing them. Her mom woke up to use the restroom and saw our bedroom light on.

“Is something happening?”

“Maybe.”

A few minutes later she came to check on us again…I was on all fours on the bed panting. She said, “Yeah, that looks real.”

At 3:30am, January 16^th we were in the car headed to Cedar-Sinai.

At the hospital things slowed down. I was “only” dilated about 4 centimeters and they were considering sending me home for a few hours until things progressed, but my blood pressure had risen a bit and they decided to keep me to monitor.  

Blah, Blah, Blah…. hours of boring early labor…Cat helping me go to the bathroom while hooked to an IV…pain…breathing….

The nurses were nice. The first nurse asked,  “Do you want to hear about pain management options?”

“No, I’ve researched them and gone to the classes, but I know I do not want any. Thank you.”

 “Are you sure? It’s easier to talk about them now than later.”

“Nope. I am so good.”

Smile. Deep breathing through a contraction. I totally had this.

Cat and I walked around the halls of the hospital. I used the exercise ball in the room to help relieve contraction pain…the contractions got gradually more intense.

At about 10am they got HOLY SHIT levels of intense. Suddenly, deep breaths weren’t cutting it and neither was the ball. Cat’s poor arm was getting squeezed to the point I am surprised it still works, while I just did my best to breathe.

My very dear friend/family in my heart,  McKerrin, arrived at the hospital at about 11am. I was ten hours from when my contractions had first begun and way, way into being in a lot of pain every 3 minutes. For the next hour, I fought tears, and sometimes cried them, while crawling around my hospital bed and just trying to do anything to make the pain stop.

Also, there is uncontrollable shaking. My entire body just convulses and convulses nonstop…a nurse tells me this is totally normal and due to a surge of hormones and also fatigue. It sucks ass. I’m already in pain and now I am flailing about.

At about noon, Cat asked me if I wanted to reconsider pain management. Yeah. Maybe I did.

The nurse came in again. I asked about options. The nurse and I discussed them. I was unsure. This felt like cheating or letting myself down. I was a warrior woman, earth mother or some shit, right? She sensed my hesitation.

“Should I come back in half an hour?”

 “Umm..”

“15 minutes?”

“How about ten?”

 “Okay.”

 She left so I could think about it.

The second she left a very intense contraction hit. I turned to Cat.

“Go out into the hall. Find the nurse. Tell her I want an epidural right now.”

She did. For sanitation reasons, my mother-in-law and friend were asked to leave for a few minutes while a team of two god-like beings descended from the heavens with their suddenly not so scary needles.

They numbed my back. Cat and the nurse held my hands while I had contractions and held myself still as they inserted the hollow needle with the tube into my spine. I only felt pressure.  Although, when you think about a tube going into your spinal cord…bleh…

Then came pretty quick relief. Not all at once, but the next contractions were much mellower. The angels of mercy told me I did a great job. I professed my undying love and allegiance to them.  They may be my favorite people alive. And then the pain pretty much stopped.

The arc-angels left and the nurse and Cat helped me, and my now dead legs, into bed.

As soon as I got situated something crazy happened.

 The only way I can describe it is if a tampon was shot out of my vagina Nerf gun style, followed by a stream of water at high velocity.

For a split second I panicked. Oh my god, something went terribly wrong with the epidural!

Then I realized and said to the nurse, “My water just broke.” She lifted the sheet. “It sure did.” She gave me a glamorous wipe down and Cat’s mom and McKerrin came back into the room.

Things got a lot happier after the epidural. We all cracked jokes and had a lovely time, while I was only aware of the contractions as an intense pressure and because of the monitor tracking them. Let me just pause to say that the three women I had with me for support were the best, most lovely people I could have asked for.

Everyone got to watch as the nurse inserted a catheter, thanks to my legs no longer working.

Super sexy stuff, but as the night would end with all these people staring into my vagina, it would have been kind of silly to be bothered by it.

There is no dignity in the birthing process…or at least no modesty.

Hours and hours of contractions and nurses sticking their fingers up in my cervix finally yielded the long awaited (about 18 hours into labor)  “You are fully dilated, now we just have to wait for the baby to drop a little further into position. The doctor will be here in an hour.”  Yay! Almost done.  The next hour was WEIRD. With every contraction I could feel her head moving down and water would gush out of me. It was gross and it made me feel like I needed to push even though it wasn’t time yet. Lots of fighting my own urges and being really glad that I was surrounded by interesting and funny women who were distracting me with jokes, anecdotes and book ideas that we still probably should write…

Then the doctor came in. She threw my legs into the stirrups and they turned on the overhead spotlights.

Hello, mother-in-law, hello close friend!…my vagina is now on display and lit up brighter than a Beyoncé concert.  (I like to pretend that is always how it appears in my wife’s mind…well, just the exciting Beyoncé part…not the stirrup part..)

We get down to business and I start to push. We are midway through the first push when the intercom comes on.

 “Is it a good time for visitors?”

We all scream “NO”…I scream it the loudest as I am also pushing.

My long time BFF has just arrived and will now be waiting…but not long. It only takes me nine pushes. Apparently that is super fast. I don’t know because I’ve never done this before, but my doctor is like “woah, that is some kind of record.” The last push sends the baby flying out. The doctor has to catch her fast…I later find out this is because the last push ripped me WIDE OPEN.

I have third degree lacerations. This means my perineum is ripped all the way through to the muscle. Later this will hurt quite a bit…but with the blessed, holy epidural, I feel nothing. Our daughter cries immediately and it such a reassuring sound. She is alive, her lungs work.

They place her on my stomach and I get to look at her little face. They wipe her down with towels. She pees on me immediately. They wipe me down with towels. She pees on me again.

 The doctor spends about 15 minutes stitching me up. I do not care. I have no idea what is going on because I am too busy being madly in love with this perfect little creature and staring in happiness at her, and my wife, and my mother in law and my dear friend. The people I love most meeting this new little person that I get to love most. I feel like I am going to burst.

McKerrin goes to get Alex who comes in to meet the little one as well. Vivienne Diane Staggs is finally here. I’ll spend the next two days in a hospital getting poked and prodded, unable to sleep and needing help to use the bathroom with all my stitches…they will be the best two days of my life so far.