“Thank you, babe,” I said.
He kissed my head and sighed. “The only thing more terrifying than stealing ice cream from an old lady,” he said, “was coming home without it.”
Poor Glen, I had so many cravings. They weren’t weird like pickles, they were just extremely specific and, uh, time sensitive. To have it immediately was almost too late. The act of eating was enough of a middleman, thank you. Early on, I needed green beans, but that seemed easy.
Canned, fresh, I didn’t care. Later, Glen would know to just get whatever I craved and throw it my way, but we were new to this and he wanted me to have the best green beans. It was a day we were leaving Vegas to go to L.A. because he had a show.
“I know the best place to get green beans,” he said, so proud of himself. “Peggy Sue’s.” Peggy Sue’s 50’s Diner is in Yermo, California, almost exactly halfway between Vegas and L.A. “You know you’re going to have to pee halfway there,” he said. “I bet you they have fucking amazing green beans.”
“I’m in!” I yelled.
As we drove through the desert, I just kept thinking about those green beans. As we got off the I-15 freeway, I could taste them. Peggy Sue’s is so cute, an original 1950s roadside diner made to look like you went through a time warp. I could not have cared less in the moment. I ran to the bathroom to pee, then squeezed into a booth.
The waitress came over, all done up like 1954, wearing a turquoise waitress uniform with pink trim and a matching cap and apron.
“What can I get you, hon?” she asked.
“I’ll have the meat loaf, with mashed potatoes, and…” I paused, like everyone knew what I was about to say. “… the green beans, please.”
“We just ran out of green beans,” she said.
She said it so nonchalantly. Going so entirely off-script that the director in me wanted to fire her on the spot. Instead, I burst into tears. Huge, face-to-the-ceiling, bawling tears. I was sitting in the middle of the desert crying my eyes out because I felt so pregnant and all I wanted was green beans.
The waitress looked at Glen and said, “She must really like green beans.”
He nodded and asked for a minute. Glen came over to my side of the booth and held me. “I know,” he said. “I know.”
We decided early on that we were going to have a home water birth with a midwife. I don’t think that pregnancy is a condition, and I don’t want to go to a hospital full of germs unless there’s a reason. I also heard something horrible: hospitals don’t let you eat or drink during labor. Fuck your ice chips, I was doing this at home. We interviewed midwives and we found a lady that I instantly connected with and liked, Sherry. Our plan was that she would be there as an adviser, and Glen would deliver our girl in our tub. The best-laid plans…
Sherry gave us a list of things we needed to have for our home birthing kit. Glen took on the job of getting everything on the list. Sterile gloves and things like that. He would come home every day with something, and he’d proudly cross it off the list.
I can’t remember what the very last thing was, but when he brought it home, he showed it to me, then pulled out a small green aquarium net on a stick. “And I got this!”
“That wasn’t on the list,” I said. “The baby is not a fish, and she’s not going to fit in that.”
“It’s in case you poop in the water!” he said, so proud.
Every range of emotion crossed my face in three seconds. It went from “Ooooh, how ingenious,” to “Oh, God,” disgusted, to “Awww, he is so sweet,” and then horrified that my husband even knew I was capable of pooping. Because we were not that couple. I’d never even heard Glen fart or burp. We believed in separate bathrooms, so outside of sex, our bodily functions were mysterious to each other. The thought that I might poop in front of him, and possibly on him if he’s in the tub with me—Oh, God. It scared me to a point where I thought, Okay, maybe we won’t do this. But then I remembered the “no food” hospital rule and decided this was worth the risks.
My dignity requests that I tell you this is the last we will speak of the net, because it would never be used, thank you.
We were all set in the weeks leading up to our baby girl’s October 31 due date. And then Halloween passed. And then the next day. Then a week. I was as big as a house and had no one to blame but me, but now my ice cream baby didn’t want to come out. My friends told me I needed to schedule an induction, but I didn’t want to go that route. “This baby’s going to come out with a driver’s license,” I said.
We tried everything to get her out. Pregnancy massage, acupuncture, spicy food, sex. None of it worked. Two weeks went by and there was still no baby. Finally, a really good sale put me into labor. We were walking around the Las Vegas North Premium Outlets, an outdoor mall near our house. I got really excited over a two-for-one sale on Juicy Couture leggings. I felt a cramp, and I’d never had any false labor pains, so I knew it was go time.
When we got home it was about five in the afternoon, and by eight o’clock the contractions were every three minutes. We called the midwife and she rushed over in her minivan. I went from zero to seven centimeters in about five hours, so they thought it would be quick. “You’ll have this baby before midnight,” Sherry said.
I thought so, too. From my tub, I could see a high window in the bathroom. I watched the sun go down, I watched the sun come up. I watched the sun go down, I watched the sun come up.
Two days of contractions, every three to five minutes without a break, and no baby.
I tried walking, I tried lying down. I couldn’t sleep and was so nauseous from pain, I couldn’t eat. I would take a sip of Gatorade and throw up two sips’ worth. Sherry kept checking the baby’s heart rate, and she was totally fine. It never dipped, and she wasn’t in distress. So we kept trying.
They broke my water for me with a needle. It sounds like it would hurt, but it just feels like you just peed on yourself. That didn’t work, and I was still stuck at seven centimeters. Glen slept here and there, and finally I slept in the tub. Sherry took a photo of Glen and me both asleep. I’m in the tub, of course, my head on the side, and Glen is curled up on the bath rug. We’re holding hands, even in sleep.
I woke at about 2 A.M. The midwife had gone downstairs to lie on the couch in the guest room. Glen was still sleeping on the mat. I was enormous in the water, and in between contractions, I looked down. I will never forget this moment: my belly churned, went completely flat, and then stuck out again.
“Glen!” I screamed. “Glen. Glen. Get Sherry.” He raced out of the room, and I couldn’t stop shaking.
Sherry came up and was very calm. “Step out of the water,” she said, “and let me check you.” She knelt to examine the baby’s positioning, and as I remember the half-second that a look came over her face, I have to stop typing to collect myself. It was puzzlement, concern, and then real stark fear before she managed to hide it.
“We gotta go to the hospital,” she said.
“What?”
My baby had had enough. She had backed up and flipped herself over to a breech position. “If this doesn’t work,” I imagine her saying on some primal level, “I’m coming out feetfirst.”
“I am calling it,” Sherry said. “You can still have the baby naturally, but I am calling it. We have to go. You have been in labor for forty-eight hours and your water’s been broken for twenty-four hours. We’re going.”
There is nothing like being in full-blown labor and you’re leaking and your husband is trying to put a diaper on you and dress you. Sherry wanted a bucket to put under me in the car, but all we had was a popcorn bowl. They waddle-walked me out to the car. I was so dehydrated and out of it, but I had one moment of clarity when they opened the door to my Escalade.