“Not in my Escalade,” I yelled to Sherry. “We’re taking your minivan.”
We three burst out laughing. “This is an eighty-thousand-dollar vehicle,” I said. “I am not giving birth in it.”
So there I was in a minivan, sitting over this bowl.
“IF I HAVE THIS BABY IN A POPCORN BOWL IN A MINIVAN…,” I yelled as we raced to the hospital. “I WORKED SO HARD TO GET OUT OF LOUISIANA. YOU ARE NOT GOING TO DRAG ME BACK TO MY ROOTS.”
We got to the hospital at close to 3 A.M. And this is important for the world to know: the intake nurse at St. Rose Hospital was a fucking bitch. Lady, please come to a book signing and stand in line so that when you get to me I can call you a bitch to your face. She gave us attitude because we weren’t preregistered at the hospital and made it as clear as possible that she was not a home-birth supporter.
I was already terrified, but now I was worried that I was going to deliver this baby with a doctor that I had never met before. And in walks Dr. Steven Harter, the most sought-after obstetrician in Las Vegas. With his pro-mom approach and amazing bedside manner, women plan their entire births around his availability. And here he was, on rotation that night.
“We think that you are too tired to push and your body knows that,” Dr. Harter told me. “Because if it finished dilating, you won’t have the strength to get the baby out. So, your labor is stalling. Here’s what we’re gonna do. We’re going to give you an epidural so you don’t feel anything, which just means you can take a nap. You won’t feel your contractions, and I bet when you wake up you’ll be refreshed and ready to push.”
“Okay,” I said, “sounds great.”
The anesthesiologist came in to give me the epidural, and Glen’s face went white at the sight of the needle. The anesthesiologist put it in, and the pain went away immediately. I was so thankful, I tried to kiss the anesthesiologist.
Thirty seconds after my pain completely went away, hunger pangs started, as if my stomach was going to rip itself open. I hadn’t eaten for two and a half days, and the epidural couldn’t mask that. There was no way I could sleep when I was this hungry. A nurse happened to come in to ask if there was anything she could do for me.
“I’m starving,” I said. “Is there some food—”
“You can’t have anything to eat,” she scolded. She said something else, but all I heard was “Blah blah blah ice chips.” And she left.
I waited until that door closed.
“Glen, come here,” I said. “Closer.” I reached up my hand, as if to gently touch his face, and I grabbed him by the throat.
“Vending machine. Now.”
“But she said…”
I tightened my grip. “Okay,” he croaked out.
He came back with an armful of stuff. “I didn’t know what you wanted,” he said. “Pick what you want.”
“Yes,” I said, grabbing everything.
I ate everything and then passed out. Glen immediately fell asleep in a chair across from me because he was so exhausted, too. Two hours later, in came the nasty intake nurse.
She pulled back my covers and shrieked. I was covered in crumbs and wrappers.
“WHAT?” I said, with all the menace I could muster. “What?”
She huffed and walked out, saying she was going to tell the doctor. Snitch. Dr. Harter came in and was cool about it. “It’s fine,” he said. “You’ve been through a lot.” He checked my cervix and there was still no progression. He told me the only thing they could do was give me Pitocin. I had been against inducing, which is what Pitocin is all about, but I was willing to try anything at that point. Besides, every hour I was at the hospital, I was running up a bill. All I was hearing was cha-ching, cha-ching.
At seven in the morning there was still no progress, so I scheduled the C-section. Now, I already told you that I was paranoid about being in a hospital. I have to tell you that I also had an irrational fear that someone was going to give me the wrong baby. Judge all you want, but that’s the kind of thing that would happen to me. I knew it takes like a minute to get the baby out and twenty minutes to get you back together, so I made Glen promise that when they took the baby out of the operating room, he had to go with her.
Fun fact: when they give you a C-section, most doctors strap your arms down. Dr. Harter said he could take the straps off, thank God. “You promise you’re not going to sit up and reach down and pull out your own organs or punch me in the face?”
“I promise,” I said.
Glen had his camera and filmed the whole thing. It is graphic as fuck and it took me a long time to watch it. It’s very… red.
Dr. Harter had his iPod going during the surgery and was rocking out to Led Zeppelin. The moment my daughter was born, Alanis Morissette’s “Thank U” filled the room. Once again, Alanis was there with just the right song at just the right moment. Dr. Harter pulled her out and said, “Oh, boy!”
“What?” I said. “It’s a girl, right?”
“Oh, yeah,” he said. “She’s just so big.”
He handed her off to the nurses, and they took her over to a warming cart to weigh her. She was almost nine pounds and long, twenty-three inches. But the room was very, very quiet, with only Alanis singing.
The baby wasn’t crying.
I know from the video that the nurses looked quizzical and started rubbing the baby. Glen put the camera down. In the video, you just see the floor and only hear us talking.
“Wha—what’s wrong?” he says. “Something wrong?”
They don’t answer but focus on rubbing her.
“Step back for a second, sir,” says a nurse.
“What’s wrong?” Glen asks again.
“WHAT’S WRONG?” you hear me scream.
Our baby let out the smallest cry.
“All right, she’s good,” says the doctor.
Then my husband let out the biggest cry. Glen, who had stood by me through all this, who had been so scared for me and for her, broke.
You just hear him sobbing on the video, sputtering out, “She’s—” Sob. “So—” Sob. “Beautiful.”
It sounded so funny and ridiculous that I slapped my hand to my forehead. As soon as he left with the baby and two of the nurses, the remaining nurses broke into laughter. I started to laugh and they had to yell at me. “Stop laughing!” one said. “Stuff is gonna fly out of you.”
“Well,” said the doctor, “he’s an emotional guy.”
“Yeah,” I said. “He feels things.”
“All right, look,” he said, conspiratorially. “I made your incision especially low and very small. I’m going to take extra time closing it up.”
“Oh, thank you,” I said.
Dr. Harter smiled. “I’m gonna have you back in front of the camera in no time.”
I had never told him who I was, but he recognized me. I smiled back at him. And yes, I have the best C-section scar. I love my fans.
SEVEN
At first, I figured it had to be about the cigarettes. Glen quit smoking the day our daughter was born, so maybe that was the problem. Then I thought it was lack of sleep and the stress of being a parent to a newborn after a traumatic delivery—all of those things are very normal. Because within the first few days of her life, Glen went completely, well, insane.
I like to say I didn’t get postpartum depression, but he did. He wasn’t sleeping, which wasn’t really so much because of our having a baby in the house, because she was such a good sleeper from the beginning. I remember standing by her crib, whispering, “For the love of God, wake up! My tits are gonna explode.”