Baby Steps (18 page)

At around five months, I started to put on a lot of weight, but I still felt good and beautiful. Dr. Bobby, my obstetrician, asked me what I was doing. “You're gaining too much weight,” he said. “I'm concerned. It's not healthy. I'm going to have to test you for gestational diabetes. Not to mention the fact that you're going to have a hard time getting all this weight off.”

“I don't care,” I said. “I'm happy. I think I look great.”

When he determined I didn't have gestational diabetes, he admitted that he once had a client who gained fifty pounds during her pregnancy and vowed not to do it again. The next time she was pregnant, she subsisted on broccoli and greens and she still gained fifty pounds. “People's bodies do what they need to do,” he said. “Maybe this is just what your body does.”

“Good,” I said. “Because I'm in the mood for ice cream.”

Later, I would look back at pictures of myself and be shocked at how enormous I was, but at the time, I just didn't see it. I was too blissful, luxuriating in my private little bubble of joy. Everything felt okay.

I traveled and worked a lot during my pregnancy, which is kind of surprising, considering how careful I was being about everything else. Early in the pregnancy, I traveled to New York City to do a photo shoot for
In Style Weddings.
I also took a meeting for a show called
Big Shots
on ABC. I ended up getting the part and doing the show. Nobody knew I was pregnant—I wasn't showing yet—and the series
was short-lived. Then the writers' strike was going on in Hollywood, so this was perfect timing for me to be out of commission. Nobody was working, so I didn't feel like I was missing anything.

I had the chance to go to a signing at a sci-fi convention in Australia because I was on the show
Angel,
so Ron and I went. I got on the plane with a flat stomach, and I swear that when I got off the plane, my belly had popped and I finally looked pregnant. We traveled around Australia and New Zealand, then we went to Turks and Caicos for a publicity event, and then I had a couple of meetings in London, and another event in Florida. I'm not sure what I was thinking, except maybe that I wouldn't be able to do so much traveling once I had the baby.

Between trips, I was always anticipating my next doctor's appointment because that meant another ultrasound, and getting to see the baby again. I hammered the ultrasound technician with questions: “What do you mean she has long fingers?” “What do you mean she has big feet?” “Will she be tall?” “Aww, look at her little button nose.” “Is that really her nose?” I was totally into it.

But after my rash of globetrotting, when I went to my seventh-month appointment, the doctor looked concerned.

“You're leaking amniotic fluid,” he said.

Ron wasn't with me on that particular visit, and I suddenly regretted it. “What? What does that mean? Should I be worried?” I said, feeling alarmed.

“No, no,” he said, in that soothing, sticky, monotone doctor voice you know they use when they want you to stay calm. This alarmed me even more. “It's a little curious that you're leaking fluid, so we just want you to take it easy. It's probably due to all the stress from your travel. Just stay in bed as much as you can. Put your feet up. Stop exercising and traveling and just wait out the rest of your pregnancy. You only have two more months to go.”

He looked at me, then apparently felt the need to say it again. “Lis, I mean it. Please, just keep your feet up.”

I relaxed when he assured me that the baby was healthy and the heart rate was fine. I got another ultrasound glimpse of her. There she was, looking more and more like a tiny human. I told myself he wasn't
requiring
bed rest. He was just
recommending
it. Feeling a little bit better, I went home and lay down, and it felt so good that I hardly got up for the next month. I was enormous by this point, so I welcomed the prospect of lying down and putting my swollen feet up at every opportunity. I began to use this as an excuse. I can't take out the garbage: I'm on bed rest. I can't walk the dog: I'm on bed rest. I can't cook dinner: I'm on bed rest. Ron was unimaginably patient with me, taking care of everything. I began to feel emotional as my hormones ramped up in preparation for birth. I tried to stay calm. I meditated. I ate more ice cream. I rested. Doctor's orders!

But I was beginning to get antsy. My unwieldy belly and swollen feet were one thing, but the worst part was that I kept peeing my pants. When I sneezed, I peed. When I laughed, I peed. When I coughed, I peed. I had one pair of black maternity pants that still fit me, and I had to wash those goddamned pants every single day. “C'mon, baby,” I would whisper to her. “Let's get this show on the road!”

When I went in for my eight-month appointment, Ron came with me because he'd been obsessing about the leaking fluid, too. When the doctor examined me, he looked even more concerned. “This isn't great,” he said. “In fact . . . I think you need to go to the hospital. We need to deliver.”

“What?” Ron and I stared at each other. The baby wasn't due for another month. It hadn't even occurred to me that I might actually need to deliver, that the leaking fluid could really be this much of a
problem. The doctor explained to me that once the fluid starts to drain, you really are on your way to giving birth because the fluid is going, going, gone. It's like your water breaking, but not precipitously. It had just been dribbling out, and there was no more time to waste.

“Is it serious?” I said. “Is it too early?” It was April 9. My due date was April 28, which was my birthday. I had been so excited to share my birthday with my baby daughter. My mother's birthday was August 28, so the date seemed doubly auspicious. But it was not to be.

“The baby's big enough,” the doctor said. “She's going to be just fine.”

This eased my mind, and honestly, I was more than ready to lie down and have somebody help me get the baby from the inside to the outside. I was tired of those worn out old pee pants. I was tired of lumbering around like a walrus. I was tired of bed rest. And I was
so ready
to start being a mommy, even though I was completely unprepared to go into that hospital on that very day. I wasn't even packed, yet there we were, driving to Cedars-Sinai.

When we arrived, we checked in, and they got me ready to be induced. The first thing they did was put a balloon in me and inflate it to open up my cervix. This was horrible. Apparently, the purpose is to slowly open you up, to get the dilation process started. According to the monitor, I was having contractions, but they were so small that I couldn't feel them. This was meant to get me going, but oh my God, it was painful! And it was just the beginning of having strangers messing around down there doing things I couldn't even see due to my giant belly. Not that I would have wanted to see what they were doing down there anyway.

Then they gave me a shot of Pitocin to start labor. In less than an hour, I began to have some more noticeable contractions, but they
felt bearable. “This isn't so bad,” I told Ron. I decided I was ready for it. I could handle anything. I felt like Superwoman. I was about to become a mother! I'd carried the pregnancy all the way, and here we were at the end of it. Mission accomplished! Little did I know how far I still had to go.

It was midafternoon when my friend Cathy, who has always been like a big sister to me, brought me a vegetarian dinner from the Newsroom Café while Ron went home to pack my things and take care of our dog. I specifically told him to pack up a hospital gown I'd had made for me, with pink polka dots—so much prettier than the ugly hospital gown they gave me. I waited nervously as the pain increased and it got later and my friends, one by one, went home to await the big news.

A few hours after dinner, the nurses moved me into a beautiful birthing room with yellow walls and a magnificent view of Beverly Hills and Los Angeles, with the mountains in the background. I hardly noticed the view. Ron wasn't back yet, and the pain was getting intense. Finally, I had to ask for a shot of morphine. I didn't want to do it, but I just couldn't take it anymore. So much for Superwoman. Ron came back around ten that night, and by that time, I was loop-dee-doo. Ron crashed on the couch beside me as I drifted in and out of sleep.

A few hours later, I awoke and I could tell the contractions were really strong. The nurse came in and checked me, and she told me I was ready to go. Finally, after seventeen hours of labor, it was time to push. I remember Dr. Bobby rolling in wearing his sweatshirt and asking, “Is it time? What music did you bring?”

“Music?” said Ron.

Oh no! We'd forgotten the music! I'd had it all planned—I was going to listen to James Taylor, to keep me calm. I began to panic as I considered going through labor without James Taylor.
I had to have
James Taylor!
One of the nurses found a scratched CD and Ron hurriedly popped it into the sound system. I listened to it skipping and scraping through the song “Sweet Baby James” as I tried to do my labor breathing.

It was a surprisingly normal birth, all things considered—sweat and blood and poop and drama; that's how it normally goes, right? And suddenly, she was out—a push, a gush, a cry—and Easton August Anthony entered the world as a full-fledged human being at 12:50
P.M.
on April 10, a healthy six-pound, eight-ounce baby girl.

I cried with relief and Ron held his tiny new daughter with a look of amazement on his face. I was so tired, I just wanted to sleep, but then the placenta got stuck and they had to scrape it out. This hurt more than the pushing! After it was all over, my best friend, Tasha, showed up. She took one look at me and said, “Wow, you're a hot mess. I think you need some lunch.”

“Oh my God, yes!” I said. “I need a Reuben and some french fries from Jerry's Deli!” Tasha left to get me some lunch, and I sunk back into my pillows to rest again. Then the nurse came in and told me that Easton's heart rate had dropped and she had started to run a fever.

I was jolted awake. Where was Ron? The nurse told me he was with Easton.

“I need to see her!” I said. “You need to bring her to me!”

“I'm sorry, we can't,” the nurse said. “We've got her in the incubator. Her father is with her.”

I lay wide awake in bed, alone in my room, aching and woozy and utterly exhausted and completely unable to do anything about this news: my daughter was in distress, and I couldn't be with her? It didn't make sense. I wanted to rip out my IV and go stumbling through the hospital corridors in my bloodstained gown, but I couldn't even sit up. Finally, Ron came back in. He told me she was okay, but he looked worried.

“I just held her for a second and then they took her away!” I said. “I need her back!” I felt like I'd been through a war and I'd won and then someone else was getting all the credit. I looked at Ron accusingly. “Why do you get to be with her?” I said. “Why can't I be with her?”

“You have to rest. You're exhausted,” he said. He was right. I hardly knew where I was, I was so upset, and truthfully I was relieved that Ron was handling things. But I also feared she might be in a more serious condition than they were telling me because they didn't want to upset me.

“Are you sure she's okay?” I said, as I felt my eyes closing.

“I'm sure.”

A couple of hours later, I woke up when the pediatrician we had chosen breezed into the room along with a nurse. She took one look at me, then demanded, “Where's the baby?”

“She's in the incubator,” I heard the nurse say, and then some whispering. I tried to sit up.

“No, no, no,” the pediatrician blustered, throwing up her hands. “The baby's heart rate went down because you took her away from her mother,” she scolded the nurses. “Give her to her mother! Let her breastfeed! She needs skin-on-skin time.”

I wanted to scream, “Thank you!” to her, but I couldn't find my voice. She turned and smiled at me. “We'll get you your daughter back right now,” she said. Within minutes, the nurses brought her to me, and for the first time, I looked at her—really looked at her.

She was so small, so perfect, with big blinking eyes and rosebud lips and tiny hands with long fingers, just like we'd seen in the ultrasound. The nurse instructed me to open up my gown, and she laid Easton on my bare chest. Skin to skin, heart to heart. I felt a surge of
emotion. My hands went instinctively to her back and I held her against me, feeling the subtle, barely perceptible, rhythmic motion of her breath. I breathed along with her—quick and soft.

“There. See?” the pediatrician said. I hadn't even noticed Easton still had the tiny stickers on her chest, monitoring her heart rate. “Her heart rate's already normalizing.”

Sure enough, it was.

After what seemed like only a few minutes, they took her away again, and the lactation consultant came in to give me a breastfeeding lesson. She showed me how to hold the baby and put my finger in her mouth to get her mouth in the right position. Then they brought her back to me. Everyone assured me that breastfeeding can be difficult at first, and that babies don't necessarily latch on right away. Nurses, the lactation consultant, Ron, everyone crowded around and leaned in to watch.

But Easton knew exactly what to do. She latched on immediately. It was the most incredible feeling. Not only were we bonded physically, but I felt like we'd known each other before. It almost felt like a karmic connection. It sounds cheesy, and maybe every mother thinks that, but our bond felt ancient to me.
I have known this person before.
That's what I kept thinking. As she nursed and her eyes wandered upward to find mine, I felt like she was thinking exactly the same thing.