Margie, without blinking, says, “Oh, the Vagina Butcher? That’s what we call him. I mean, it’s up to you.”
And I know I have to get out. Had I bothered to do any digging, I would have known sooner that my doctor has a nickname in the doula community. He butchers vaginas, apparently. So, I do the honorable thing and have my husband call and say we’re moving to another city. Daniel gets my medical records faxed to him so there is no awkward good-bye and I’m now in the care of a new doctor, a mother of two with a nice practice in Glendale. The new doctor is someone Margie knows, has worked with before and trusts. That’s good enough for me. There are a few very popular and beloved doctors in Los Angeles and sometimes I get doctor envy for not having someone fancy or famous, but at least my new doc only plans to cut my vag if it’s absolutely necessary.
Don’t go Googling this topic, because while you will find delightful tales of intact girl parts, you will just as surely find horribly misspelled, sad, angry postings about “fourth degree” tears, leaking, burning and bleeding that you can’t ever un-read. The Internet is the Heidi Montag to my Lauren Conrad. That’s right, we’re frenemies. The Web is my friend when I find a posting by someone sane who has survived childbirth without anal stress incontinence, but it’s my enemy when I get sucked into some rambling, under-punctuated story about a years-long recovery from an epic laceration.
I comfort myself with the notion that just as boots are made for walking and kidneys are made for filtering, vaginas are made for stretching. I should be fine. Sometimes, this is obvious, and other times, it ’taint.
People I Want to Punch: So in Love with Big Boobs
I
know having “big balls” is prized, at least metaphorically, but guys, if you happen to be reading this pregnancy book, imagine if your balls were three times their normal size, swollen, sensitive, hanging heavy and splaying uncomfortably across your thighs. Big, giant balls would get in your way, as awesome as they sound.
Guys may want brass balls, or balls of steel, they may even want to go balls to the wall, but big balls? I would think twice now that I know how big boobs feel.
All the people who relish big boobs, who comment on how much I must love the new rack, sometimes I want to punch you.
I was an A cup and now I’m busting out of a C. And it’s not all that. One afternoon, I’m sitting having coffee with a friend when the front clasp of my bra comes undone, apropos of nothing, and I just bust out of my brand-new Spanx bra. Maybe it was caused by the dangerous mixture of a robust inhale with a moment of slight slouching. Basically, I’m sitting stock-still inadvertently flashing the place (probably should have buttoned those top few buttons on my oxford) before I process what has happened. I don’t blame the bra, but my boobs are growing so fast they are actually testing the tensile strength of Spanx.
This is supposed to be one of the best things about being pregnant, but I didn’t mind my old A cups. These new boobs are tender and unwieldy. It’s hard to sleep without rolling over and pinching one of them. Sometimes I can actually feel growing pains in one or the other, like when my mind wanders during a boring movie (thanks,
Angels and Demons
, for giving me 138 minutes to notice the stinging, aching feeling of my breasts inching toward a D cup).
I keep trying to wear the little bralette things I used to wear—you know, no underwire, no hooks; you just slip them over your head and they look sweet and girlie—but now they feel suffocating, like something Joan of Arc would have worn to bind herself down and pass as male. Either Joan of Arc or Yentl. Or Brandon Teena.
When people comment on my emergent boobs and how thrilled I must be, they are essentially telling me that my regular size, to which I assume I will return, is inferior. Well, oddly enough, being flat-chested is one of the only things about my appearance that I don’t mind, which is strange considering I live in Los Angeles and should be on my third set of implants by now. Whereas I once clung to my flat status as making me stand out in a world of curvy women, now I’m a C, which is to say, average, and in my case, painfully average. No more not needing a bra, or even taking for granted that I will stay in one. No more pain-free jogs on the treadmill. No more looking athletic in a men’s oxford. It’s a new world, and in this new world, I have to pay attention to “support” and coverage and cleavage.
I’m not saying I’m all offended that our culture prefers giant-breasted women; it’s just that I had carved this out as my one area of beauty confidence and now I must humor all of you joking about how my husband must be psyched and how much I’m going to be sad when these breasts deflate.
This is physically uncomfortable and it doesn’t make me feel more womanly or more attractive, so when I have to go along with all of you saying how much fun it is to have boobs now, I want to punch you a little bit. Just please, if you have to punch me back, not in the chest. Thank you.
eighteen
Babymoon in Vegas: Bet on a Crisis
O
n the way to Vegas, things start to go wrong, as they so often do, at the Mad Greek.
Within a couple of hours, I will be trying to locate the nearest hospital, but now I’m just waiting for the beefy leather-skinned guy in front of me to stop yelling at the clerk about his $3, and how it was her mistake, and how he’s going to file a claim with the state. Behind me, a man eats sullenly at a booth with his well-behaved toddler, who silently chews one fry after another.
The roadside diner smells of coconut sunscreen, with base notes of diesel and feta.
I had begged my husband to take me to Vegas, because I was doing what they call in recovery programs “pulling a geographic.” As in,
If I just leave Colorado, I won’t wake up with festering facial sores and paranoia, because I’m not really a meth addict. I just need to move to Boston
. Instead of going on a normal “babymoon” to, say, temperate San Diego, I decide that in Vegas I’ll be the old me.
Baker, California, is right off the I-15. I’ve broken down here many times. In the past, it was just my car overheating, or my psyche decompressing from a weekend with my mom and her wall of bird-themed paintings and her obsessive studying of restaurant menus and her autistic tuning out. This time, however, it’s my body. I’m twenty-nine weeks pregnant, it’s 110 degrees, I have no business being at the Mad Greek no matter how much I love their greasy pita bread and fresh strawberry shakes, no matter how much I think the me that will show up in Vegas for a last hurrah won’t look like she’s in her sixth trimester, or have trouble breathing, or be sure she’s washed up in show business or be concerned her baby won’t be healthy or his life won’t be perfect.
Ojai in the second trimester was one thing, but the third trimester is no time to head into a desert, much less toward Vegas, a city filled with smoke-choked casinos, frat guys who shove you blithely on elevators, free booze you can’t drink, mile-long walks to everything, hooker-strippers whose frosted hair and legginess are an attack on your swollen feet and maternity maxi-dress.
Unfortunately, wherever you go, you take yourself with you, which is another one of the annoyingly true bumper-sticker slogans they tell addicts. The same holds for pregnancy, and the crappy mood that has come with it for the last couple of weeks, and the not working much anymore and the visions of myself rocking a baby with spit-up on my shoulder staring blankly at a newborn and asking myself, “Is this how I’m supposed to feel?”
In Vegas, or I should say en route to Vegas, I am still big and uncomfortable and scared with a tinge of pre-postpartum. Only on I-15, I don’t drink any water because I’m nervous about having to pee.
At the Mad Greek, I order an omelet. When the cashier asks me what kind of toast I want, I hesitate, ask what they have. I mumble “wheat,” and look backward at my husband, as if to ask, “Do I really want wheat bread toast? Will that taste good to me? Would I prefer rye? Who am I?”
He snaps, “Yes. Wheat. Good.” Only I would know he’s snapping, because he’s a subtle snapper. My husband has a very long fuse and almost never loses his temper, but when you’re this pregnant, you can’t sustain even a small snap.
I slide into a booth as he waits for our order, sip on my fountain drink, eye the kid eating his fries. Feel a kinship with the little dude in his denim overalls, because we both seem lost and like we need our mommies.
My husband returns with our food, which we both just stare at until I tell him I didn’t like him snapping at me, and he apologizes, and admits he has spent the last two hours regarding the temperature gauge, worried he was going to break down on the side of the road with his pregnant wife. He’s been worried about lots of things, he admits: being a good enough provider for us, having enough room, making sure the air-conditioning is working and the windows are sealed. I tell him I don’t need much, and that he’s going to be a great dad. I start crying, wiping my eyes with scratchy Mad Greek napkins. He doesn’t touch his food, and his hands are shaking a little bit, which only happens when he’s really upset.
My nose starts to bleed, just a trickle. My stomach starts to cramp, and I figure this must be one of those Braxton Hicks contractions I’ve heard about, mild, irregular “practice” contractions that are usually felt by the second or third trimester. I wipe my bloody nose, wipe my eyes, don’t mention the cramps because I’ve just finished assuring my husband there is nothing to worry about, that we won’t break down in the desert, that we’ll get the windows fixed, that I know he’ll provide us with all we need, that he married a girl who cries and bends but doesn’t really break.
The wheat bread is toasted on one side and soft on the other, but I eat both pieces. We hit the road.
“This trip is going to be great from now on. I was just worried about getting you there. Now, I’m psyched,” Daniel says cheerfully. Soon, I will make him promise to take me to any hospital except the one twenty minutes or so from the Strip. My mom lives in Vegas, so I’m familiar with the place. I have no idea if what is happening to me is serious; all I know is that I don’t want to end up at the peach-colored hospital on the outskirts of town, because you go there to die, or at least my stepfather did. When he passed (as Hemingway would say, “gradually and then suddenly”), his death certificate described him as white and his cause of death as leukemia.
Only he was black. And died of congenital heart failure.
Probably an honest mistake, but it doesn’t point to great attention to detail. That hospital reminds me of sloppiness and slipping away, and while I have a long history of being lukewarm on my own existence, the pull to keep this baby safe is mooring me to this world like nothing else has.
The cramps abate until right when we exit the I-5 in Vegas. Only now, they are about ten times worse than extreme menstrual cramps, and we are stuck in Friday afternoon congestion. I have to take off my seat belt. I check the clock, and it’s been twenty minutes or more of this one cramp. I quietly Google “Braxton Hicks” on my iPhone so as not to panic my husband, and from what I can tell, those are supposed to feel like a mild tightening, but not painful. Another half an hour goes by, which is when I decide to tell my husband, just in case I’m actually having preterm labor.
I’m doubling over now. I’m pretty sure I won’t be able to walk through the lobby of the hotel without some help, but I can’t spook the Mister because this whole stupid Vegas thing was all my idea and it was obviously completely idiotic.
Somehow, we make it to our room at the Palms. I will myself to walk upright but find myself stopping to lean against slot machines every few yards. We call our doctor, who says I’m probably dehydrated. Drink water and rest, she says, and if things don’t improve in two hours, call back.
My husband pours me a bath and I drink all four bottles of Smart Water he bought in the lobby. I soak and listen to CNN and read
USA Today
. In two hours, I’m fine. I glance out the window and look down at the Palms pool, where it’s “Ditch Friday,” a packed bash the locals call “sweaty ball soup” because of the preponderance of male attendees. Part of me feels like I’m watching children trick-or-treat from behind a curtain, nursing a case of mono, but most of me feels I’m exactly where I should be, cool and safe, away from the blaring Kanye and the pool-friendly canisters of Miller. I was never a party girl before, and you can’t go back to a place you’ve never been, nor should you ever want to dunk yourself into sweaty ball soup.
Often, I wonder what’s on the other side of this pregnancy, whether being a parent will be a blissful shuffling of priorities or just something else that’s supposed to come naturally to me but doesn’t. I can’t possibly know how I’ll feel once I cross over, but that doesn’t stop me from trying to figure it out. One thing that’s becoming as clear as the acrylic heels on a showgirl ’s shoes, the old ways of feeling okay about myself were wearing me out. I’m done grubbing for gold stars to justify being alive, and I wonder if caring for another human being and loving him as well as I can will be gold star enough.
Sitting naked at the desk in the hotel room, cramp-free, my husband rubbing my shoulders, I think I’m almost ready to qualify as a mom, because I’ve never felt so protective. As long as Buster is okay, I don’t care about being a has-been (that barely was), or having kind of a double chin now, or wearing outfits Kate Gosselin would suggest are too “middle America,” or gaining forty-five pounds. I don’t care that I’m not at the party pool; I don’t dance, I’ve always hated crowds and I burn in the sun. I don’t want to be down there, or back home, or in my old body, or anywhere else. My husband demands I drink another bottle of water, and I imagine him with Buster in a Baby-Björn, holding my hand, and I don’t know how I ever got out of the desert intact.