I Want My Epidural Back (17 page)

HOLDEN:
Mommy?

DADDY:
Holden, go back to bed.

HOLDEN:
No, Daddy, I don't want youuuu. I want Mommm-mmmy.

ME:
Holden, listen to your dad. It's only 5:20, go back to bed.

HOLDEN:
Nooooooo. I wanna sleep with you.

ME:
Fine, but you have to really sleep and you can't talk.

HOLDEN:
Mommy, face me.

ME:
No, I'm facing this way right now.

HOLDEN:
No, Mommmmmy, FACE me!!!

ME:
Fine.

So I roll over so we're lying on our sides and our heads are on the same pillow, face-to-face.

HOLDEN:
Mommy.

ME:
No talking. Sleep.

HOLDEN:
But Mommy.

ME:
WHAT Holden?

HOLDEN:
BARRRRRRFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF!!!!!!

I shit you not. It was like he stopped at the all-you-can-eat buffet on the way to our bedroom and then decided my face was the all-you-can-vomit receptacle.

DADDY:
Oh my God.

ME:
(through gritted teeth)
Et ee um a-er owls.

DADDY:
What?

ME:
(through gritted teeth)
Et ee um a-er owls.

TRANSLATION:
Get me some paper towels.

REAL TRANSLATION:
Why the F are you still standing there? You better sprint as fast as humanly possible to the kitchen and get me some F'ing paper towels in the next two seconds or puke is going to seep into my mouth and then I'm gonna throw up too and you're gonna be up to your elbows in Pukesville cleaning this shit up without me and then we are getting divorced.

Seriously, this is the shit they mean when they say in sickness and in health.

DADDY:
Oh, buddy, are you okay? Is it your tummy?

Are you kidding me? Is
HE
okay?!!! He's fine. He just threw up so he probably feels a little better now. I'll tell you who is NOT
okay. The woman who was literally 6 inches away from his mouth when it decided to turn into an explosive cannon and projectile vomit at 60 miles per hour into five of her open orifices.

DADDY:
Do you want a sip of water, buddy?

ME:
AGGGHHHHHHH!!!

Only it comes out as “MMMMGGGHHHHHH!!!” because I still can't open my mouth because it's basically wired shut until someone gets me some F'ing paper towels. He finally gets the message and heads out of the room and God help him if he comes back with Holden's toothbrush and toothpaste and doesn't come back with something to clean me off.

Luckily for him, he returns holding some paper towels. TWO of them. Are you shitting me? I mean it takes more effort to tear off two paper towels than it does to bring the whole roll.

DADDY:
I grabbed them as fast as I could.

He hands me them, I wipe off my face, and as soon as I'm 200% sure that no throw-up is going to leak into my mouth, I speak.

ME:
I will now be getting into the shower and standing under scalding-hot water for the next 30 minutes. And then I will be headed to Atlanta to go to the CDC to get decontaminated. Take care of everything without me. I'll be back in time for dinner. Not to cook it. To eat it.

Look, my hubby wrapped a present for me! Eeeeeks, I wonder what it is!! Do you think it's the bracelet I asked for from Tiffany?!

I DON'T LIKE SEX
. Not anymore. I mean I used to lovvvve sex but it's kind of impossible to like it after you've been forced to have it for eight months straight over and over and over again. You see, after I was kidnapped by a ring of whip-yielding pimps, nahhhh, just kidding. Sorry. Seriously, sorrrrry. I totally shouldn't joke about pimps and sex slavery and shit. That stuff is real and horrible and no one should be forced to share their body with anyone, so that was a bad joke. But I'm not joking about sex.

I know what some of you are thinking. “Boo-hoo-hooo, that's so sad that you don't love sex anymore. I feel so bad for you and your cold vagina. Maybe you should just try having more sex? My hugglepoo and I do it every single night and sometimes even twice when we're feeling frisky.”

Well, (a) I wouldn't want to be like you because you use annoying words like
frisky
, and (b) come tell me that after you HAVE TO have sex a lot for eight months straight.

Okay, lemme explain. It all started when I was twenty-nine.

Aggghhhh, why haven't I met my husband yet?!! The plan was to meet him by the time I was twenty-five. I mean really I thought I was gonna marry my high school boyfriend, and then I thought I was gonna marry my second high school boyfriend, and then my third high school boyfriend, and then a few more, and then a few my freshman year in college, etc., etc., etc., all the way until I was twenty-five when I was dating this total asswipe who I kept thinking would change into the perfect prince the way asswipes often do in the movies so I could marry him. But nope, out of 247 boyfriends between the ages of fifteen and twenty-nine, not a single one panned out. Shit.

And then when I was twenty-nine, I met the man of my dreams. The man of my desperate twenty-nine-year-old dreams who actually sucked and it took me four and a half lonnnnnng wasted years to figure out that our relationship was like two puzzle pieces you keep trying to jam together even though they don't F'ing fit but they're the only two puzzle pieces left because you don't realize that you accidentally left another piece in the box. But as I was desperately clinging on to the relationship in hopes that it would work because I couldn't find the right puzzle piece, the eggs in my ovaries were getting older and wrinkly and growing wiry gray hairs.

ME:
I don't know, Doc, I just keep hearing this loud ticking noise in my ears.

DOCTOR:
That's your biological clock ticking. It gets louder the closer you get to becoming an old childless hag.

I mean now that I have kids, I actually recognize that childless people have totally AWESOME lives that are often better than those of us who are parents, but at the time I thought my life would be over if I didn't get to have children. I was hunting for a husband like I was fighting for my life in the Hunger Games.

And then when I was thirty-four, I met him. And no, it didn't happen when I least expected it to like all those jackasses say it will. I worked my ass off to find the right guy. I was on multiple dating websites forcing myself to go on at least one date every week, and going way out of my comfort zone, saying yes to pretty much anyone, including men with receding hairlines who wore black pants with brown belts and gross tank tops. Yup, I lowered my bar in the clothing department and raised my bar in the personality department, and I found the man of my dreams. The
REAL
man of my dreams. And we had great sex. Lots of it. And it was AWESOMMMMMME. And we both wanted to get married and we both wanted to have kiddos and we both knew that my eggs were slowly rolling toward the assisted living facility for senior citizen eggs, so we didn't waste any time.

ME:
We should probably start trying to have a baby right away because it might take a while.

HIM:
Yes. Me want sex.

And guess what!? We were preggers within two short months!! I don't know what everyone's talking about, it's so easy getting pregnant (FYI, I'm not this big of a douchebag. Keep reading).

And then we had Zoey and life was awesome, even though we never slept and we couldn't go out anymore and my boobs were more hangy than my uvula and none of my pants fit, etc., etc., etc. But still, everything was great and we knew we wanted to have a second.

HIM:
We should have another so they can play together and make things easier.

ME:
Definitely.

PEOPLE WHO ALREADY HAVE MORE THAN ONE CHILD:
Bwhahahahahahahahaha!!!!

At my hubby's suggestion, we started trying right away.

ME:
But I'm not even ovulating right now.

HIM:
You might be. We should have sex just in case.

And when I got my period that first month, I wasn't surprised. Disappointed? Maybe a little. But not discouraged. I mean this was exactly what happened the first time. And I fully expected to be pregnant by month two.

Then month two came and I remember sitting at my desk and feeling a little pain in my belly. OMGeeeee, is that the embryo implanting?!!! I was super excited. And then a few hours later I felt it again. That embryo must really be burrowing into that lining. And then by that evening I was spotting a little. Eeeeeeks, it's happening!!! And then by the next morning I was digging through
every old purse in my closet to find a tampon because I hadn't bought a new box of them because I fully expected to be preggers this month and hell if I was gonna spend a bunch of money on tampons I didn't need. Shit. Now I was disappointed.

ME:
I'm not pregnant.

HIM:
Good. Me want more sex.

So the first thing I did was go to Costco and buy a GIANT box of tampons because Murphy's Law says the bigger the box I buy, the faster I will get pregnant. And then I went to the Internet and started to research ovulation calculators. It was asking me things like dates and cycle length and luteal phase and I'm like WTH does the moon have to do with it? And since my cycle wasn't always regular, I figured out that I was gonna be fertile sometime between June 4th and June 10th and that we should have sex every
other
day because that would give my hubby time to replenish his sperm supply (apparently sperm need time to reproduce too).

So we waited. And waited. Until . . .

ME:
Honey, we need to have sex today!!

And his clothes were off before I had even finished saying the word
today
. And then after we were done, I laid there. No wait, I just got laid. I lied there. Or did I lay there? Whatever, I reclined there on my back visualizing all the little spermies racing to the egg to see who would get there first. It was so exciting to think
about them nibbling away to fertilize the egg or however they do it. And then, exactly forty-eight hours later, doo da doo da doo doo doo. Doo da doo da doo doo doo.

HIM:
What is that noise?

ME:
Oh, that's my alarm. Time to have sex!

Yup, I set an alarm to remind us. So we did it. And forty-eight hours after that. Doo da doo da doo doo doo. Doo da doo da doo doo doo.

HIM:
Again?

Neither of us was really in the mood, but it was time so we did it again. Phew, three times in one week. We're definitely going to be pregnant now!!

UTERUS:
Fuck you!!!! You're not in charge here!

Yup, Aunt Flo arrived again. So every month we kept trying. Insert, repeat, insert, repeat, insert, repeat, over and over again until my vagina felt like someone had put one of those medieval torture devices in it that looks like an umbrella that they open up inside you and my hubby's peeper felt like someone had rubbed it against a cheese grater for a couple of hours to make shredded penis. Mmmm, a delicacy in many countries.

Okay, now close your eyes because I want you to picture something. Awww shit, you can't read with your eyes closed. Fine, open
them back up and close them figuratively. Now picture me and my husband having sex. Agghhh, nooo, you're blind now!!! I totally apologize. My bad. So don't actually picture
us
. Picture my head on Gisele's body and my hubby's head on Channing Tatum's body and now picture us having sex. There, that's better. So now what I want you to do is picture Harry Potter standing next to the bed while we're having sex and he's pointing his totally powerful wand at us and he is literally sucking allllllll the magic out of our sex. It's like electric lightning is shooting out of our naked bodies and it's all being sucked into his wand. And when he's all done, he vanishes into a puff of smoke and we are left there still doing it. Not making passionate love. Not getting it on. Not fucking. Just doing it. In out in out in out in out.

Because that's what sex had become for us. Something we had to do. A chore.

HIM:
We need more lube. Here is the bottle.

ME:
Okay, it's applied.

HIM:
That's good. I'm going to cum.

ME:
It's about time.

HIM:
All done.

ME:
Okay, I'll lie here for the next forty-eight hours and then come back so we can do it again.

It was about as enjoyable as putting together Zoey's new bike. But worse because imagine putting that bike together over and over
again, three or four times a week every month, but then the next morning you wake up and there's no bike. Shit, does that analogy even make sense? I don't know, but basically all I'm saying is that when you
have to
have sex many, many times, it starts to become a chore.

And every month I would be somewhere when I would feel the first twinge of cramping and I would kid myself into thinking it wasn't period cramps, and that maybe I just had to poop or something. And then as the day went on the pains would get stronger and all I could think about was nooooo, I don't want to have to have sex anymore. I mean don't get me wrong, I love my husband to death and I think he's crazy sexy, but I just didn't want to do it anymore. And I wasn't alone. He was pretty much over the whole sex thing too. And let me tell you this, if your husband doesn't want sex anymore, something is wrong.

We felt annoyed, irritable, angry, guilty, exhausted, and spent. These are all really great things for a marriage, by the way.

Anyways, this went on for eight months. Eight lonnnnnnng months of doing it and doing it and doing it without the result we wanted. And pleeeease don't think I'm an asshole for complaining about eight months when there are so many couples out there who do it for years without conceiving and who have to get shots and pay shitloads of money and buy eggs and feel those awful cramps month after month after month for years on end. If eight months was bad for us, I can't imagine what it's like for some couples and my heart goes out to them. Big time.

And then one day I didn't get the twinge of pain, so I peed on a stick and there it was. Clear as day. The blue line. I wanted to
jump for joy but I didn't because I was too scared I would dislodge the baby.

ME:
Honey, guess what? We're pregnant.

HIM:
Really? We did it?!!

ME:
We did it.

Yup, we did it. A LOT. But it finally worked. I don't know which we were more excited about. The fact that we were pregnant or the fact that we didn't have to have sex anymore. Until after the baby arrived and we got the green light from the gynie.

GYNIE:
Well, it's been six weeks. You can have sex again.

ME:
Do we have to?

I mean no, I didn't really say that out loud. And I'm happy to say this isn't the end to our story. Because guess who showed up to our bed again one day! Harry Potter!!! Completely out of the blue! Yup, one day he randomly showed up and he aimed that magic wand at us and zappppppp, he gave us back our sex magic!!! Needless to say, my hubby was a little perplexed when I started yelling, “Thank you, Harry!!!” in the middle of our sexcapade, but at least the magic was back. Phew.

And now my hubby won't stop asking for it again. Everything's back to normal.

HOLDEN:
I want a cup.

HUBBY:
Where are the cups?

ME:
Where the cups are.

I mean seriously? Did we seriously need to have this conversation? Does anyone else out there deal with this shit?