You'll Grow Out of It (18 page)

But if I were ever going to taste it, today would be the day.

Instead, having made it to this bizarre little Oz, I find that I am not on the yellow brick road but rather a parallel side street. The Emmy urban planners have created these corrals so that everyone knows exactly, and literally, where they stand. And in my case, it is between the red carpet with the Prinzezzes, who are being treated as such, and the huddled masses of fans on my left, yearning for a photograph of anyone famous. Even when I think I have reached the top, I am still stuck in the middle. My friends back home are barraging me with texts asking, “How do you feel?” and the truth is that even though of course I am grateful to be here, because I'm not a complete asshole, I am getting yelled at by a security guard. And that is disappointing. I am as close as I will ever get to the Prinzezzes, and yet I am still not one of them and in fact large professional bouncers are making sure I do not get too close.
Oh well
, I think.
Of course
.

So then once we are inside, something bananas happens: We win the Emmy for best sketch show, and suddenly I am standing on the stage looking through the television screen which I have always watched from the other side. Holyshitholyshitholyshit. In the sixty seconds we are up there, I experience a rush of discoveries. I discover that when you walk onstage at the Emmys, you start shaking uncontrollably. I discover that when you win an Emmy you are seized by the hope that all your ex-boyfriends are watching. I discover that when you exit stage right, you are ushered into a VIP lounge where there is finally (FINALLY) booze, as well as a giant stack of doughnuts and sushi.
2
Viola Davis is sitting by herself waiting for a drink. Mel Brooks is in the corner smiling and chatting with friends. I order a glass of white wine and head for the food, where LL Cool J and I both shove salmon sashimi into our mouths. The entire situation is surreal, as two thoughts jostle shoulders in my mind: (1)
I have won an Emmy
; and (2)
I don't truly belong here
.

This carousel of anxiety only halts because I look across the room and see a handsome man with an adorable smile and terrific blue eyes talking to an equally stunning woman. I am wearing contacts, so my vision is a little loopy. But this man looks familiar. I squint, squint again, and then realize, holy shit: It's Ben McKenzie.

Ben McKenzie! You know, the lead of
The O.C.
, my favorite TV show from 2003 to 2007. He played Ryan. Ryan who was from the wrong side of the tracks but whose life changes when he is taken under the wing of his public defender, Sandy, played by Peter Gallagher (Jewing it up to great effect). Sandy lives with his family in tony Newport Beach. It is the fanciest place Ryan's ever been!

It was such a fucking awesome show. My friend Kate and I were obsessed with it and watched every single week and then hopped on the phone immediately afterward to discuss. We would have texted but the show existed pre-texting.

I can't believe I am in the same room as RYAN!

I'm just drunk enough to know that I need a photo with him, but I am also sober enough to be worried that he'll be annoyed by this random fan asking for a picture. I am sure people bother him all the time because he is famous and he played fucking RYAN. However, I figure if Amy Schumer asks if she can take the photo, he will be okay with it. I tell Amy that I need to borrow her famousness and she is immediately on board. We walk over.

The woman he is with, on closer inspection, turns out to be Morena Baccarin, the gorgeous doe-eyed angel who played Brody's wife on
Homeland
. I have never seen a woman less troubled by another woman approaching her boyfriend than Morena Baccarin was by me going up to Ben McKenzie.

I tap him on the shoulder and say “Hi” and then Amy jumps in and says she wants to take a picture of us. He looks at us quizzically but smiles (my heart stops) and says “Sure” and then he puts his arm around me.
3
Just as Amy is about to take the picture, he turns toward me with a slightly worried look on his face and says:

“Hold on, wait. Is this some kind of in-joke between you guys?”

I study his face. He is serious. He's genuinely concerned that our interest in taking this photo is ironic. That we are somehow making fun of him.

And that is when it dawns on me:

Even Ben McKenzie feels a little bit like dogshit.

But how could this be possible? He was the star of
The O.C.
! He was Ryan! He is also on some show now called
Gotham
that I have never watched but I am sure is wonderful because he is in it. And yet, as he chats with his girlfriend, beauteous Brazilian gift-from-above MORENA BACCARIN, in the VIP EMMY LOUNGE, he is insecure enough about his stature that he's worried he's the butt of a joke. That maybe he is being compared to his former
O.C.
self and found lacking.

Even Ben McKenzie does not feel like a Prinzezzz.

Ben McKenzie, who has everything.

Years ago, I read an interview with Nicole Kidman where she talked about winning her Oscar for
The Hours
. At the same time that she was at the peak moment of her career, arguably of anyone's career, she was also going through her divorce from Tom Cruise. She said that after she won, she found herself back at her hotel room early, by herself, feeling as alone and sad as she'd ever felt in her life. I remember liking Nicole Kidman very much for revealing that information, but also not totally believing her. Surely, I thought, even when Nicole Kidman is sad, she can't ever be that sad. And of course it is a cliché that the very rich and very beautiful and very famous can be miserable, and Marilyn Monroe committed suicide, and Owen Wilson tried to commit suicide, and we are all human. But it was hard for me to imagine having those feelings while holding that golden statue. Surely there must be some protective magic in it, at least for a little while.

So how surprising to find myself having won an Emmy, in the basement of the Nokia Theatre, topless and alone. I am breast-pumping in a little bare dressing room. My friends have gone on to the post-ceremony dinner and I've told them I'll join them there. With the pump making its
wuhm mmm wuhm mmm wuhm mmm
noise, I watch my nipples pulled outward and then back. My once cute little pink nipples, now turned into odd brown inchworms. My postpartum stomach has gotten fat the way indoor cats' stomachs get fat, with a large wavy flap of skin that droops low over the elastic of my Spanx, and would get in the way if I tried to jump to the top of a refrigerator.

My Emmy is on the floor. I am not the loneliest I've ever felt, but I am not the happiest, either.
This is what it feels like to be here
, I think, but strangely enough I cannot tell exactly what I am feeling. I try to figure out if this is enough. I have a baby. I have a husband. I have an Emmy. These seem like things everyone wants. But then there are the buts. But I am scared of the future. But I don't know what my next job will be. But I am surrounded by people more famous and more rich than me. But I don't believe in myself. But what if I never get past the point of helping other, more confident people achieve their dreams. But I am a footnote to others' success. But I am on Zoloft because of a deep depression that set in while I was pregnant (it's helping).

I feel like I'm not really here, even though I'm here. It's the same feeling I had when I started working on
SNL
and I went to the afterparty for the first time—the legendarily coolest party in NYC. I expected to feel the relief of finally being in. But as I was ushered to a table in the immediate front with the other new writers and interns, I realized that the real party was in the back. And in the back, the real party was at Lorne's table. And even at Lorne's table, the real party is probably only in Lorne's head. And in Lorne's head, Lorne is the only person allowed in. I think maybe Paul Simon is also there.

Much is made of the modern phenomenon of FOMO—the fear of missing out—spawned by millions of Instagram and Facebook and Twitter photos of people having more fun than you, being closer to the ocean than you, showing off better tits and ass than you, standing closer to celebrities than you. You think,
I wish I was there, not here
. But then you get there. And you think,
I thought here would be different. I thought it would be more like there. But it's more like here again.
And it never ends.

I would keep pondering this, but I am finished pumping. I pull my dress back on, struggling to zip the back on my own, and walk into the bathroom, where I pour my breast milk into the sink and watch the white go down the drain.

M
ike and I are sitting in a circle with eight other pregnant couples. Our childbirth education leader, Carol, has just asked if we would like to see what a contraction might look like. Like Bartleby, I would really prefer not to. Everyone else, however, nods yes, they would very much like to see a contraction. Carol sits back in her chair and closes her eyes. She makes a low “mmmm” noise that stops and then starts again louder. To my horror, Carol begins to moan, and gradually slumps off her chair until she is on the floor on all fours, groaning and hitting the ground with her fist. I feel many things watching this. I am embarrassed. I want to leave. I am already terrified of birth, but now I am also terrified of Carol. Her moans eventually get lower until they cease, and she returns to her chair, quiet, eyes closed for another few moments before she opens them again and gets out of “character.”

“What did you think?” she asks the group.

One woman says she's interested in learning positions to help with the pain. Another woman says she's afraid but excited to give birth. A woman who seems like she might be a little bit of an asshole raises her hand. She turns out to be me.

“I think, I don't want to do that,” I blurt out. I tell everyone I am seriously considering an elective C-section, because I am. Everyone looks at me like I just said I am seriously considering throwing a puppy off a roof.

For the rest of the class, Carol leads the group in a slow, meandering discussion of pain management methods that allow you to avoid an epidural. To my amazement, none of my fellow preggos seem to want one. They talk about getting an epidural as if they are talking about getting gonorrhea. There are some hedges about maybe getting a “walking” epidural or a “late and light” epidural. My head is exploding.

Carol says she's going to show us a video of women in labor. “It's not scary, I promise,” she says. She pops in a DVD and then, not surprisingly, struggles with the AV for a few minutes. Finally, she gets it to play, and we are seeing a hospital in what appears to be the late 1970s, based on the porn mustaches of the dads and the curly 'fros of the moms (both black and white). We watch the women in hospital gowns walking up and down the halls, supported by their partners, sweating and staggering. One woman is in her labor room, holding on to a bar on the wall and whispering to herself like she is possessed. Another is in the hospital bed, eyes closed, a grimace on her face. There's fifteen minutes of this stuff, and then we cut to some of the actual births. I've always avoided watching birth videos. But now I'm being forced to watch this, like I'm in
A Clockwork Orange
, and I can't look away. We see one baby come shooting out of a vagina, purple as a plum, and for the first time in my life I see what the umbilical cord really looks like. It's blue and looks like fifty Twizzlers twisted together.

Carol snaps off the TV. “See?” she says, grinning. “None of those women had epidurals. And they looked okay, right?”

I do not think they looked okay.

Five hours later, we are wrapping up. There is still another whole day of this tomorrow. This is a two-day intensive class for which we have paid hundreds of dollars. Carol asks if anyone has any final questions. An Italian woman with a cute accent raises her hand.

“Erm, I am just curious, um, just, why does everyone not want an epidural? I do not want it, either, I am just curious as to why others don't.”

Carol's brow furrowed. Everyone's brow furrowed. Except mine. My brow didn't furrow. I don't know what the opposite of furrow is. Let's just say it unfurrowed.

It unfurrowed because if there is one thing I want you to get out of this book, and I am not putting any pressure on you to get anything out of it, but if I were to tell you one thing that I would want you to close the covers of this book and walk away convinced of, it would be this:

GET THE EPIDURAL.

GET THE EPIDURAL.

When you write an email and you use all-caps, people don't like it because they say it seems like you're screaming. They're right. I am screaming.

GET THE EPIDURAL.

I mean, if you really want to give birth without medication, and it is important to you, and you are absolutely certain that you are the only one telling yourself that you want to birth your baby this way, then by all means, go ahead. But if you are Googling around and feeling unsure, or your mother-in-law is telling you that she did it without the epidural (she doesn't remember correctly, I assure you), or some doula is pressuring you to give birth at home in a tub filled with quinoa, basically, if you have a shadow of a doubt…

GET THE EPIDURAL.

Not only do I recommend getting an epidural while you're giving birth, I'd say get one beforehand. I'm sitting here writing, and I would get an epidural right now if I could.

I have gone online to try to understand what reasoning there is for women not to get an epidural. The top reasons seem to be:

1. You can't feel yourself pushing.
   
2. You're numb and can't move.
   
3. There's an increased risk of C-section.
   

I will now quickly address these assertions. (Let me add now that I know every woman is different, and every labor is different, and we are all snowflakes, and I am definitely not a doctor, but on the other hand…GET THE EPIDURAL.)

 

1.
Re: You can't feel yourself pushing.

 

          So, I had an epidural. And not just any epidural. I demanded it as soon as I got to the hospital and I told them to turn it all the way up until the knob might come off. Hours later, when I was fully dilated (ew) and it was time to push, I experienced an intense need to poop. If you want to know what it felt like, I can't describe it in any other way except it felt like I was going to give birth to an armadillo out of my butthole. When you get this sensation, your entire body wants to help this armadillo escape and is willing to assist by any means necessary. Not only will you push, but you will push with every molecule in your body. I pushed, and I felt myself pushing. That said, I would have loved to feel absolutely nothing. I would have loved to give birth the way women did in the 1950s when they were basically chloroformed with a rag at eight months pregnant and didn't wake up till their baby was two weeks old. I don't know why we stopped doing this.

 

2.
Re: You're numb and can't move.

 

          This was not true for me. I could feel my legs and move my legs, though I probably could not have stood if I wanted to. That said, I didn't really want to move. Once I got my epidural, I lay still on the hospital bed staring at the wall-mounted TV, happily watching an epic marathon of
Sex and the City
on mute. I had it on mute because I know every line of dialogue in every episode of that show, and also I was enjoying the peaceful beeps and blips coming from my fetal monitor, after a shitshow of a morning that included vomiting from the pain of my contractions. Also, I was entitled to unlimited ice pops, the kind I ate as a kid that come in long plastic tubes that you have to bite your way through. I did this for six hours. How often in this life do you get to lie in bed eating ice pops and watching
Sex and the City
for six hours? Please continue reading to reason #3…

 

3.
Re: There's an increased risk of C-section.

 

          I suppose you could argue that if your labor wasn't progressing, and a new position would have helped but you can't get into that position because you have an epidural, you might end up needing an emergency C-section. But what would that lead to? Probably recovering in bed, getting to watch more
Sex and the City
and eating more ice pops.

          This seems like a classic win-win.

          GET THE EPIDURAL.

Why do so many women feel like they shouldn't get an epidural?

Consider this.

I am seven months pregnant and standing on line at a grocery in Brooklyn, minding my own business (as much as anyone pregnant can mind their own business, because people constantly feel like they have the right to talk to pregnant women about their pregnancy). A woman in front of me turns around. She's a little younger than me. She does not appear pregnant. She is not with kids. Maybe she has kids at home. It doesn't really matter.

She asks me, “When are you due?”

This is a common question and one I don't mind answering, although I have never felt compelled to ask anything of a pregnant woman that I don't know.

I say, “June twenty-seventh.” I assume we are done.

But then, she says:

“Are you having a natural birth?”

I'm just trying to buy a sandwich. Is this complete stranger really asking about my plans re: my vagina? I cannot believe this. Still, I decide to be honest.

“Fuck no,” I reply with a smile.

She looks at me, worried. “So…you're having an epidural?”

I am beside myself. “Why don't you go fuck yourself,” I tell her.

(Okay, I didn't say that. Instead I said:)

“Yes. At the very
least
.”

Now she looks genuinely shocked. She turns and scurries away, like a missionary who's just been told by a particularly stubborn native that she's very excited to go directly to Pagan Hell.

I have thought about this conversation often. It annoyed me the rest of that day, and many days after, and recalling it now, I'm annoyed again. I just had to eat a cookie to stop being annoyed. But at the center of this interaction is one of the key little acorns of bullshit that perpetuates this guilt over epidurals.

The term
natural birth
.

“Natural.” It sounds so…natural. So relaxing. So earth goddess. So feminine.

But how often do people really want women to be or do anything “natural”?

It seems to me the answer is almost never. In fact, almost everything “natural” about women is considered pretty fucking horrific. Hairy legs and armpits? Please shave, you furry beast. And while you're at it, don't forget to remove your pubic hair, that's also an abomination. Do you have hips and cellulite? Please go hide in the very back of your shoe closet and turn the light off and stay there until someone tells you to come out (no one will tell you to come out).

It's interesting that no one cares very much about women doing anything “naturally” until it involves them being in excruciating pain.

No one ever asks a man if he's having a “natural root canal.” No one ever asks if a man is having a “natural vasectomy.”

GET THE EPIDURAL.

“But what about the science,” some women (and many men) will say. “There is science supporting all the estimated ‘risks' of an epidural!” Well, again, I am not a doctor, but I do have the Internet. And I've Googled the pros and cons extensively, which is very close to what a doctor would do. And the fact is there's science supporting both sides. There's a boatload of science that says having an epidural is totally fine. And for everyone arguing that epidurals slow your labor down, there are all the doctors who say that epidurals actually speed your labor up.

There are so many debates in this life in which there is some evidence of one thing, and also some evidence of the other. At such a point, you just have to decide what to believe. So here's a radical idea: Why not believe the thing that makes you happy? Why not disavow the argument that means you will be writhing in pain for umpteen hours and just GET THE EPIDURAL. You probably already see the wisdom of this philosophy in other areas of your life. For example: There is that old rumor that Richard Gere once had to go to the emergency room because there was a hamster stuck up his butt. I can either believe this, or not believe it. It's way more fun to believe it, so I do.

GET THE EPIDURAL.

And finally, I offer you this thought.

Shortly before my son was born, I spoke to a friend on the phone about how guilty I felt that we were planning to hire a night nurse for a few weeks. Shouldn't I be the one to take care of him all the time? He was my peanut that I had created. Wouldn't I be shirking my maternal responsibilities if I didn't stay up around the clock? I was worried that I was already a failure.

At which point my friend said, “What are you trying to win?”

What was I trying to win? I thought about it and realized—nothing. There's nothing to win.

There is so much pressure on women around birth and labor and mothering to do it one way or another. It's so easy to believe the notion that having a baby demands complete and total sacrifice, and anything short of that is not enough. That if you're not in pain, you're selfish.

But here's the thing: If you're worried that skipping the pain of childbirth means you're somehow cheating your baby, or yourself, you're not. Because the truth is, life offers more than enough pain that you will not be able to skip. By the time you've had a kid, you've probably been through some of it already. The pain of breakups. The pain of rejection. The pain of being picked last for a team. The pain of hearing your parents fighting in the other room. When you have a baby, there will be plenty more pain. The pain of recovery, no matter how you give birth. The pain of nursing. The pain of not fitting into any of your old clothes. The pain of not even fitting into your maternity jeans. The pain of hearing your baby cry and not knowing how to fix it. The pain of wondering whether your partner still finds you attractive. The pain of arguing with your husband while your child is in the other room. The pain of knowing that you witnessed the very first moment of this beautiful person's life, and that one day, hopefully at least a hundred years from now, there will inevitably be a last moment.

So really…

Get the epidural.