My Birth Story

My water broke. We rushed to the hospital under the glow of a full moon. This is perfect, I remember thinking. I’m having a baby. Just like in the movies.

But this wasn’t a movie. And, as the patient nurses at the hospital informed me, my water hadn’t broken. I was so confused. But what about all that clear liquid that came out of me and onto my fiancé’s leg (while we were doing the activity that got us into this mess in the first place)? They laughed. That was probably pee. I was not in labor. But what about the contractions I was having? That was pre-labor. How long does pre-labor last? Could be hours, could be days. Hard to say. This isn’t science. This is labor. They sent us home. We sent ourselves to In-N-Out Burger.

And thus begins my birth story. The most hilarious, terrifying, miraculous, and thrilling experience of my life. And this is coming from someone who once caught Justin Timberlake’s sweaty neck towel during an NSYNC concert. Maybe my birth story only feels worth telling because it’s mine. But still, I feel compelled to share in hopes that other moms out there feel that their birth story is worth telling too. Giving birth (in all its forms) is the most epic, goddess-warrior shit I could ever think of, and no, I didn’t really get it till I did it, but now I do, and so here we go…

I was over a week late and so over being pregnant. I think being sick of being pregnant became my entire personality. So when I went in for a stress test and my OB-GYN noticed a minor drop in my baby’s heart rate and suggested going for an induction that night, I was so stoked! I was embarrassingly fixating on my daughter’s zodiac and really wanted a Libra; this meant she would most likely pop out the very last day of Libra season. Not to mention my parents were arriving the next day, and going for an induction now meant I wouldn’t have to pick them up from the airport in the AM and could avoid the schlep. I cried with relief at the fact that soon I’d no longer be pregnant. Rufus (my baby daddy) cried at the fact that soon we’d be meeting our daughter. Hey, to each their own.

We grabbed some California Chicken Cafe (our OB-GYN insisted we weren’t in a rush!), texted our families an update, and then headed to the hospital so I could give birth to our daughter. Finally, something worth driving to the west side for.

We parked at Labor and Delivery and floated to the third floor. It still hadn’t really hit me. How could it? I felt both totally unprepared for this moment and also like I was born for this shit. Bring it on, baby.

We checked into our room. No windows, but labor means losing all sense of time, so who cares if we couldn’t see the sunset? The outside world truly disappeared. For the foreseeable future, my vagina would be the only view worth taking in.

The thing I remember most about labor were the nurses. I don’t have words to describe how incredibly these women cared for me, for us. Yes, the attending doctor and the residents were great, but the nurses were the ones who were in the trenches with us and really got me through labor. Like the best coaches, they make you feel like you can do anything.

First up was Nurse Savannah, a warm, bubbly blonde, and the start of induction. Induction is when they help kick-start your body into labor. They use a variety of methods — first up, The Balloon. I won’t go into the dirty details, mostly because I’ve blocked them out, but basically they stick a balloon-type thingy inside you to help encourage your cervix to dilate and contractions to start. If Savannah was insisting on torturing me like this, I demanded she at least provide me with some juicy hospital gossip. She divulged how a certain A-list celebrity insisted they shut down the entire unit for her delivery, then revealed some of the worst baby names she’s heard (Snake and Placenta). That helped distract me from the pain, as did digging my nails into Rufus’s arm as hard as I could. But I knew with each contraction I was one step closer to meeting HER. And that got me through. As did the promise of fentanyl, if the pain got too much. (I’m serious!) One episode of “Below Deck” later and it was finally time to take out that evil Balloon. I had been having so much fun gossiping with Savannah, I forgot to ask for the fentanyl. I don’t have many regrets in life, but missing the opportunity to truly party like a rock star will forever haunt me.

Nurse Savannah’s shift ended, and it was time for Nurse Chloe and Pitocin. Chloe wore Marvel superhero pins that adorned her scrubs, which was fitting because she truly was one to me. She warned me that Pitocin was going to intensify the contractions a lot and that I shouldn’t be afraid to ask for the epidural. She promised me that I didn’t need to try to be a hero — I already was one. The Pitocin hit, and yeah, the contractions got more contraction-y. It is truly a pain unlike anything I’ve ever felt, and yet I’ve already totally forgotten it and would give birth again right now. Evolution! Thanks to Nurse Chloe, I didn’t try to tough it out. I got the epidural, and I could still cry tears of joy thinking about the moment it hit. Sweet relief. Thank G-d for drugs. I’d marry my epidural if I wasn’t already engaged.

Night became early morning, and things continued moving along. My cervix was almost fully dilated, and I had some Bloody Show (my favorite labor term). As we moved into the second day, I was fucking exhausted. But I somehow managed enough energy to throw my AirPods across the room at Rufus, whose snoring kept waking me up. My leg was going numb from the epidural, and despite being super nauseous, I was also starving. The end still felt so far away. I was losing hope. But then the attending doctor entered my room, stuck her hand up my vagina, and told me I was fully dilated! We did it! It was finally time to push!

But first, my new nurse Kathy was due for her lunch break. Would I mind waiting a half hour? Sure. I’d waited 39 years, so what was another 30 minutes for Kathy to scarf down a zesty burrito bowl? One of the most fascinating things about birth is how not fascinating it is to other people. For you, it’s the biggest moment of your life, but to others, it’s just a Tuesday morning.

Nurse Kathy was the perfect person to help me push. Calm, positive, and just the right amount of chatty. If I was going to push as hard as I could for as long as I could, I was gonna need to hear all about her passive-aggressive mother-in-law.

And so I pushed like a motherfucker. Finally, all those squats were paying off. Sure, it got a little tiring, but I was finally at the third base of labor; I could see home plate, and I felt like a badass! But as the hours passed, I noticed my OB-GYN growing more concerned every time she came by to check my progress (or lack thereof). It seemed my baby’s head was not descending down far enough. But she assured me not to worry. My baby didn’t wanna leave my uterus — who could blame her? She told me to relax and just keep pushing. So Rufus cranked up the birth mix, and I followed Salt-N-Pepa’s instructions to “Push it real good.”