Belly Laughs_ The Naked Truth About Pregnancy and Childbirth - Jenny McCarthy [31]
So what does one do? Well, any normal person would tell her husband to be on full alert, and she would make sure her bags were packed and yadda yadda. Not me. No, I called and made a hair appointment because I wanted a nice blow-dry for all of my delivery pictures. Yes, I’m an idiot.
Off I went to the hair salon, and as cosmic punishment I immediately started to feel crampy. I sat through my blow-dry even though my hairstylist told me I was crazy and needed to get home (remember, this was the guy who had witnessed my false labor months before). I suffered through the final stages of grooming sweating and moaning. When I finally made it home, I couldn’t lie down because I was too eager, and I knew we still had some time before we should go to the hospital. No longer Psycho Chick and with a surprising presence of mind, I remembered the “4-1-1 rule” that my doctor had drilled into my head: My contractions needed to be four minutes apart, one minute long, for one hour before I went to the hospital.
I needed to kill time. I snuck into the bathroom and pulled out my waiting enema. It looked mean and foreign and invasive, but I thought hard about using it. Remember, my big fear was not if I was going to tear my vagina on the table but if I POOPED ON THE TABLE. After standing in the bathroom for ten minutes having contractions and feeling miserable, I came to the conclusion that the last thing I wanted to do was to stick something up my butt. So, I threw the enema away. Little did I know I was also throwing away any hope of having a poop-free delivery.
Finally, at midnight, my contractions were 4-1-1, so we ventured off to the hospital with our suitcase and our nervous bellies. On the drive there my husband and I talked about how we felt like we were standing on the edge of the Grand Canyon and didn’t know whether to fly or fall in. We were absolutely terrified about what was to come. We understood that this would be the last time that life was only about the two of us. In a few hours we would be responsible for another life. No more clowning around. As Dr. Phil would say, “It’s time to get real, people.” We looked at each other and smiled, and when we arrived at the hospital, we were whisked off to labor and delivery.
From there, things slowed down. As when I was in premature labor, they hooked me up with belts to monitor the baby’s heart and measure contractions. My sweet little nurse asked if I wanted to get hooked up with an epidural yet. This part was confusing for me because I wasn’t in severe amounts of pain, but I’d heard those horror stories about women who waited too long and couldn’t get an epidural. Then there were the stories about the women who got it too early and it ran out right before they were about to push. I asked her if she thought I was close to pushing, and she laughed and said, “Darlin’, it’s midnight, and you probably won’t start pushing until three in the afternoon.” So I figured I would wait on the epidural. I wasn’t too anxious for a needle in my back anyway.
After about an hour, now feeling settled in our room, I started to envision myself giving birth and . . . completely started to freak out. I almost hyperventilated. I realized that this wasn’t one of the million daydreams I’d had during pregnancy. This was real. I became terrified at the thought of pushing a giant head through my vagina, and I was certain that my vagina would be the only one in the world not up to the challenge. How could it be? My vagina would never be able to open to a gaping hole the size of a watermelon. My husband was trying to calm me down, but it wasn’t working. I was just too scared.
I decided that my peace of mind lay with an epidural. I devised a plan, before the anesthesiologist walked in, to flirt with him so he would give me extra medicine. This goes to show you that I did indeed fall asleep during my one Lamaze class. Had I been listening, I would