A Bikini Cut And The Crack-Head Shakes.

Early on in my first pregnancy, I would joke about how I would gladly be cut open instead of have my vagina blown out by a 7 pounder. However, the truth is, when I was told I had to have a cesarean, I cried like a baby.

It was less than a week away from my due date and I had gone for my weekly check-up. My doctor put his hand on the top of my belly and immediately led me to the ultra sound room. He then, with an annoying, nonchalant manner, requested that I come in to his office. He sat across from me and told me that my daughter was breech and that we would schedule a cesarean three days from now.

Before I said anything, I started to ugly cry. I don’t really know why, other than I just immediately felt robbed of something I was deathly afraid of to begin with. I was even more petrified now.

My unborn daughter refused to let someone else pick her birthday. I went in to labor the day before I was scheduled. My poor doctor had to cancel his golf plans. Pity.

After settling in (several painful attempts at an IV, catheter and small talk), people were somewhat scrambling to fit me in to the OR. I started to panic. It was one of those, I’m scare and I want my Mommy moments…only my Mom can’t hold my hand from heaven. Thank God for my husband, who refused to go to work the day before I was scheduled because he, “had a feeling”. This is the same man who woke me up that morning to the scent of Lysol, due to nesting like a crazed she-man.

Out of no where, nurses started pouring in to my room and I was wheeled away to the OR. My husband had to hang back until right before they cut me {cringe!}. Shortly after, the anesthesiologist came in and read me the if-you-die-it’s-not-my-fault waiver. He then had me sit up and hunch over as he completed the spinal block. A little prick my ass! That shit hurt and him telling me not to move made me want to cry harder and punch him in the jugular.

They laid me down and then this guy starts asking me “can you feel this, can you feel this, can you feel this?” I was so freaked out because I kind of could and kind of couldn’t! I just felt like I was failing his stupid test and I was going to feel the doctor slicing my skin! Finally, the doc said, “hey, do you feel this?” and I asked, “feel what?” Apparently, I was good because he was pinching my leg as hard as he could.

At this point, I am flat on my back and my arms are strapped down. It’s perhaps the most vulnerable, terrifying position ever.

I have a blue curtain hanging by my face to prevent me from seeing my body being pulled open and organs shifted around. That would be great except, if I looked straight up, I could see the reflection of what was going on, in the big light fixture that was not being used at the moment. If I looked to the right, I saw a tube that my blood was rushing through.

Again, thank God for the man sitting on my left. It was his face and his voice, that I focused on. That was the only thing that kept me calm, as I felt my body being pulled and jerked around. I couldn’t feel the pain but I felt what I knew they were doing to me. Again, just awful.

My daughter was pulled from my womb and marked her presence with a dainty little cry. They cleaned her up and brought her over so I could see her. My reaction was, “Oh my God, she is so beautiful!” I laugh when I think of this because it was actually quite a shallow reaction. I was psyched she didn’t have the cone-head, gooey, newborn look to her.

My experience wasn’t over yet though. Even though the hubs left to go be with the baby, I still had to be put back together. It was the oddest thing to hear two doctors, on opposite sides of me, discussing their summer plans, as they were literately closing up my body. Bizarre. When they were done, a nurse took the blue sheet down. I was immediately mortified. My doctor was wearing, what my memory now swears was a butcher’s apron, and it looked like he had just slaughtered a warehouse full of cows.

After spending an hour in recovery, by my self, where nurses chatted about hospital politics, while throwing around my numb body to clean me up (it was just awkward), I was finally taken back to my room. Here’s the thing though. I got, what I have dubbed, the crack-head shakes. For some reason, some people get real shaky after a spinal. I was one of those people. Someone should have warned my sister. As I am being wheeled in, she starts freaking out because her baby sister looks like she’s having a crack-attack.

My crack-attack started to fade eventually and within a few hours, my legs were warm and tingly. Not in a I-just-had-great-sex kind of way, but more of a did-I-just-piss-myself kind of way. I kept trying to will my big toe to wiggle like Uma Thurman in Kill Bill. Shit didn’t work that way.

It all being said and done, I got to hold and breast feed my tiny, baby girl and all was right with the world.

Going in to have my second child, I thought knowing what I knew, the C-section would be easier. It wasn’t. I was scared and panicky the minute I walked in to the hospital.

Natural childbirth is painful I know, but it’s natural. There is something about being cut open to bring your baby in to the world, that makes you feel a little robbed. I think most women (most I know anyway) pray for a cesarean when they find out they are pregnant because they are petrified of jacking up their lady parts and afraid they won’t survive the pain.

There is absolutely nothing glorious about a cesarean, except the end result of course. It’s scary, it’s cold, it’s not natural and the recovery is slow and painful. I still cringe (not lying) to this day when I hear a staple gun. Yes, they used fucking staples to close me up! It isn’t as easy as a conveniently, scheduled due date that avoids wrecking havoc on your body. My feet hitting the floor the next day was a stabbing pain that made me want to bunt sweet baby Jesus.

So to the women who don’t have children yet or are currently pregnant: Do not wish for a C-section. Our lady parts are fucking awesome and can handle it. I never understood what the big deal about C-sections was, until nature demanded that I have one.

In the end, all that matters is that I had a healthy baby girl, who will be five years old in less than a month (Wow!). But truth be told, I get a bit jealous in a room full of women, hyped up on birthing stories.

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Nat Geo Boobs: A “Perk” of Being Momma.

Underwire. Push up bras. They not only hold the girls up but have become my last line of defense in the war against saggy booby syndrome. I have nursed two kids. Throw in entering my 30’s and I am definitely losing the war.

Delicious D’s

I loved my boobs. A perfect B. Added a little junk in my trunk after getting married and guess what? I loved them even more. I had the perfect C. Then, I got pregnant. My lovely C’s turned in to vuluptous D’s. It was a miracle. The girl that couldn’t tell her back from her chest as a blossoming teenager has managed to pull off two fun-filled, fabulous D’s.

Looking at my boobs now, I see a whole new meaning to the expression “sucking the life out of you”. I pumped primarily for my first child for six months. Nursing went a little smoother with my son, who latched his perfect little lips around my now affectionately dubbed “Nat Geo nips”, every chance he got, for nine exhausting months. These deflated balloons no longer bring the boys to yard is all I’m saying.

These new larger than life nipples have decided they prefer originality, ultimately refusing to be like the other. My nips are as indecisive as I am. One choosing to invert just to make that very clear. Neither prefer to rest politely in the middle of my breasts anymore. They seem to migrate these days, one north and one south.

There are no more sexy, slow-mo bouncing boobies that I once had and loved. The girls are more swaying than bouncing these days. And don’t even get me started on lying down. Looks like I got two medium sized tumors creeping in to my arm pits. My cleavage is now a tunnel of darkness between two rained on ant hills.

Are these ants mocking me?

I had no idea that my perfect D’s would morph in to shriveled up itty bitty A titties. No one told me that there would come a day when I would have to roll these bitches up to put them away. Someone failed to mention And that trips to the bathroom would now and forever involve a reach down to put the girls back in their place.

A lot of attention is put on the Freddy Kruger marks left on our bellies after cooking our babies. Our once perky and full of life breasts seem to be the invisible heros of developing and nourishing our spawns. I’ve had this conversation with other moms before and it always requires a slightly twisted sense of humor. Those with out kids will laugh, but it’s usually one of those nervous “come on guys, it’s not really that bad, is it?” kind of laughs.

I put out a request for women to share how they really feel about their post-baby boobs on my Facebook page. I can’t say I’m surprised at my followers sense of humor.

 “I have always called them my 2 sunny side up boobs.”

 “I think of clown shoes. A little long, but still fat on the end.”

 “Long orangutan boobs! Or water balloons, slightly filled.”

Many other women described their boobs as “saggy”, “long”, “less perky”. “Stretched out, heavy, floppy sandbags”, said a Mom of three, who is expecting her forth soon (as well as her boobs to touch her belly button afterwards). One that I could totally relate to was “flat as pancakes”. We’re talking late night, half-assed Denny’s pancakes, at best.

 Oh, I miss the girls. I miss the days when I was more concerned with the color of my bra, and not whether the Nat Geo nips would steal the spotlight. I wish someone would have shown me a picture of post nursing boobs, before I decided to let the monsters latch on. It wouldn’t have persuaded me to feed them any other way. Perhaps though, I would have given the girls the front line more often, before they melted, developed protruding, wondering eye balls where my delicate nipples used to be and made me ask myself…Is muffin-boob a thing?