We have chosen to give birth in a hospital because of the outstanding facilities it makes available to us. We would also like to deliver our baby in a hospital since we spent most of our twenties getting stoned and watching episodes of ER, and so we know that delivering a baby is the best way to cheer up an attractive but beleaguered doctor. Please make sure our doctor is handsome and “cares too much.” We considered a home birth, but we just got our hardwood floors redone. We also considered a birthing tub, but the mother is concerned the water won’t be warm enough. Is it too late to flood the hospital room? Or turn it into a really fun foam party? We are sorry for asking. The mother is very pregnant and would like to remind everyone her brain has turned into spaghetti.
Those we plan to have present at our birth include: Baby, Mother, Father, Grandparents, Lawyers, Agents, Lottery Winners, Lookie-Loos, Midwife, First Wife, Life Coach, Finnoula the Doula, Unexpected Ghosts, Bossy Astrologist, and the entire cast of Cheers. All other visitors and unnecessary staff may be turned away, unless they are wearing something cute. Or bring hot wings for the father.
The birth environment is very important to us. For that reason we ask that the lights be kept dim, noise be avoided, and the door be closed for privacy. We would also like people to stay “chill” and not “bring their own shit” into the room with them. It’s really important we feel “cool.” Please decorate the room with Nan Goldin prints and leather beanbag chairs. We would love it if you could bring in a silk Persian rug for us to destroy. Think Chateau Marmont if it was closed for repairs. Or the set of MTV Unplugged.
Speaking of music, we will arrive with our own. We plan on delivering our baby to the soundtrack of Pink Floyd’s The Wall while simultaneously watching The Wizard of Oz. If this kid works with us, we guarantee your minds will be blown!
The mother will wear her own clothes to the birth. If the delivery is on “Casual Friday,” the mother will be wearing a tube top and bike shorts. Regardless of the day, the father will be in a fun tuxedo with jokey suspenders. Both the parents are in entertainment and have no business wear to speak of. Everyone else should be wearing open hospital gowns with nothing underneath. It only seems fair.
We plan on handling pain in a variety of natural ways. Please have a birthing ball and back massager available upon request. An annoying nurse with an unfunny and teasing manner on whom we can focus our anger would be a welcome addition. The mother would also like a punching bag, a screaming pillow, a mirror to smash, and a small handgun. The father would like a George Foreman grill, just to have.
We ask for vaginal exams only upon request. The mother requires at least a minute or two of chitchat before cold fingers are introduced. The mother would like to remind the staff that her vagina is the absolute last thing that she wants to have touched right now. The mother can think of a thousand things that she would rather have presently poked at than her vagina. Honestly, the mother doesn’t know how the hell that baby is going to get out of there. The mother also would like to request that the handsome doctor maintain eye contact at all times during said poking.
If induction becomes necessary, we are aware of the nonchemical methods and would like to try them in this order: breast stimulation, sexual intercourse, and cervical cream. That’s right, you heard us. If this baby isn’t coming out, we are going to start doing it and make you all watch. So, let’s get cracking.
We will use the squatting or semi-squatting position for pushing. Preferably the mother would like to “drop it like it’s hot.” The mother would like to push at her own pace. The father would like to add that he hopes it doesn’t “take all day.” We would like to feel our son’s head as he descends with the option to stick him back up in there if we don’t feel ready. The mother should be given the freedom to walk around during labor. Light choreography is expected.
If drugs become necessary, we would like to go all in. We are talking epidural, helium, and roofies. The mother would like to ask one last time why no one is taking seriously her request for nitrous oxide. The mother heard about women in England and Sweden and Canada being offered this at birth and apparently it works wonderfully to calm nerves and help with delivery. The mother still resents the judgment she received from doctors and friends when she brought up this idea. Either way, if drugs have to be administered, both mother and father know a guy.
If delivery assistance is needed, we prefer “suction” over “forceps.” If episiotomy is needed, we prefer “buttonhole” over “backstitch.” If cesarean is needed, please inform us early so we don’t have to go through the above first.
In the event of a cesarean, the mother would like to be conscious. The mother would also not mind if you tweaked her abs while you’re down there. The father would like to be present and totally freaked out when he accidentally looks past the curtain and sees his wife’s organs stacked next to her like laundry.
The father would like to be involved in the “catching” of the baby and the “cutting” of the cord. At least that’s what he is saying right now. We’ll see. Please don’t cut the cord until it stops pulsing. Please immediately let the cord blood guy in with his titanium suitcase so he can put the cord blood in a vault and keep it fresh. It will help us during the robot apocalypse.
After birth we wish to nurse immediately. Please do not introduce formula or bottles or pacifiers or water, unless those things stop this baby from crying. Why won’t he stop crying? Wait, where is everybody going?
We prefer our stay in the hospital to be extended to the longest period our insurance will allow. We need time for our heads to catch up with our bodies. We also need to catch up on some Judge Judy. Please know we are grateful and sore and happy and scared. We will hear our baby down the hall and recognize his cry and we will realize this truly is a sci-fi miracle sent to us from G-O-D.
That being said, if people buy gifts that aren’t on the registry the mother will lose her shit.
The mother would like to take this moment to admit a few things. She thinks natural childbirth is amazing but she also likes drugs. She didn’t put baby oil on her perineum and try to stretch it because she just never felt like it. She lied when she said she completely stayed away from lunch meat. She also skipped Lamaze because sometimes she can’t stand being around other people. That’s all. We good?
Thank you in advance for your support of our choices. We look forward to a wonderful birth. We are excited but mostly scared. Have you SEEN the mother? She is TINY! How is this going to WORK exactly? Please advise.
the day i was born
I REMEMBER MANY DETAILS ABOUT THE DAYS MY SONS CAME INTO THE WORLD BUT VERY LITTLE ABOUT MY OWN BIRTHDAY. Partly because I was a newborn baby, and partly because my mother was always a little coy about how the birth went down. When people celebrate birthdays I like to have them describe the day they were born. Sometimes it’s fun to see if the birth matches the personality. Does a big baby turn into a big adult? Does a baby born at home turn into a homebody? Does a baby born on New Year’s Eve end up being a real party monster?
I was born September 16, 1971, in Newton, Massachusetts. The most popular song at the time was “Joy to the World” by Three Dog Night. All in the Family had been on for less than a year, Evel Knievel had just set a world record jumping over nineteen cars, and Disney World would open a month later. My mother was twenty-four years old and my father was about to turn twenty-five, and they had been married for a short eleven months. Mom wore yarn in her hair and claims she doesn’t remember a thing about labor. Back then there was this wonderful thing called “twilight sleep” where women were given anesthesia at the onset of labor and woke up with a baby. Today “twilight sleep” is when you pass out on your bed while looking at paparazzi photos of Robert Pattinson eating an omelet. I always pictured my mom in a deep sleep, her beautiful thick hair (that I didn’t inherit) spread out like a fan on the pillow. The Best of Bread played on the radio while some doctor pulled me out using groovy seventies fondue forks. I figure now would be a good
time to ask her how that day went down.
IT WAS 1971, THE AGE OF ALMOST “UNNATURAL CHILDBIRTH.” I had no childbirth education classes, no prenatal diagnostic tests, no ultrasound. I started labor and Dad took me to the hospital. He went home to await the birth at Nana and Gunka’s house. There was no push to include fathers in the delivery room at the time, so that didn’t feel strange.
I didn’t feel afraid. My contractions stalled, so they had to break my water. Things moved pretty fast from then on. I remember the pain, being administered a “saddle block” anesthetic, and then helpful nurses and my doctor encouraging me at the moment of birth. You were slight in weight but unusually long, making for an easy delivery.
I was thrilled to have a daughter. My mother had modeled so successfully how to bring up daughters. I can still remember that first rush of motherly pride, that assurance that my child was perfect, and then that first twinge of self-doubt. Was I ready for this job? I look like a kid in the pictures, with a long ponytail, smiling and probably overly confident. Right after you were born, you were happily bottle-fed and then returned to the nursery and I was given four days in the hospital to recuperate. It all seems so separate and sterile now, so different from today’s emphasis on instant mother-child bonding. Yet I felt great and it had all gone so smoothly.
Pregnancy had been a different story. I was sick almost every day up to your birth, sometimes on the way to work. I was teaching third grade in a nearby elementary school in 1971 and the policy was that I was supposed to resign my job upon finding out I was pregnant. An understanding principal looked the other way and I made it through the school year. Over the summer, I gave up my job in preparation for stay-at-home motherhood. There were virtually no other options available. My parents were still young and working full-time. There was no day-care facility nearby. For me, it just wasn’t socially acceptable to go back to work full-time and I had always followed the rules. I was the oldest daughter in my family, the one who was working her nine-to-five shift at the bra department in our local store while her sister was at Woodstock. I studied, graduated, got a job, fell in love, got married, and had a baby. I left my job to take care of my daughter. That’s the way things were done. That’s the way all of my friends were doing it.
We moved away to a not-so-neighboring town. Dad went to work every day with the car and you and I were alone all day, in unknown territory. No one knew about postpartum depression then, or dared to speak its name (“Snap out of it!” was the more common reply), but knowing what I know now, I am quite sure that the signs were there for me. I was often overcome with loneliness, unsure about my choices, missing my friends. Motherhood was a twenty-four-hour-a-day, all-encompassing job. It was the hardest job I had ever had. Everything that happened to you happened to me. I had once heard children described in a novel as “hostages to fortune” and certainly my happiness depended on yours. You were not a sleeping baby. You stared at me with those blue eyes at all hours of the day and night.
I would walk the length and breadth of our town, singing Helen Reddy’s “You and Me Against the World.” It was the time of the burgeoning women’s movement and the National Organization for Women had just been launched, and I was curious and bewildered at the same time. Where did I belong in this new world?
Moving to a new suburban town when you were five made all the difference. Here lived some college friends and a host of other educated women. Most of them were also at home providing full-time child care. These women and I “volunteered” and you came with me. We made paths for a town walking trail, read to kindergartners, delivered meals to shut-ins, and constructed floats for the Fourth of July parade on which you and your brother sat proudly and waved. We were busy and productive, involved in town politics and issues. It was the beginning of networking for me, a time of making connections and defining goals and career plans. You were always part of all this, watching me become my own person, motivated and ready for change.
—EILEEN POEHLER
I WAS THRILLED TO HAVE A DAUGHTER AND SPECIFICALLY asked the florist to put a card on the arrangement that read, “Glad it’s a girl!” I have never forgotten holding you as a newborn, with your whole fanny fitting in the palm of my hand. I figured I would wait for the appropriate time to describe this to you, and now seems like a nice, private moment!
—BILL POEHLER,
also chiming in
That’s my birth story. I was small and fussy, and remain so as an adult. Three years later my younger brother and only sibling, Greg, was born. I remember my father dressing me to go to the hospital and my mother commenting on how he put the wrong pants on me. I remember loving my brother instantly. He was my first friend.
If your parents are still alive, call them today and ask them to describe the day you were born. Write the details down here, on the following pages. Tell the story every year on your birthday until you know it by heart.
sorry, sorry, sorry
I SAY “SORRY” A LOT. When I am running late. When I am navigating the streets of New York. When I interrupt someone. I say, “Sorry, sorry, sorry,” in one long stream. The sentence becomes “Sorrysorrysorry” and it’s said really fast, as if even the act of apologizing is something to apologize for. But this doesn’t mean I am a pushover. It doesn’t mean I am afraid of conflict or don’t know how to stand up for myself. I am getting to a place right in the middle where I feel good about exactly how much I apologize. It takes years as a woman to unlearn what you have been taught to be sorry for. It takes years to find your voice and seize your real estate.
I am still learning the right balance. Sometimes I go too far the other way. I have a quick temper and I’m not afraid to argue. Once, I was flying from New York to Toronto with Tina Fey and Ana Gasteyer on our way to shoot Mean Girls. We were flying in first class and spent the hour-long, ten A.M. flight chatting about life and work. The man sitting next to me was in an expensive suit on his way to a meeting, and I got the sense that he hated us and our friendly back-and-forth. A few times during the flight he sighed loudly, which I took as a sign that we were bothering him. I ignored it. Maybe that was a mistake, but sighing doesn’t really work on me. As we got off the airplane and headed toward the moving walkway, the man pushed past me and jostled me a bit.
“Excuse me,” I said.
“Excuse me? Excuse you!” he said.
I looked up at his boring, rich-guy face. He was turning red. I realized he was preparing to scold me. He had bumped into me on purpose to teach me a lesson.
“You girls were talking the entire flight,” he said. “You should not be in first class!”
All of my lower-middle-class Boston issues rose to the surface. I don’t like it when bratty, privileged old white guys speak to me like I am their mouthy niece. I got that amazing feeling you get when you know you are going to lose it in the best, most self-righteous way. I just leaned back and yelled, “FUUUUUUUUUUUUCK YOU.” Then I chased him as he tried to get away from me.
“You rich motherfucker! Who do you think you are? You’re not better than me. Fuck you and your fucking opinions, you piece of shit.”
And on and on. Tina was laughing. Or horrified. I don’t remember; I was in a rage haze. Also I was showing off, which can be at the very least embarrassingly transparent and at the very worst careless and dangerous. But who doesn’t love self-righteous anger? It’s great. When I yell at the dads drinking coffee and looking at their phones at the playground while their seven-year-olds play on the preschool monkey bars, I feel like I am fully alive.
But for the most part I try not to yell “fuck you.” I try to say “yes please.” And “thank you.” “Yes please” and “thank you” and “sorry, sorry, sorry.”
But there was one “sorry” that I took too long to say, and it haunted me for years.
Saturdays at SNL were a tornado of activity. I would typically be in eight or nine sketches a night, which meant fast costume changes and lots to prepare. Costume changes at Saturday Night Live are a d
ance all to themselves. Each week I would confab with my human pit crew and figure out how much time I had to change between sketches. I would change under bleachers and tucked away in corners. Hearing the sound of the audience while I was in my underwear was thrilling and terrifying. My job was to stay still and obey directions as they were shouted: “Lift your foot!” “Snap this shut!” “Close your eyes!” Bruce would pull off my pre-Velcroed shirt as Robert glued on my fake mustache. I would hold up my two index fingers next to my head while Jeffrey put on my old-man wig, and Spivey would stand next to me telling me that my new cue to enter was “Thanksgiving is ruined!” Everyone was equal during those moments, all of us actors in a play trying to get changed in time. I watched Robert De Niro wiggle into spandex pants as Siegfried. Or Roy. I witnessed Donald Trump stepping into a chicken suit. I engaged in small talk with Derek Jeter as he was buttoned into a dress. “How are you doing?” I asked. “Are you nervous?” He just laughed and said, “No,” thus settling the long-standing debate about what is more nerve-racking: live comedy or the World Series.
“SNL time” is completely different from real-world time. Gena, our stage manager, would peek in and reassure us that we still had “a minute twenty.” Our shoulders would relax and we would joke around like emergency room doctors. We would chat about someone’s boyfriend as we hustled to the stage floor, and more than once a prop was thrown to me with seconds to go. I would catch it, the crowd would clap, and the scene would start. It was chaos. It was so exciting.
The problem with busy shows is that details get lost. Attention is not equally paid and things slip through the cracks. It was in one of those cracks that I did the only sketch I regret from SNL. The crack is not an excuse. Or maybe it is. This essay is about apologies, and I have learned an important part of apologizing is not making excuses. But that night was particularly busy.