My Birth Story

This is the story of the day I met my son.

It was three-thirty in the afternoon on a Saturday, and finally, the door shut. I was alone for the first time in what felt like weeks. Time had melted together. It was my first time experiencing pregnancy alongside my first ever global pandemic that we had been locked into for over a year, almost two. Nothing felt certain during this time and nothing was.

I looked over at myself in the mirror and soaked up the sight. I managed to make it through almost my entire pregnancy without swollen ankles, and in those last two weeks they evolved to full-blown tree trunks.

I sat alone in my new house, a real home-house in Thousand Oaks— a sweet little suburban zone located smack dab in the middle between Los Angeles and Santa Barbara. We moved in two months prior on my thirty-fourth birthday. It all felt kismet. My first set of house keys, thirty-four years old, and thirty-four weeks pregnant all in the same breath of life. How in the heck did I get here?

My mind panicked as it wandered. I had reached four days past my due date and didn’t know what to expect. My mom flew in from her home in the midwest on my expected due date which was the tenth of August, 2021. August tenth was also my paternal grandmother’s birthday. Grandma Forte and I were buds when she was alive so this shared date was incredibly special to me. More on that another time. It meant the world having my mom in town to be here to support me and to meet her first grandchild. But, a funny thing happens at the end of a pregnancy. Hormones say, “ding dong” and you say “hello?” and they go, “you hate everyone — every smell, every sound, and ever-y-thing that isn’t you ejecting a human from your body.” So naturally within a few hours of her arrival my mind began plotting murder.

I needed to get away from everyone. My husband hadn’t left the house further than a five mile radius for almost a month. He was so ready and so excited to be a dad. But on this day, on this particular Saturday four days past my due date, he had an appointment in Los Angeles that I encouraged him to keep. A hair appointment. Important stuff before becoming a dad and being stuck indoors again for God knows how long. My mom was in town, after all. She was driving me absolutely mad-hatter-mad but she was here. Moms have a special talent for this I think.

Now, intuition runs strong in my blood line; my mother’s is no exception. After multiple days of long walks, long talks, strawberry-date smoothies, and my mom’s loving presence triggering every part of me, she sweetly checked herself out of my house and into a hotel right up the street. I love you, mom. Intuitive queen.

After she and my husband walked out the door at the same time, together like nervous little chickens, I exhaled. It was then that I quickly realized I hadn’t been alone in a long time. Like, a really long time. I am someone who thrives when I am by myself. I wondered if my baby could feel this — if he could feel me needing this thing. I felt him kick.

I laid on my couch and reveled in the silence. I sat in complete awe feeling like although this was me who was pregnant here, it felt somehow as if I was watching someone else do it the whole time. Such a strange thing. Images of all the women in my life who are mothers flooded my mind. I thought about my grandmothers and their mothers and all the women in my bloodline who did this before me. Why didn’t they brag about it more? I felt supported knowing that although I was genuinely terrified to give birth for the first time, I could do this. I can do this.

Can I fucking do this?

Literal minutes after reveling in my solitude, I began to feel pressure in the lower part of my back. Braxton Hicks contractions had been paying me little visits for weeks. You know, those “pretend” contractions that come days or weeks before you are actually in labor just to fuck with your already worried mind. I got those a bunch. I remember asking my OB no less than twelve times, “are you sure I will know when I am going into labor? Like, for sure, for sure?” and she assured me… '“you will know”.

It’s wild that we just trust doctors. Quick note about mine… my doctor, one of the top OB/GYNs at Cedars Sinai was top-notch, five-stars the whole ride through other than the fact that I never once saw her face. Strange times, the pandemic was. We got really close in those final appointments together. During one of our last ones, I was sitting in her little room reminiscing internally about our time shared and our close friendship and all that we had been through. And then she said something that I still can’t believe. She shared how excited she was for me and my family, how she couldn’t wait to meet the baby, and that she was about to take a family trip to Hawaii.

“HA-wuhhh-ii?” was all that I could verbally manage. She would be gone the week of my expected due date. “Not to worry”, she told me.

“Most first time moms rarely deliver on their due date.” I felt like Seth Rogen in Knocked Up the moment he finds out his doctor is in San Francisco at a Bat Mitvah. WTF, mate? She scheduled a C-section for the day after her return.

There was no way I was having a fucking C-section. I visualized this moment in great detail for a long time and it did not include surgery. I laughed to myself as I replayed our every conversation in my head. None of this was in my control. This was a moment of pure surrender.

The pressure in my back started getting deeper. Like an obnoxious, squeezing, heavy period pain that came and went. It was six-o-clock by now. Whatever this was, it felt different. New. Hours of this, but even then my mind didn’t jump to “labor”. I just thought, “wow, pregnancy really blows at this stage, this is so uncomfortable; FML.”

I had to pee.

I always had to pee. That’s really a thing by the way. By this hour, I began to sense that these intense pains in my back were possibly contractions and I should probably start timing them. I knew that if I texted my husband our chosen emoji for “labor” that he would probably without question drive home at a hundred miles per hour immediately. And immediately what I needed was a calm bubble of energy.

I took a breath. I went into my yoga mind. Contractions (as I was now calling them) were seventeen minutes apart. That seemed OK enough for me to manage. I had an app timer thingy that my sister recommended. And then something I had never experienced before happened. When something new happens to your body it is sooo weird, right? Like, woah… first cut… first scab? How weird. First bruise… what the heck is that? Weird. First kiss — hey now. Kinda weird. First unexpected glob of blood dropping out of you the size of a golf ball? WHAT THE—

I went to use the ladies and looked down and there it was. Holy guacamole. Here we go. Bloody show?! I read so much about this... I became immediately excited like a total psycho. I was in pain, but oh what a thrill! Seeing my body do things I didn’t think it could do but was doing right before my eyes.

So there I was, alone in my bedroom with my two dogs right by my side. Intense pain rushing like waves throughout my body. And I’m like, “wow!”

“That’s what a contraction feels like!”

“Woah, I am… pregnant!”

“Oooweeeee, this is WILD.”

It’s an odd experience that you can’t quite understand until you are in it. You read so much about something, and then you go through it and it’s just this magical thing that’s happening. It’s unlike what you thought but also somehow exactly like you thought all at once. The reality fills in the curiosity holes. I had arrived.

Time and light evolved from day to night and somehow I was able to make it this far keeping myself calm and centered. I heard a sound. Our garage door was opening.

“Thank GOD,” I melted into my body with relief. I could only convince my mind not to panic for so long. I passed the calm torch to my husband as he walked up our stairs and made eye contact with me. I was hunched over our bed taking deep breaths as I waved him in closer. Contractions were now eleven minutes apart.

“Hi babe. Everything is totally cool. I think I am going to have a baby.”

It felt like the movies. He got into gear within milliseconds. It is incredible to witness a man so happy to become a father. I threw my phone at him. We began timing contractions together. Eight minutes. Somehow we were now at eight minutes. Time was no longer real. My husband, Ian, rubbed my back and kept me hydrated and made me a sandwich. Is there a greater love that exists than when someone makes you a sandwich? I don’t believe there is.

Seven minutes. All I had was this very present moment. I took a shower. Magically. We got down to six minutes and then called my mom who was up the street and she jetted over right away.

We were approaching the five minute contraction mark when she arrived. Bag packed and hyped as hell, we began walking out the door… and then I felt… my water break? Ohhh hello panic. There you are, my friend.

For me, this was THE MOMENT. A combined feeling of shock and super-strength took over my being. My underwear was completely soaked. I went to the bathroom to check the situation, and to my utter surprise, there wasn’t a flush of water… but instead a much larger, scarier-looking glob of blood than the one I found hours earlier.

I laughed to myself. What a naive little bird I was thinking that the golf ball glob was my “bloody show”. It was not that. It was this. This epic, wtf, horror film, red ball of wreckage was the real show. I was in shock, truly. But also like, into it? I don’t know, I’m sick. It was time to go to the hospital.

I hopped in the car with my high-on-life husband who had entered into a mode I hadn’t seen him in before. I liked it a lot. It was almost midnight now and the roads were completely clear of cars. Every song that played on the radio aligned with our life in this moment. I can’t remember a single one now but I remember we were laughing about it the whole drive there. Deep breaths. Contractions were down to three to four minutes in the car. It’s intense. As fuck. I feel like an animal.

We arrived at Cedars Sinai in Beverly Hills, pulling into the parking garage at exactly 1:11 a.m. Hello angels. I exhaled. We made it. Ian grabbed a wheelchair and our packed bag and rolled me up to the labor and delivery ward… the ah-ah-hem, same one where Beyoncé birthed her twins. I had never felt cooler in my whole entire life.

Men and women in scrubs welcomed us in and brought me into a small room with dim lighting. It was the middle of the night but time felt irrelevant. Upside down. Unreal. We had entered into something big and the only way out was through, literally.

I was given a bed and my husband collapsed into the chair next to me. A nurse wrapped a belt around my belly and hooked me up to a machine that had the ability to see my contractions and measure their distance. It looked like a lie detector machine. I’ve never been hooked up to one, but it had the same little wave markers that I had seen on television that move more when people aren’t telling the truth. The nurse looked relieved as she watched. She confirms to me that my contractions were between two and four minutes apart. She checks my dilation.

To enter into the labor and delivery ward, which I quickly learned I was not in yet, you need to be dilated four centimeters. As an occasional perfectionist and aspiring overachiever, internally I thought like a real jerk, “I’m at six.” My contractions were brutal at this point and my level of tired was beyond comprehension.

The nurse sighs and tells me firmly, “you are at half a centimeter.”

Instantly, my internals are in fury. I felt exhausted, confused, and perhaps deceived? How could this be true? Check the lie detector machine again, lady. Ian looks at me with, “it’s gon’ be alright” eyes, and I could just feel that we were both at our end. We hadn’t even started. Not really.

The nurse is endlessly compassionate. I feel safe with her. She is on our team. She suggests that we can go home (another hour’s drive in the middle of the night — not happening) or we can stay the night and walk around a bit. She will come back and check me again at sunrise. I opt to stay. My husband quickly passes out.

I’m not sure if I ever slept. The waves of contractions were keeping me alert. Some occasional dozing off and perhaps some minor hallucinations occur. I walk around here and there but mostly just to and from the bathroom to pee. It was all I could muster. My husband snoring, sweetly. He looks so peaceful. I feel jealous. Being a dude has got to be nice. Maybe in my next life.

There is a clock in our room that I couldn’t help but watch. The tick-tock sound became a companion of mine. A steady beat that kept me going. What time did the sun rise? I had no idea and I didn’t think to ask. I held my belly and began to talk to my child. “It’s OK for you to arrive now. I am ready for you.”

The nurse entered the room again around six in the morning. She smiles as she checks. Three centimeters. Three fucking centimeters. My contractions are now two minutes apart. She believes we are getting close. Music to my ears.

Eight-thirty in the morning now and another check. I am at three-and-a-half centimeters dilation and they decide to admit me. Sweet relief! My husband barely awake. I nudge him and in celebration I tell him that we are moving to a new room. We are both delirious. And thrilled.

A new nurse, Nicole (my birth-given middle name that I legally dropped when I got married) arrives. She clearly had a good night’s sleep and was cheery as can be. I liked her right away. She wheels me down the hall into a sun-filled room with a great big window, a beautiful view of Los Angeles, and a big, cozy couch for my husband to relax on while I do all the hard stuff. I must have done some good in this life to land in a room like this.

Nicole then said words to me that still give me a chill… “It’s official, you are not leaving here without a baby!” That made this reality all very real. Suddenly the experience of watching someone else do this thing became just me doing this thing. I am strong and incredible. All moms are.

We turned on the TV and to my absolute delight, Saved By The Bell was playing. It was a TV marathon and I could think of no better time to binge. It was the episode where Jessie gets addicted to caffeine pills and we entered their world in the scene where she is in Zack’s room so excited. It felt so meant for me.

“I’m so excited! I’m so excited! I’m s o . . . s c a r e d.”

I couldn’t help but feel a connection. One thing I know to be true about God (Mama Universe as I like to call her) is that she has a great sense of humor. I laughed at the hilarity of it all. But my God, was I in pain. My body had been through seventeen hours of contractions at this point. It was at this hour that my team (as I was now calling them) asked me if I wanted an epidural. Before this moment, I discussed with my doctor that I wasn’t sure how I would feel about an epidural and wanted to decide in the moment if that was an option. I looked up at Jessie and Zack and without a doubt… I wanted those drugs. Give ‘em to me.

They brought in an anesthesiologist and walked me through the process. Basically, don’t move or you are in big trouble. A square was then painted on my lower back around the intended injection point and nurses explained that the needle would be the most painful part. I took a deep breath in and scolded myself internally, “don’t you move a muscle, bitch”. It went in. I breathed out. I did it. I did it. I am so thankful that I did it.

For the first time in so— many— hours, I could breathe. I thought about my mom who birthed four children all without an epidural. So unbelievably badass. How did she do that? My mind wandered off on this thought for awhile.

Active labor was in full effect and over the next several hours we went through a lot. Dilation went from three-and-a-half centimeters to six centimeters to eight to then being stuck at eight for many hours, to deciding on a low dose of Pitocin, to my baby having meconium (a fancy word meaning he took his first poop while inside of my body), to me spiking a high fever of a hundred-and-three, to my water then finally actually breaking, to everything —especially time— slowing down, to my baby’s heart rate slowing down, to my absolute submission to this great big thing that we don’t quite understand taking over. I reached nine centimeters and it was now almost ten at night. What day was it? What year was it?

Doctors began discussing a C-section.

I was completely out-of-body and hearing whispers around me about the thing I didn’t want to do. This helped me gather my superpowers. I prayed. I talked to God. I checked in with my baby. My husband had to be terrified but was somehow calm and kept it together for all of us while he rubbed my back and said nice things to me. Imagining that we would meet our baby soon, he looked up the date on his phone and shared some cool things with me that happened on the fifteenth of August:

—The opening of the Panama Canal, 1914
—The first day of Woodstock, 1969 (OK, very cool)
—The Beatles playing at Shea Stadium, 1965 (cooler!)
—The day The Wizard of Oz premiered in Hollywood, 1939
—National Relaxation Day (hilarious)
—A shared birthday with Julia Child, Napoleon, Ben Affleck, Anthony Anderson, Joe Jonas, and Jennifer Lawrence (love me some JLaw)

Next thing I remember, Dr. Tsui came in to greet me. He was my stand-in doctor that I met just a few days prior “just in case” my real doctor didn’t make it back from her travels on time. He had good yelp reviews. He also told jokes which put me at ease. Laughter is medicine and quite possibly the key to life. His presence brought me new energy and strength and we chatted for a few minutes about next steps. The plan became one final check on my dilation, and if I hadn’t reached ten centimeters (the magic number) then it was time to resort to a C-section to get my baby out safely. I learned this surgical procedure is quicker than I imagined, done in about fifteen minutes. I began to consider this new reality, the one I didn’t envision one bit, as my fate. Nurses began prepping my transport and the surgery ahead.

Final check time.

A moment of complete surrender. The team of nurses, three of them now looking after me, came in to assess my progression for the last time.

They looked at me, looked at each other, then back at me again. I recognized their faces as expressions of celebration. I was so tired. What was happening?

“TEN CENTIMETERS!” they exclaim.

“You are at ten centimeters! It is time to meet your baby!”

Then, like a goddamn nascar team, Dr. Tsui and a team of people burst into the room within what felt like seconds. A spotlight is put on me. My legs are put into stirrups. Gadgets and sounds abound. My husband grabs the tea candles we brought and begins lighting them and putting them around the room. He starts a playlist that we made prior. Our “push list”—

Salt-N-Pepa begin singing, “Ahh! Push it!”

Following that was Queen’s, “I want to break free”, Diana Ross’s, “I’m Coming Out”, loads of girl-power songs, and a few others I won’t mention here because they are just ours.

The room laughed with us at the song choices. Or maybe it was all the voices in my head laughing. I felt like a superhero who had reached her mission’s end point and I was ready to fight the big boss. One of the nurses leans into me and whispers as if she is giving me support, “Here we go, Megan. You are going to push now. Most first time moms get the baby out in two to four hours…”

Two to four HOURS?! WHAT THE—

Forty minutes later, I met my son.