Chapter 15 Pinch
FIFTEEN
PINCH
FOR ALL THE PAIN of losing Samantha Who?, I at least had my rock god, my best friend, Martyn.
Any mischievous pride Tony might have felt in my terror quickly evaporated when Martyn asked to drive the Vespa with Tony riding pillion. Being Dutch, Martyn grew up on two wheels, and by the time he and Tony returned, it was Tony’s turn to look both terrified and nauseated.
As a couple, Martyn and I were having fun, two best friends creating memories. It couldn’t get any better, until it most definitely did.
2010: Cinco de Mayo. If I was a Laurel Canyon baby, I like to think of my daughter, Sadie, as a Patrón baby.
That May, Martyn and I went down to our house on the shore near the coastal town of Ventura for a few days.
We had gotten engaged on Valentine’s Day and were heading to the coast to celebrate, among “other stuff.” We were lounging in our neighbor’s hot tub, varios shots de Patrón se consumieron esa manana, and, thanks to the tequila, at around noon I looked at my husband and said, “Chop-chop!” It was time for “other stuff.”
We had already tried to get pregnant. I was getting older, and I didn’t know if it was ever going to happen. Many years earlier I had written that letter to a daughter—I just knew it would be a girl—a baby I described as being “lost in the mail.” The letter read,
“I’m going to see you, but now’s not the time. When we’re ready, I’m going to see you.”
Here I was, two decades later, upstairs at my house, the swell of the Pacific at my window, the unrest of the air clattering the glass, and Martyn and I? Other-stuffing like crazy. Next thing I knew, I felt a pinch—an actual pinch, deep inside my body.
I swear to God, I felt it.
Then I thought, Nah.
“Let’s do more Patrón shots!” I said, on Cinco de Mayo, aka el día de la concepción.
I had constant checkups because I was thirty-eight years old, and the ultrasounds showed that my daughter’s head wasn’t growing. Eventually, we went to see a specialist.
“Her head is indeed really, really small,” he said. “I think she might have IUGR.”
“Huh?” I said.
“Intrauterine growth retardation.”
That’s not something an expectant mother wants to hear.
“Are you doing drugs or drinking?” he asked in what I can only describe as a judgy way.
“No, I’m pregnant, you idiot,” I said, putting aside those postcoital Patrón shots on Cinco de Mayo.
I wanted a second opinion, so I found a different doctor, who was so unjudgy that he didn’t even do a cursory examination. Instead, he stared closely at Martyn and me.
“Have you two looked in the mirror recently?”
“Huh?” I said for the second time in a week. Why do all these ob-gyns speak in riddles? And why are they all men?
“You both have tiny heads,” he said. “Very tiny heads.”
I looked at Martyn and realized in a flash that he did, indeed, have a tiny head. Martyn looked at me, and I could tell by his reaction that he’d had the same realization about me.
“Your baby is fine,” the doctor said, chuckling. “Now get out of my office.”
I know that people who are on television are supposed to have big heads, but none of this should have been a surprise.
Ben Affleck has a big head—like, abnormally large—and when I made Surviving Christmas with him, they had to put me in a certain position for the posters because his head was so much bigger than mine.
I was sufficiently comforted by this realization. My baby was healthy, and it gave me hope about the logistics of the actual confinement vis-à-vis the birth canal. Still, I was a fully hysterical pregnant person.
Even though I was so excited to be pregnant, I hated the actual feeling.
I was sick for the first three months, though once the second trimester arrived, I thought I could be that person, the one who did spin classes, two hours of dance and hiked the entire Pacific Crest Trail—the whole bit.
Not so fast. By the seventh month, I was sequestered at our beach house almost full-time, and the state of my lethargy could be encapsulated by the fact that one day, in the middle of a perfectly fascinating conversation, I fell asleep sitting up.
I ended up bedbound and paranoid: anytime I had a twinge I would shout “Here we go, guys, she’s coming! ” and rush to the nearest hospital.
I remember my poor gynecologist, Dr. Rothbart, walking into the delivery room at two in the morning like a zombie.
“Can we stop? You’re nowhere near dilated.”
Finally, I showed up one too many times in the middle of the night. This time, it was well after 3 a.m., and Dr. Rothbart arrived in a ratty Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Science sweatshirt.
“I’m inducing,” Rothbart said. “I’m sick of you.” (He actually loves me.)
Thank god I’d thought to do some “gardening” ahead of time.
I figured the least I could do, given how little sleep Rothbart had been getting, was offer him a pleasant experience down there, or at least a clear runway.
I fear there may have been areas I couldn’t reach owing to my bump.
Much later, during a postpartum checkup, I apologized for my barbering.
Sure enough: “Yup,” Rothbart said, “it was an interesting choice.”
Rothbart got his own back, though, in the form of Pitocin.
That evil drug made the contractions so much worse.
The only comfort I got came from holding a little ceramic frog from the 1940s that my mom had held when she had given birth to me.
This calmed me just enough, as did the doula rubbing my feet.
At some point my dad walked in and said, “What’s wrong with you?”
“What’s wrong with me?” I said. “Fuck you, dude. I’m having a baby.”
At another point Martyn and I decided we wanted a mirror to watch the birth together.
The nurses found one for us, but the second we looked, we both started screaming.
That was the end of the mirror experiment.
(British pop star Robbie Williams once joked that witnessing his wife giving birth was like watching his favorite pub burn down.)
About eighteen hours later, our little mama came out.
For the first time in my whole life, I didn’t care what I looked like.
I didn’t care about anything. I wanted my baby on my skin.
I wanted to pull her out—which I did, by the way, by her shoulders—and put her directly onto my chest. I didn’t care who saw my no-nipple, scarred-up tits.
Didn’t care. I wanted my child’s skin on my skin.
Then I noticed one of the nurses crying as she looked at my bare chest.
“Are we doing this now?” I said. “Please don’t feel bad for me. We’re all good here.”
And we were.
Sadie is a teenager now. Every Cinco de Mayo I wish her a happy birthday, and she throws something at me. This is fair: who wants to imagine their mother saying “Chop-chop!” in a borrowed hot tub before heading upstairs?
She has genetically and otherwise adopted much of my approach to life, though. She wears T-shirts that say things like
I MILFS
I’ve told her she can’t wear that outside our house, but I don’t think she listens to me.
I’ve never known or felt or shared love, or been loved, the way I have been since that beautiful child was born.
Even though we have our ups and downs like any family, there’s such an extraordinary connection between us.
And I’m a damn good mom—that’s really all that matters to me.
Have there been times I’ve failed? Sure.
But Sadie and I always come back from it.
The other day I was dropping her off at school when she announced, “I don’t want to get out of the car.”
“Why?” I said. “You can’t miss school today…”
“No, Mom,” she said, “it’s because I’m having such a great time with you.”
My love for Martyn LeNoble is cellular. In fact, the love that I have for this man is deeper than I’ll ever be able to adequately convey.
He is my family. And his family is my family, too. I once went to their house in the Netherlands, and his father was blasting Elliott Smith, all by himself, cooking—he’s an incredible chef.
“Do you want me to turn this down?” he shouted over the music.
“Are you kidding me?” I shouted back. “You’re blasting Elliott Smith. This is my happy place in life.”
I love these people.
When Martyn and I got married on February 23, 2013, in my house, it was a small group: me, my friend Rachel as my maid of honor, and Martyn’s friend Vincent as his best man.
My friend Kathleen McNamara, who’s a minister at Agape, performed the ceremony.
My mom was there, as well as Marlon, Martyn’s daughter from his first marriage, and little Sadie.
I came down the stairs to the song “Save Me” by Aimee Mann.
I had suspected I could never love anyone, and yet here I was.