Free Sometimes I Feel Like a Nut by Jill Kargman Page A

his Apgar test. Ten! And they usually only give nine. But he got ten.”
    I’d been reading What to Expect and other tomes, so I was loosely familiar but not 100 percent sure. “Wait . . . aren’t those, like, whether your heart’s beating and shit?” I asked.
    “Well, yes, but alertness is key . My son was sooo alert. The nurses said they’d never seen a more alert baby. Never!”
    Ah, and so it begins: Apgars now, SATs later. Always a yardstick, ever a measure. Perhaps in Texas it’s cheerleading captain or in Alaska how many fish you spear, but in New York City it’s schools and social stuff and dough. Which many of these women had in the bubble of the Neo–Gilded Age—their husbands all put the “douche” in “fiduciary.” They all threw money at any issue, hiring consultants for walking, talking, peeing, pooing, and violin. No matter! I simply wouldn’t let it get to me. Or so I thought.
    The next ambush came at my baby shower, where a whispering group of older moms told me a thing or two about a thing or two.
    “Wait, you’re not having a C?” one gasped, incredulous.
    “Um, I m-mean, unless it’s an emergency . . . ,” I stammered.
    “So you’re doing it, like, natural ?” another said, hand to chest in horror, accompanied by a grimace like the passed hors d’oeuvre she’d just sampled was a shit profiterole.
    All eyes were on me.
    “Well, no, not natural, I plan on having drugs, obviously,” I replied.
    “No, but, like, you’re going to . . . give birth?” the first asked, face contorted. “No, no, no, no. Schedule a C. You get a blowout, you get your nails done, you go in, you get the private room, and you remain intact down there. Trust me, your husband will thank you for it.”
    I left considering these whispered warnings. Was I so out of it? Did people think I was like some hippie mama going into the woods and shitting out my baby? Was my vagina going to resemble the Holland Tunnel?
    Cut to: obstetrician’s office.
    Me: I’d like a C-section. My husband will thank me for it.
     
    Her: You’re insane . I don’t do that.
     
    Me: But all these other doctors do it! Like Dr. S!
     
    Her: Yeah, w ell, he slices around the Duke basketball schedule. I’m different. I let nature decide your baby’s birthday.
     
    Unfortunately for me, and my vagina, my daughter arrived a week late, tearing through me like a bowling ball on its way to a strike. Except for instead of a flying-pin cacophony, it was my ear-piercing shrieks from hell. Because I was obeying the nurse who told us not to come to the hospital before the contractions were five minutes apart or we’d be sent home, I sat at home for hours like an asshole with a stopwatch timing my spazzing ute. At five minutes, I gathered my shit. By the time we got to our lobby, they were four minutes apart. By the time we scored a cab, three.
    Wails. From the whale.
    We stormed up to the delivery ward to find that there was a wait for the anesthesiologist so there was no epidural to be had. And get this! No birthing room available. My doctor was mortified and apologizing profusely as they wheeled my IV-harpooned ass into . . . wait for it . . . a supply closet. Yes. Stacked with boxes upon boxes of latex gloves.
    “Um, I’m sorry, but am I in Ecuador?” I asked my husband.
    I was later given morphine mid-pushes but I felt everything and was unpleased (read: RIPSHIT).
    Oh, and by the way, my doc took such pity on me that for the next two kids I got my epidural in the fucking parking lot.
    They took Sadie, demucused her, put her under that French fry warmer thing, and handed her to me in a blankie, pronouncing her Apgar a nine. (Boo! There goes Princeton!)
    We brought her home in the “going-home outfit” soon to be splattered with doody, so why I didn’t just go with Old Navy I have no idea. The first four months I was underwater. Like Brooke Shields before me, down came the rain. Except I literally sobbed at fucking