Also, I just had no idea that it was that hardcore. I knew birth would be insane, but I didn’t know the aftermath was insane. Nobody tells you about that. You’re like, “Oh, I’m injured. I am an injured person.” I thought I would just kind of bounce back. I make lists, I’m kind of organized, and I felt like, all right, I’ll be able to kind of troubleshoot this new priority shift.
It was just like I was hit by a wave. I didn’t know what the fuck happened. I totally was depressed. All that chemical shit happened to me.
Partially I think why I wanted to do it at home was, I just was like, this is going to be my thing. I want this experience, I want to feel it, I want to be there. I’m impressed with this whole mechanism, my body’s just kind of operating. I got very nervous about whether I’d know what to do. The truth is, your body knows what to do.
ALI WONG
It’s just so weird to me when people have these overarching statements about what it’s like to have kids because it’s so different. Do we make any overarching statements about what it’s like to have parents? Every parent is different and every kid is different.
Like breast-feeding. Basically, breast-feeding is super sensitive because some women don’t have time, and they want to go back to work or maybe they don’t have enough milk in their breasts to breast-feed. But on the west side of Los Angeles, there are these crazy lactivists that make you feel like your daughter’s going to turn into a prostitute if you don’t breast-feed.
CAROLINE RHEA—COMEDIAN AND ACTOR
I remember the first time I was pumping, my boyfriend walked in. I said, “If you never want to have an erection again, ever, you will watch me pump.” It is the grossest. First of all, that noise. And you are literally in a pasture by yourself. But you know, it’s important.
I was not going to breast-feed because I got gestational diabetes. I actually lost twelve pounds. I think it’s hilarious. The only time in my life I’ve really consistently lost weight I was in my final trimester of pregnancy. My boyfriend was so afraid of me because I was so angry, but he says, “You know, breast-feeding is really good for the baby.” I’m like, “I’m not doing that. It’s disgusting!” Of course the minute the baby was born, I looked at the baby, and I’m like, “Oh my God, does she have eyelashes? Could I have some H?agen-Dazs?”
After I’d been resugared and I felt better, of course I breast-fed, and it’s the most painful thing. That’s what the epidural is for. It’s unbelievably painful. Everyone says how natural it is. No. It’s the most beautiful thing in the world, and it’s totally bonding, and it’s ridiculously painful. They put so much pressure on you at the hospital. They literally say to you, when they ask you if you’re going to breast-feed, they say it like this, “Do you love your baby?” I’m crying, “I love my baby.” You don’t know that they have invisible shark teeth. Rows and rows of them. But it’s the most rewarding thing and you have to do it for your baby.
LAKE BELL
When you are all of a sudden bedridden, you can’t walk upstairs, and you’re torn, and you’re literally beaten up. There’s this little thing that is insatiable, like I don’t know what she needs, or I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing. I also have this person that I share my life with that can go down to the shop and get something, but I can’t. That’s frustrating.
ELIZABETH BANKS—ACTOR, DIRECTOR, PRODUCER
Women should not be expected to bounce back. It’s I think a true disservice with all this going on right now with these celebrity moms. First, I just want to remind people that celebrities generally are genetically superior human beings on a certain level anyway. They’re mostly thin, they’ve got trainers, they work out, they’ve got money, they’ve got the ability. If you’re holding up certain celebrities as your benchmark for what to look like after you’ve had a child, just go be with your kid for a minute. Don’t get to the gym right away. It’s all right.
MARY LYNN RAJSKUB—COMEDIAN, ACTOR
I never really thought about having a kid. There was one time where I called my mom and started crying out of nowhere. I was on the freeway, and I called her. I said, “I’m too old to be a young mother,” but I didn’t even necessarily want to be a mother. I was just having that passage-of-time thing. I was like, “Oh, I’m not having a baby in my twenties.”
It was terrible when the baby was born. It was really, really hard. Your whole life as you know it is just completely shaken up and turned upside down, and pushed all over the place. Just, everything that you want to do, everything that you are doing, you can’t do any of it. Even just simply waking up every three hours, and being enraged about that, and you can’t, because there’s this helpless creature. It pushes your buttons on every level of having to deal with being responsible for something. Everything else that you thought had meaning is just stupid. “Oh, this job or that job.” This is a creature. Everything else is like, “Who cares? Who cares about all these things that I was worried about?” They don’t matter when your job is to keep something alive, and to take care of it.
It didn’t come natural. I didn’t like it, and I didn’t like the kid, and I didn’t know what I was doing. The baby was terrible, and he wouldn’t stop crying. I lost all sense of myself and sense of time. Then the instincts kicked in, and now I love it. It’s awesome. I love it so much. My son is the greatest guy ever. The greatest guy ever. It’s the hugest, massivest, suckiest adjustment. Thankfully my husband is solid as a damn rock.
LOUIS CK—COMEDIAN, WRITER, DIRECTOR, PRODUCER, ACTOR
When I had my daughter, or when her mother had her in front of me, everything changed. I just fell in love with this kid. I remember she was screaming in the delivery room, really upset. She seemed particularly upset. Kids are supposed to cry when they are born, but she seemed angry to me, and upset. You know when a kid’s crying in a delivery room, everybody is smiling. “Aw, look at her cry.” But I was really upset for her. They put her on this little table, and they’re putting stuff around her.…
Sorry.
I’m unexpectedly emotional. It’s not a story that I tell a lot, so.…
Marc
It’s all right, man.
Louis
Let me have some water.
Water’s good, it washes away your love for your children so you can talk without a shaking voice.
Yeah, they put her on this little table, and they were fucking jabbing shit into her, and they’re just rough with her, and she’s screaming. It was a C-section, so her mom is being sewn up. Her mom was just taken away.