New birth plan

Should we be so lucky to bring a third baby to term, I've got my birth plan already prepared.

For Chebbles' birth, I had an elaborate birth plan with all kinds of bizarre specifications, such as the desire to have her rest on my belly after birth and a request that no one test her Noro reflex because that seemed mean. It was about four pages long, that birth plan, and I agonized over many of the details with my doctor and doula.

With Baby V's birth, I didn't make a birth plan. I just trusted my new doctor to understand my desires, which were, "Let's get out of this thing alive." I brought a few magazines and some hairbands and kept things fast and loose.

Now I feel I've learned some valuable lessons. I will not go into labor without a birth plan ever again, and this is what my birth plan will say:

"DO NOT WIPE MY MAKE-UP OFF."

I was so PISSED when I arrived at the hospital with my long-wearing mascara, face powder and shiny pink lipstick on, and the nurses immediately commenced wiping it off. Don't they KNOW how hard it had been to apply?

I may have been dying of a bacterial infection in my placenta (Group B Strep, for those keeping score), but early that morning I had groped my way over to the bathroom counter, and forced myself to keep steady while I made myself pretty.

You may think this was vain. I was endangering my own life, and that of the unborn Baby V, with every minute I delayed my departure to the hospital. In my defense, I didn't know that the deadly infection was raging within me. And also in my defense, I am SICK AND TIRED of looking like Leif Garrett in my postpartum pictures.

My poor children! When they look back on the pictures of the day they were born, they've got to wonder who the pale manatee is. Or why they seem to have been born to a person resembling Danny Bonaduce. I'm sorry, girls. I'm really, really sorry about that, but it's not my fault. I put on make-up that morning. I arrived at the hospital -- doubled-over, spiking a fever and weeping uncontrollably -- looking GREAT. But the nurses, thinking they were offering comfort of some kind, wiped it ALL OFF.

I even told them this, through my tears, I asked the nurses to stop wiping my face so much because it was negatively impacting my hard-won make-up application, but they chuckled, as they are wont to do at that hippie-haven, and kept on wiping.

Never again! I've got my birth plan. You are all witnesses.


PS: I told you Hub-D looked hot in scrubs.