Why did you want to be a Mom?

previously published on Can I Ask You a Personal Question via Substack

Well, Brook, the short answer is, I didn’t. But let me take you back to the beginning…

“How pregnant do I have to be before I can get an abortion?” I called out to Jason from the hotel bathroom, trying to sound rational.

I sat on the freezing cold toilet, wearing only thermal socks and a headband, focusing intently on the plastic wand holding my destiny. Swallowing hard, ingesting one more moment of freedom I tried not to look down at what I could already sense was a smug pink smiley face glaring up at me. Overwhelmed and unprepared, I fell into my lap hyperventilating.

It was 2008, and Jason and I had only been dating for six months. Two months prior, we'd secretly gotten engaged in St. Martin, but that was only because I’d found a picture of another girl’s underwear in his phone and he didn’t want me to jump to conclusions or light him on fire. I considered his proposal more of negotiating tactic, a pillow-talk promise I could easily extract myself from if he turned out to be a philanderer, or somebody who owned a bunch of aquariums. I was falling in love with him, but it was too new a feeling to trust completely. I’d never been in love and, I have to say, I didn’t enjoy it. I was always more comfortable in relationships where I held all the cards, where I didn’t have to feel and I couldn’t get hurt—where there was always an easy exit.  

Over Christmas I vaguely remembered taking ecstasy and letting Jason finish inside me, then washing down a morning after pill with the next day's breakfast. I gave no thought to the notion that I could actually be pregnant. I wasn't even sure I couldget pregnant. I was 28 years old and I'd never been on birth control. At some point along the way I just decided that I was blessed. Accidental pregnancy was one of those things that happened to ‘other girls’—the ones in high school who smoked cigarettes and listened to Courtney Love. 

Granted, I’d never let guys finish inside me. But it was the holidays, and I was feeling festive. It wasn’t until a few weeks after New Years that I suspected a problem. We were skiing with friends in Vermont when I started experiencing cramps that felt like I was being shived to death in a women’s prison for not sharing my clarifying shampoo. My boobs were swollen torpedoes of estrogen. Every couple of seconds I'd check behind me to make sure I wasn't turning my double black diamond red. I wasn’t.

After two more days of waking up on unblemished sheets, I grew concerned and bought a pregnancy test. Like buying a Lotto ticket or a rolled up drugstore scroll with my horoscope on it, I wasn't expecting more than a few seconds of entertainment, followed by a tinge of buyer’s remorse.

 Jason waited anxiously on the other side of the bathroom door as I hyperventilated.

"Well?"

"I can't breathe. This can't be happening. I'm gonna faint." I hobbled out of the bathroom and threw myself prostrate on the floor, hoping to instantly miscarry.

"Wow. OK. Well, we can handle this." Jason picked me up and put me on the bed.

"I'm too young to be a parent, Jason. I'm a mere child myself." I thrashed around in a full-blown tantrum.

"You're 28. Actually, you're 28 and a half so basically you're 29," he said, thinking he was comforting me. "Let's take a beat and think this through."

"OK … But I don't want a baby." I cloaked myself in a plaid comforter assuming it made me invisible.

“Like ever?” He sounded concerned.

I’d pictured myself with children in the future, but before that I needed to be famous and have a booming acting career. The kind that would make my parents question why they hadn’t paid more attention to me when they had the chance. I needed my ex-boyfriend to stop paying half my rent. And I needed my dad to stop paying the other half.  

I had a life plan, things I needed to check off my list. If I was going to bring someone else into the world, I wanted to be able to take care of them, famously.

“Maybe someday,” I said. “Just definitely not right now.”

I spent the rest of the trip skiing like I was a stunt man in a Warren Miller film. I darted in and out of trees without braking, tried to complete an entire run on one leg, and even attempted a jump I'd researched on YouTube known as a "Screamin' Semen." There wasn't any point in holding back; as far as I was concerned, life was over. I was knocked up, I was barely working, and I was only five months away from being 29, which was only 12 months away from being 30, which was basically dead.

Three days later, I was still alive and Jason's screamin' semen was still burrowed inside me. We'd spent the last 72 hours (the same window, incidentally, that my bunk morning after pill should have covered me for) weighing our options. Abortion was still tops on my list. Most of my girlfriends had survived them without complications or remorse. It was, after all, the 21st century. I was an independent woman living in a country that for the moment still granted me the freedom to make my own choices with my body.

The only thing holding me back was Jason. He wasn't some random dude I'd rear-ended while pulling out of the Rite Aid parking lot. Sure, I'd slept with that guy. But I obviously wouldn't have thought twice about aborting his baby. Jason was different. As much as I hated to admit it, he had a hold on me.  And in my mind, having an abortion meant running the risk of ruining our relationship. I didn't want look back and feel resentment towards him for allowing me to destroy something that was a part of us. Or have him hold it against me in fights. Like, “You forgot to put the cap back on the toothpaste and, oh yeah, you killed our baby.”

I wasn’t ready to be a mother. I was living in a one-bedroom apartment with no furniture, and I’d thrown out all my dishes because I was too stressed out to wash them. But I was educated adult woman, with money in the bank (that my dad and ex didn’t know about) and a relationship that was actually making me feel something. 

The more we talked, the more we realized we had to have the baby. The timing was a little off, yes, but we were in love, and secretly engaged already. We’d find a way to make it work.

When Jason broke the news to his mother, she was less than thrilled.

“You know, you don’t have to marry her just because she’s pregnant,” she said, saving her more devout Catholic expressions for the next time she was in public. I imagined that in her best-case scenario, I’d run off to Europe, or die during childbirth, leaving Jason no choice but to move back home and have her raise the child with him.  

My family was less interested in raising my child for me.

“I’m too young to be a grandparent Jenny. I’m a mere child myself,” my mom whined as an eighteen year old spray tan technician instructed her to bend over and spread her ass cheeks. 

To their credit, both my parents  warmed to the idea once they realized that the baby’s father was successful and stable and not the guy I rear-ended at Rite Aid.

Jason and I spent the next three months preparing for parenthood. We moved in together, went into couples' therapy, bought an SUV. The circumstances didn't allow us time to play games. We opened up about our own childhoods and forged pacts about the things we would do differently. We bought books, talked about names, and even looked at pictures of kids online. 

But as my hormone levels continued to rise, so did my anxiety. I felt like a caged animal, locked into a life that was thrust upon me. Unlike my fledgling acting career, parenthood happened overnight.  Whatever I’d tried to do with my life up to that point was now doomed to sit on the back burner. I was going to be one of those moms—those women with unfulfilled dreams, delusions of grandeur, and a need to vicariously compete in their daughter’s talent show.

And what about Jason? He was great but so is everybody when you’ve been sleeping with them for less than a year.  Sometimes I'd look over in bed and imagine all the various threats our relationship might face. What if he fell in love with someone more successful than me? What if he fell in love with someone skinnier than me? What if one day he decided he was trans and transitioned into a skinnier more successful version of me?

My anxiety came to a boil one afternoon on our way to a routine doctor’s visit. We were in the SUV, and Jason had turned left on Beverly instead of right. The faster way would have been taking La Cienega to Third, but after living in Los Angeles for almost eleven years, Jason still couldn’t tell Third and Beverly apart. When we first met I found his handicap cute, but once I was pregnant, I saw it as a personal affront to my sanity.  That would have been enough; then he mentioned that he liked the name “Ernie” for our child-to-be.

"Let me out of the car! I don't even know you! You've completely hijacked my life! I want my life back!" I tried jumping from the SUV.

"Sit down! Jenny, sit the fuck down now!" He tried to hold me in place by the hood of my sweatshirt. His breath smelled like matzo brie to my expectant nostrils as I bit down hard on his hand.  The truth was, no matter how serious or ridiculous our fights seemed in the moment, they really didn’t matter. Like two siblings bickering in the backseat on a family road trip, we were tethered to each other for eternity, regardless of the outcome.

But at the doctor's office that day, things took an alarming turn. We huddled together on a white exam table covered in crinkled up paper. The doctor had already exited, giving us a moment alone to digest the news. After three months inside my womb, our fetus decided pull the ripcord.  His heart rate had stopped. I was miscarrying.

Before I knew it, I was reclining in a dark room at a nearby clinic, where a giant dust buster was inserted up my vagina and my fetus and his vacated condo were suctioned out.  The fear and anxiety (even the rancid smell of Jason's breath), all of it faded to the background. Once the procedure was complete, Jason and I locked bodies and started crying.  I’m not sure we knew everything we were crying for.  Our lives that had been moving so fast suddenly came to a grinding halt. Our destinies that a moment before seemed so certain, so cemented together, were without warning ripped apart.

This was my chance. If I needed an exit, I could make one. But the only place I wanted to run was straight to Jason. I couldn’t live without him. I mean, I obviously totally could have and I’m sure would have rebounded and been totally fine. But I didn’t want to.  When I was afraid to love him, he loved me with total conviction. When I questioned my own strength, he trusted me completely. He was either the most incredible man I’d ever known or  even more batshit insane than I was. Either way, he was perfect for me. 

After committing to carrying Jason’s child, marriage, which used to scare the shit out of me, suddenly seemed easy. (Especially once I confirmed that he looked terrible in DVF wrap dress)  We eloped that week.

Five incredible years of marriage later, the only name Jason was desperate to transition into was “dad”. I didn’t wake up one day and suddenly know I was ready to try again for a baby.  But Jason reminded me that I was 34 and a half, which was basically 35, which was basically 40, which was WAY past dead, and I figured it was now or never.

Getting pregnant this time around wasn't nearly as easy, partially because the universe never cooperates when you need it to, and partially because figuring out when you're ovulating requires an understanding of second-grade math. I’d spent a solid year half-heartedly fucking around with thermometers and period-tracking apps for my iPhone when my sister insisted I try using a digital ovulation stick. Three months of dragging my heels and getting waylaid by online sample sales later, I finally bought one. Twenty-eight days after that, I was pregnant.

Once again, I fell into my lap hyperventilating, but this time it was with nervous excitement. I didn't feel any more prepared or any less afraid. The only thing I knew with confidence was that with Jason, I could handle having my life hijacked.

Then, at 41 and a half weeks pregnant, I changed my mind.

"Wait, I might not be ready for children," I said one evening as I waddled around the bedroom trying to reposition what felt like a tiny knee digging into my rib cage.

“Well, get ready.” Jason said, unmoved and far too used to my neurosis. 

Logically, I understood that there was someone just underneath the surface of my skin about to explode into the world like the most rewarding zit of all time, but I wasn't feeling connected to my son. He kind of seemed like a dick, to be honest.  Up all night doing flip flops around my stomach, probably breaking shit and tagging my uterus with question marks because we hadn’t yet decided on his name.  His hands defiantly covered his face in every 3-D ultrasound we tried to snap of him. He wasn’t even out of my body and already he wanted nothing to do with me.  Once we met I was sure he’d explain that it was all a misunderstanding and that he had no idea how young and beautiful I was and we’d fall madly in love— Or would we?  I still couldn’t conceive of ever loving anyone more than my dogs (especially if he had to be washed more than once a month). 

The truth was, having kids still scared me; but while I was afraid for myself, I was more afraid for my son. I knew that no matter what I did, I was bound to fuck something up. Every parent is the reason their child eventually spends thousands of dollars in therapy. That I understood. But I didn’t want to cause him pain. I didn’t want to make mistakes.  I didn’t want to do anything that would result in my being sent to voicemail for the rest of my life.

I was used to relationships where I felt in control, but with my own flesh and blood, I would have no control. You think some little defiant dick is going to placate me? Or let me pretend that I’d be totally fine without him? No way. I was going to be a blubbering idiot. A hemorrhaging vein of emotion.

I was going to get hurt. 

I was due on February 4. On February 14 I was still pregnant.

"This is just my new body. It's just what I look like now," I explained to Jason, defeated. I gave him a kiss on the lips and hoisted myself into bed, utterly disappointed.  

The truth was that after eight hours of sequestering myself at home and watching Netflix, I’d stopped believing in God and the order of all things. I was over being patient, waiting for nature to take it’s course. Fuck nature. This pregnancy had gone on so long that now my Aquarian son was dangerously close, like three days shy, of becoming a Pisces. I hated Pisces men.  All of my exes were Pisces, and they were all overly sensitive, elusive liars. It was such a Pisces move to blatantly ignore my wants and needs and just hibernate in my womb long enough to become a Pisces. I wasn’t going to let this happen, I was having an Aquarius even if it meant reaching inside and pulling him out myself.

My hair was a teased rat’s nest of restlessness.  My fingers looked like mini French baguettes.  I rolled myself up on a body pillow like an enslaved Sea World orca and tried to fall asleep. 

As I flipped on my side, my water broke.

“Baby… I think my water just broke.”

"WHAT!? Shouldn't we be drenched? I don’t see anything!" He looked up at the sky then down at the bed, searching the sheets for proof. I think Jason expected a giant bucket of “You Can't Do That on Television" slime to drop from the ceiling and cover us.

"Maybe you just peed."

"Baby, I would know if I just peed, and I didn't. You need to call the doctor." I hurried to the bathroom and stripped off my clothes to make sure I couldn't see his head or the face of one of my former Pisces ex-boyfriends peeking out.

Jason called our doctor, Howie Mandel (his real name) as I sat on the toilet, regretting having used all my pregnancy books as nightstand coasters. I guess I should have prepared myself better, but those books made me feel like I was studying for the SAT.  When Howie said I should go back to bed and try to sleep, I was skeptical. I’d tried to go to sleep and instead I wet my pants. This time, who knew what might happen? (Of course I didn’t. See above, re: coasters.)   So instead of sleep, I wandered around the house moaning and groaning. I figured that if I went through the motions of giving birth vocally, my body would eventually catch up. Like in acting class where they teach you that if to start breathing really fast, eventually you’ll burst into hysterics and become Meryl Steep.

Around 3:30 a.m., I gave up and Jason and I drove to the hospital. I wasn’t feeling any cramping but pretended to be miserable, just in case I suddenly felt like screaming or beating Jason uncontrollably and needed an excuse. The streets were empty save for a couple police cars. Part of me hoped one might try to pull us over so I could say, "Sorry, officer, we don't have time for your bullshit! WE'RE HAVING A BABY!" then hit the gas and peel out—but no luck.

Once at the hospital, we were escorted into a private delivery suite where I was told to strip.  I’d brought no less than seven sexy nightgowns with me.  I wasn’t sure what kind of message I wanted to send to my newborn son as he emerged into the world.  I could be bohemian silk kimono mom, black mesh Agent Provacateur mom, lacy, demure floor-length mom, or even all white cotton co-ed mom.  Like a bride at a Kennedy wedding, I assumed I’d probably change twice. I wasn’t sure how labor worked but everyone said it took forever. I told Jason to notify me when he felt we’d hit the half way point so I could sneak off and slip into my second look. 

Before I had a chance to make a nightgown selection, a nurse came in and fingered me. Then another, then another. Suddenly I wasn’t feeling very sexy.  The final nurse hooked me up to a monitor, where Jason could visibly see that my contractions hadn’t actually started and that any sounds I might have been making were only because I thought I was Meryl Streep.  I was barely two centimeters dilated when Howie Mandel and my doula, Ana Paula, arrived.

Ana Paula was the type of woman who takes a lot of deep breaths and talks about chakras. She was serene and centered.  I‘d never seen her car but I already knew it was a Prius with a bumper sticker that urged fellow drivers to free Tibet. She’d been referred to me by a friend who was shocked that at seven months pregnant, the only thing I had planned out about my birth were the outfits. I finally got around to meeting Ana Paula when I hit thirty-six weeks.

“So what is your birth plan?” she asked, sitting on my couch, staring inquisitively at the giant photograph on our wall of a small Asian girl holding a bloody butcher knife in one hand and a dead goldfish in the other.

“My plan? Um. Well, I guess at this point I’m having it.”

Ana Paul smiled empathetically and promised if I listened to her, I’d have “A magical experience I’d cherish forever.”  

This was my first time seeing her since our chat and already I was regretting inviting someone into the room that believed experiences could be magical without drugs..

Howie ordered me a Pitocin drip to help induce labor. He then offered me an epidural. I wasn't opposed to painkillers, per se. But the latest craze in the mommy world was to do things naturally—as opposed to when my mother had kids and the trend was to push the button on your morphine drip as many times as you could before a person sprung from your giant hairy vagina. Also, I’d recently seen that Ricki Lake documentary that convinces all women to give birth in their bathtubs. Though I eventually decided against a home birth, I was still open to the idea of doing things naturally. Mostly just so I could gloat to my mother. .

But that was when I was the kind of pregnant that looks cute in tight shirts and leggings—when I was safe and pain-free in the comfort of my own bed. Now, with what felt like a thousand teeth clenching down on my abdomen, following in my mother’s footsteps seemed like a pretty sensible option. I knew Jason and Howie didn't give a shit whether I delivered naturally.

But there was Ana Paula.  She favored the holistic approach. She’d delivered countless babies in  bathtubs.  And even though I knew it shouldn’t matter, I needed to know that Ana Paula loved me more than those other babies, that respected me even without a silk kimono, and she considered me just as strong as the girl that referred her to me. So the drugs would have to wait.

I wandered the halls of the Labor and Delivery ward for five hours, riding the vicissitudes of the most incomprehensible pain of my life. I couldn’t stand up straight, I couldn’t speak, I couldn’t see. My hands were shaking and my back was drenched in sweat when finally my ego was beat into submission.

Physical pain had won out over my need for approval. I asked for the works.

An anesthesiologist, who looked roughly the same age as my boob job, walked in and administered an epidural. From that point forward, everything was a blur. I know that Howie, Jason and Ana Paula sat with me for more than seven hours, waiting for my cervix to dilate. It never did. After endless pushing and pooping myself twice, the baby's heart rate began to drop.  A C-section was our only option.

My anxiety mounted as the nurses wheeled me down the hall towards the brightly lit operating room.

“I think we’ve passed the halfway point,” Jason said, appearing next to me in scrubs and taking my hand.

I smiled at him. Or maybe I smiled at the wall. But it was meant for him.

Howie told us we'd be meeting our son in less than 10 minutes. All the choices I'd made with my life—the bad haircuts, the questionable workout mix tapes, The Screamin’ Semen—came flooding back to me.  I was hit with a flurry of unanswerable questions.

Would this little creature love me?   Would he approve of me?  Would his friends ever consider me hot? Would he ever find a picture of me from middle school with super thin eyebrows? Or a Facebook post where I vowed to go Vegan? Does my  OB/GYN realize that one of my vagina lips is longer than the other? Is it weird to ask him to shave a little off while he’s down there?

I snapped out of it as the nurses rolled me from my hospital bed onto the operating table. A linen screen was placed just under my chest. Standing next to me, Jason pulled out his camera and waited anxiously.. Once the IV drip took hold, everything below my ribs went numb. I told Howie to let me know before he started cutting.

"We've already started," he said matter-of-factly.

I tried to stay focused and not picture all the balloon animals he might be making out of my intestines and abnormally long pussy lip.

"OK, you are going to feel a lot of pressure," he instructed.

I waited for a minute, but before I could get super-cocky about not even flinching, I heard a baby cry.

My narcotized eyes looked up and saw Howie's hands holding a bloodied version of Cesar, from Little Caesar's Pizza. He had a large Roman nose, chubby cheeks, and a black toupee stuck to his head..

"Pizza pizza"  I  could have sworn I heard him say as he was whisked off for a bath.

A few minutes later, a nurse walked him back over and placed him on my chest. He seemed a little pissed off. Like maybe the caesarian was interfering with whatever plans he'd made for the evening. I cradled him in my arms the way I'd seen people hold babies in movies, trying to console him.

I wanted to laugh, sob, and throw up all over myself, all at once. I'd burst through the ceiling of any love I'd felt before and was now traveling into the stratosphere reserved for heroine junkies and people who write romantic greeting cards. I didn't recognize these feelings in myself. I was instantly and completely transformed. For once I wasn’t thinking about my career or if my hospital smock made me look fat.  Yes, I'd make mistakes, and yes, one day my son might decide to send me to voicemail.  But it was part of an emotional, painful, joyous journey I was finally happy to take.

I wasn’t ready for kids. I was just ready for him.

~Jenny Mollen Biggs

EPILOGUE. (As if you wanted this fucking post to be longer.)

I now have two kids and at one point was even considering a third.

Sid and Lazlo are everything I never knew I wanted. (They are also a couple things I could do without.) But even when they are pegging me in the face with Bey Blades or peeing on me in the shower, I still feel humbled and grateful that I get to do this life with them- that they chose me. They are out of my league. They are over the top. They are the love affair of my (and Jason’s) lifetime and I feel so fucking lucky to be their mom.