Yes, I'm still mad about the How I Met Your Mother series finale a week later. I spent nine years investing in this show. It's going to take me more than a day to get over the disappointment. It would be like if Pop Culture Dad (who, BTW, I've been with less years than I was Ted, Marshall, Lily, Barney, and even Robin) came home tomorrow and dumped me in an ugly and unceremonious way. Okay... It's not actually that dramatic. But the finale did. really. suck. y'all!

But you know what's the worst part of that horrible finale? We HIMYM die-hard fans have been defending our loyalty to this show for the last couple of years, and these bastards (Thomas, Bays, and the rest of the HIMYM writers) just punched us in the gut and left us lying in the dirt. It's been hard being a HIMYM fan, and now it was all for nothing.

Pop Culture Dad and I actually met towards the end of the first season of HIMYM. I was a fan. He was not. I quickly caught him up to speed and got him in the HIMYM fan club also. Our relationship grew and blossomed with these characters for five years. And then he dropped out. PCD just couldn't do it anymore. The writing wasn't as good as it had been in the earlier seasons. Ted was becoming increasingly more annoying (particularly his on-again, off-again obsessions with Robin). PCD got tired of them not just jumping to how Ted met the mother and getting over it already. Pop Culture Dad would occasionally watch an episode with me here and there, but many times, he would spend the episodes peppering scenes with an interjection of, "This is so stupid!", "Has this show been cancelled yet?", "I swear the only thing good about this show is Marshall and Lily!", "I swear... Ted is the WORST father ever! Why would you tell your kids this story??", and "WHY ARE YOU STILL WATCHING THIS SHOW??". There were a few episodes that proved the exception to Pop Culture Dad's I-Only-Watch-This-Show-When-You-Make-Me rule in the latter seasons: the Robin Sparkles episodes, the Slap Bet, and Barney's proposal to Robin. Pop Culture Dad isn't the only one who expressed these feelings; many people--all former fans--said similar things when they realized I was still watching HIMYM. Only a few of my friends loyally stuck around as I did. We were all disappointed with the ending.

So now what? We stuck around for nine years--the last few of them spotty and challenging--and we got nothing for the effort. All of the justifications we had made for this show have melted away. All of the naysayers have completely valid reasons for saying, "We told you so," and they were right (dammit!). I never thought I would be that chick who stayed in a bad relationship for years and years after all of my friends and family members kept telling me, "He's no good for you!" and I never listened, because I was clinging to the memories of happier days. But there you have it. I was. And I'm pissed that Bays and Thomas made that kind of fool of me!!

Sigh... But the relationship is over. It's dead (much like Tracy McConnell, RIP. Girl, R. I. P...). It's time to move on.

But first, maybe I need some more closure.

Despite our differences in the end, there are some things that I will always appreciate about How I Met Your Mother.

1.  I love that in a post-Buffy, post-Angel, post-Veronica Mars world, I got nine more years of Alyson Hannigan gracing my screen [and, from time to time, even got a glimpse of her lovely husband. Oh Sandy Rivers/Wesley Wyndham-Pryce, how I adore you, too!]. But, let's face it. Even without HIMYM, Willow wasn't going to be absent from the small screen for too long, because Alyson Hannigan is a National. Fucking. Treasure, goddammit!

Aly, I know we're almost the same age and all, but you can totally be my mom, too!

I know, hon. I feel the same way about Thomas & Bays!

Though, if I'm being totally honest, this is how I prefer to picture NPH. And this has NOTHING to do with HIMYM.

3. Jason Muthafucking Segel.
Look, I know he was doing shit before HIMYM. But I never watched Freaks and Geeks or Undeclared until after HIMYM and every Jason Segel role in a movie since then threw me in the Jason Segel fan club. Seriously, the man can do no wrong... Er, scratch that. I watched This Is the End. And that shit was horrible. But Knocked Up; Forgetting Sarah Marshall; I Love You, Man; Despicable Me; Bad Teacher; Friends with Benefits; The Muppets; Five-Year Engagement; This is 40... OMG. He was golden in ALL of it. Every last drop!

In addition to the fact that I am such a huge Marshmallow/Lily Pad fan (and they're only part of the entire series Pop Culture Dad still liked), I love, love, love that fictitious Marshall and I [and my #4] have the same alma mater, even though we would not have graced the halls at the same time [yes, people, I realize that this is fake!! After all, we're talking about a universe in which New York City has all of four minorities. Dahell...].


4. Brad Morris.
Hey, True Blood only airs during the summertime. So any time I can have an extra bit of Joe Manganiello on my television in various states of undress is a good thing.

5. Robin Sparkles. I would go to the mall with her today and any other day.


So... One would think with all these fond memories, the season finale wouldn't have stung so much. But one would be WRONG. Oh so very wrong.

These fond memories are exactly why the series finale felt like one huge, never-ending Slap Bet to the face. There was so much good about this show before it started sucking. And I could have even let the sucky parts go if the season finale had been worthy of even the mediocre parts of this show. But it was sooo very bad. It felt slapped together and rushed. We spent an entire goddamn season on Robin and Barney's wedding, only for the HIMYM writers to slap together 16 years of twists and turns into 44 minutes. It was so poorly done, you would think they were making it up as they were going along. It was a complete disservice to how they've built these characters over the years and how they've grown. Ted going back to Robin makes NO sense to anyone who believes in having healthy, adult relationships [OMG, they were SO toxic together. At least it was true to previous seasons in that Robin wanted Ted only when someone else had him and that Ted was completely Robin's puppy dog for some inexplicable reason. But did these people seriously not grow at all over two and a half decades of knowing each other??]. While I'm less broken up about The Mother (aka Tracy) being dead, since we all pretty much expected that even before the hints thrown out this season, the way her death was treated was so shoddy that I almost feel like they could have forgotten to write in the part where Ted meets her, and the net result might have been the same. Barney spent all these years growing as a man, only to turn back into a major douchebag (in his 40s, no less) the second that callous bitch Robin dumps him, only to then magically reform again the second he has a daughter [P.S. I am willing to bet money right now that the "Dad" in the new "How I Met Your Dad" ends up being Barney. But I refuse to watch another Thomas/Bays production, so one of you will have to let me know in a few years if that prediction was true]. You all already know how I feel about the children's reactions. And we never found out the meaning behind that fucking pineapple.

In co-creator Craig Thomas's infamous fuck you tweet to fans of the show, he says:

We did a finale about life's twists and turns and that is not always what happens...but THANKS!
— Craig Thomas (@HimymCraig) April 1, 2014

Of course, the irony here is that in a finale allegedly about life's twist and turns, it never occurred to the HIMYM writers that when your show goes on longer than anyone ever planned, the characters have developed in different ways from what you originally plotted, and the fans have fallen in love with different expectations (by your design, no less), maybe instead of rolling with an ending you taped nine years prior, you need to roll with the "twists and turns" and give your show an ending that makes sense in light of everything else that has happened over the last decade!

SPOILER ALERT: Honestly, this should go without saying. The episode aired four days ago. If you have not watched it yet, but are clicking on links to anything discussing that episode, then you kinda asked to be spoiled, did you not? But in the interest of not having to moderate a ton of "OMG! I can't believe you soiled it without warning us!" comments, here is your obligatory spoiler alert.

Show of hands: Who's still crying happy tears thinking about this episode?

Monday night's How I Met Your Mother—the greatest moment in HIMYM history or the greatest proposal on television of all time? Discuss amongst yourselves. I am not here for a recap. That has already been done beautifully in a plethora of other places [a side-effect of my originally-written post from Tuesday morning being deleted by my iPad app... But that's another story for another day....]. I'm going right to the meat and potatoes: the proposal.



Look, we all knew it was going to happen. The season opened with Robin and Barney's wedding day. We knew a proposal was going to happen and it was going to have to happen soon. I will admit, however, the Patrice thing threw me off. I had just assumed that the Patrice relationship would drag out and that Robin and Barney would somehow plan a quick trip down the aisle shortly after Barney cured whatever illness made him go after Patrice. Pop Culture Dad is more perceptive than me, however. As I mentioned Monday night on the Facebook page, he totally called the ending halfway into the show. Okay, okay, he didn't predict the whole thing. Even he is not that good.

Seriously, Thomas and Bays deserve Emmys for the carefully-crafted season that led up to this amazing proposal [and, while we're at it, let's throw in some nominations for Smulders and my secret BF Harris, too, m'kay?]. Just look at all the pieces that went into "The Robin" and think about how this entire maddening season was worked to lead to this one moment. And while you're at it, think about how the relationships of the characters have been built from Day One to make this even remotely plausible.

"The Robin" — The Last Play Barney Will Ever Need (Awwwww....)

• Step 1: Admit to yourself you still have feelings for this girl: “I am hopelessly, irretrievably in love with her. More than she knows.”
{sigh....}

• Step 2: Choose the completely wrong moment to make a drunken move after hanging out at a strip club. And get shot down on purpose.

• Step 3: Agree that you two don’t work, locking the door on any future you could have together, “I’m done trying to get you. I can’t do it anymore,” which will drive Robin nuts.

• Step 4: Robin goes nuts.

• Step 5: Find the person who annoys Robin most in the world and ask for her help. Explain everything to Patrice and hope she agrees to help.
{totally didn't see that coming}

• Step 6: Check with your doctor about possible broken ribs. [insert visual of Patrice squeezing the life out of poor Barnacle]

• Step 7: Pretend to be dating Patrice.
{it all makes sense now}

• Step 8: Wait until Robin inevitably breaks into your place to find The Playbook and show it to Patrice, which you’ll monitor via the hidden cameras you have in your apartment.

• Step 9: After Patrice finds The Playbook, have your first big fight.
{This was pretty funny, watching Barney and Patrice on the balcony looking and gesturing like they were angry, but actually saying things like, "Thank you so much for helping me!}

• Step 10: Prove your loyalty to Patrice by burning The Playbook. And actually burn it. You don’t need it anymore.
{I started tearing up just a little bit here}

• Step 11: Because your friends have no boundaries, they’ll inevitably have an intervention for Robin, which you’ll monitor via the hidden cameras you have in Marshall and Lily’s apartment.
{The perfect representation of how well these friends all know each other}

• Step 12: Tell only Ted about your plan to propose to Patrice.

• Step 13: Wait and see if Ted tells Robin, and if he does, it means your best bro in the world has let go of Robin and has given you his blessing.
{And... Cue more tears. Think about this. Really think about it. It speaks volumes to the relationship between Ted and Barney. Without Ted's blessing, none of this was moving forward. And Barney loves Ted so much that he was willing to leave the whole thing in his hands. This, to me, is almost better than the relationship between Barney and Robin, which I love}

• Step 14: Robin arrives at her favorite spot in the city and finds the secret final page of The Playbook, the last play you’ll ever run.
{and more tears...}

• Step 15: Robin realizes she’s standing underneath mistletoe.

Now, of course, we reach the part where Robin is understandably peeved at the level to which Barney tricked her, until he implores her to flip the page over and read the last step...

• Step 16: Hope she says yes. [As Robin lowers the page, there is Barney with the ring on blended knee]

{Game OVER, folks! Even my hubby, a former fan who has made fun of this show for the last season, couldn't hold it together any more. With tears in his eyes, Pop Culture Dad said to me, "Well... That was pretty moving."}

Huffington Post has a video of the proposal (but not the voiceover of Barney reading the steps) here.

This episode got me thinking about my own proposal this morning. There was once a reality show following men around as they were about to propose, which proclaimed that while the wedding is the most important day of the bride's life, the proposal is the most important day of the groom's. That certainly has some truth to it (though I would argue that for couples who have children the births of their children are actually the most important days of both lives, but I digress...). I cannot imagine how stressful the proposal is for most men... you know, the ones who decide to do something monumental instead of just posting something on Twitter. And when the proposal hinges on everything just going right.... Sigh...

Poor Pop Culture Dad. While we both love my engagement story now, he was a total wreck at the time. We were already living together, and he had the engagement planned for a couple of months. He arranged to have lunch with my dad to ask for my hand, and that's when the first part of his plan went wrong... My dad has a big mouth. My dad called me at work an asked why in the world my boyfriend would want to go to lunch with him, were we trying to get married or something? Really, Daddy?? I remember muttering something to him like, "I don't think you were supposed to tell me about that." One of my friends and I tried to come up with other reasons my then-boyfriend may have arranged this secret meeting with my dad. My 30th birthday was coming up. Maybe this was related to my party. Maybe they were planning something bigger than the Hello Kitty and karaoke I had requested? I chose to go with that theory rather than get my hopes up.

Then the day Pop Culture Dad and my dad were supposed to meet, my aunt died. Not just any aunt, either (my mom had 15 siblings and my dad had four, obviously I can't be close to every single one). My godmother. My mom's best friend. The aunt who had lived with my mom and I, raising their two kids together as more like brother and sister than cousins, for much of my life. My mom was, understandably, a wreck. There was no way my dad was going to be anywhere other than beside her side [they've been divorced for three decades, but are still best friends]. Same with me. So those plans were off. And we had to leave for Louisiana the next day... The day my husband had planned to propose. And he had already had a plate made up to do the proposal.

So what did my dear husband do? Improvise, of course. Even though I was up until 3 a.m. Making funeral arrangements, consoling my mom, and packing for us to drive from Texas to Louisiana, he woke me up at 6 a.m. that morning. Groggy as I was, I still remember that conversation:

PCD: Wake up, honey! I brought you some coffee.
Me: I don't want any f---ing coffee. I want to sleep.
PCD: We have to go. And you need coffee.
Me: No. I need sleep.
PCD: Trust me. You really want this coffee.
Me: {finally suspecting something was going on an sitting up} Wha---?

And there was my proposal on a plate.... on a flower-filled tray... with the coffee I was too tired to want.




Obviously, nothing went as Pop Culture Dad scripted or planned. While the "god mother dying the day before the proposal" story might make an interesting twist for scripted television, it certainly isn't one you want in reality. I am told the originally planned proposal involved me coming home to a house filled with flowers. That would have been nice. But my actual proposal was nice too; because at the end of the day, what I had was the man I was madly in love with completely consumed with making sure that I knew exactly how much he was in love with me too. And isn't that all that matters?

Okie doke. Share some engagement stories. I don't think I've cried enough happy tears this week.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Another Pop Culture star is born

 WARNING: Although I feel like the phrase "birth story" should serve as a warning that there's some serious TMI ahead [after all, is birth ever really pretty? No. It's pretty much always a little bit gross], I'm going to do the standard warning anyway. I realize only soon-to-be mothers, recent mothers, and birth story junkies care about the nitty gritty details. This is for them. If you're not into knowing that much about someone else's bodily functions or the details of contractions, effacement, and all that jazz, I'd suggest you skip this post altogether or just go straight to the pictures. It's gonna be long, y'all... and maybe a wee bit gory.


Let the story begin...


Dou Me, Baby


First, let me go way back. When I had Pop Culture Toddler, I enlisted the services of a doula for both during and after labor. Rhonda was invaluable. So I knew as soon as I got pregnant with Pop Culture Baby that I was going to go the doula route again. Rhonda had since retired from the baby doula game. I knew her daughter had stepped into her place, since one of my friends used Rhonda's daughter as her postpartum doula for her twins. I could have used her daughter. Instead, I decided to go the difficult route and get an out-of-state doula. Now, this wasn't something completely on a whim. Christi (or Diva Doula, as I now feel like calling her) is one of the moms from one of my WTE expecting boards. Her youngest daughter was born within days of PCT. She was even our board leader at some point and is currently one of the admins of our Facebook group. So while I didn't "know" her, I have known her for over three years. She had already served as the doula for some of the other November 2008 moms, and I wanted Diva Doula to "dou" me, too. As you can expect, Pop Culture Dad and pretty much everyone else thought I was crazy. But with Pop Culture Toddler, my midwives had predicted when I would go into labor, down to the weekend, and with a 13-hour labor the first time, I was feeling pretty confident about being able to get Diva Doula here in time.


Then of course came the GD diagnosis. Because I ended up on medication to control my blood sugar, my midwives told me that if I didn't have Pop Culture Baby early, as I did PCT, they were going to induce me at 39 weeks. Everyone, myself included was fairly confident, though, that I would go early again. Boy were we wrong. Apparently I controlled my sugars almost too well. So instead of growing a behemoth baby and ginormous placenta, I was forming a fairly regular placenta and (what was to me, anyway), a teeny baby. At my Level 2 ultrasound, PCB was measuring a few weeks behind, and was 18th percentile. PCB was predicted to be six pounds if I went full term. Because of the gestational diabetes, I had ultrasounds every three weeks. While my fundal height was always perfectly on track, the ultrasounds always showed a baby that was measuring a couple of weeks behind. Kind of weird considering that our 3D ultrasound revealed really chubby cheeks. *shrug*. So week by week, my confidence going into labor at 38 weeks again began to wane. And then...


Long Labor? False Labor? WTH Knows?


Ten days before my due date, I started having really regular contractions. They were frequent enough that I started timing them. First they were far apart. Then as the day went on, they sped up to 10 minutes apart, and then 8. I e-mailed Diva Doula and asked her for reassurance that I could have contractions 8 minutes apart for a number of days. Based on the ultrasound I had just the week before, PCB was still measuring small, though better than before (now 25th percentile), but PCB was just small enough that I wasn't exactly thrilled at the idea of going into labor early and having a teeny tiny little baby. Diva Doula told me to lie down on my left side for an hour or so, drink a lot of water and see if my contractions slowed down or stopped. They didn't. Then she told me to just say the word, and she would get on a plane; her hubby was getting ready to get her on a plane. We talked it through for a while and decided, just in case, to get her on a plane. If she was here for a couple of days, that was fine. Better than her missing the birth altogether.


Diva Doula came in, and I continued to have contractions. Then, at some point right before I went to bed, they disappeared, only to come back with a royal vengeance while I was sleeping. I was afraid I would go into labor in the wee hours of the morning; but at least Pop Culture Dad and Diva Doula were there. The next morning, I told Pop Culture Dad to go on to work, and I would call him if he needed to come home. By then, I had steady contractions 5 minutes apart. He later told me that he got ribbed all day for being at work while his wife was in labor. During the day, Diva Doula and I tried to help the labor along. We went geocaching. We drove around. We walked. At one point when we were walking around my neighborhood, the contractions got so bad I had trouble walking. We were actually getting close to the point where my midwives told me to call them back. But I didn't feel like I should go to the hospital yet. So we went back to the house where I decided to go relax in the tub... and the contractions disappeared again. WTH? Same pattern as the night before, my contractions got frequent, horrible and painful in the middle of the night, but no magic happened.


The next day was my midwife appointment. The midwife with whom we met, Mary, thought it was weird that I had contractions that steady and close that got stronger and then went nowhere, but it wasn't unheard of. She checked me, and it turned out I hadn't made any progress from the week before. I was still a fingertip dilated and about 60% effaced. So I basically had two days of contractions for nothing. At this point, I was days away from being 39 weeks. It was time to talk induction dates. Mary told me point-blank that, two days of false labor notwithstanding, Pop Culture Baby was not ready to go anywhere. An induction date at the early end of 39 weeks would not be a good idea. I began to get fearful that an induction date at any time would not be a good idea. But seeing as I only had a one week window in which to give birth (gee, thanks, GD), I picked my due date as my induction date. Might as well make it to 40 weeks, right? Mary agreed to give me Prepadil the next week to see if that helped move things along so I could avoid induction. It was a great start, but still pretty sucky. I went back to my car and cried. Hard. Diva Doula was such awesome support (a necessity when you feel like a complete tool, like I did). We went walking and geocaching some more, in hope of sparking more labor. Nada. That day, I decided the GD diet was off. Let me tell you, I really enjoyed my comfort-Frosty that day.


Diva Doula went home the next morning, and I went to the hospital for my Prepadil. Mary told me to go walking (preferably around a mall with a credit card) to see if I could get some contractions going. Nada. When I went in a few days later for my midwife appointment [now after a full week and a couple days of "false" labor, which felt pretty damn real], I was ready to tell them not to induce me at all. I was really afraid of being one of those ladies who has a horrible induction experience and ends up either having an awful, long labor or winding up getting a c-section. I had another ultrasound. Pop Culture Baby had a growth spurt, and was suddenly estimated at 50th percentile. Dawn, the midwife that day, checked me again. I had made a wee bit of progress, but not much. In fact, I had gone from 60% effaced to 50% effaced. WTF?? Dawn, however, was convinced that I was ready, and that an induction would go beautifully. As some added insurance, though, Dawn stripped my membranes and scheduled me for another Prepadil the next day. She warned me that the stripping may do nothing, or it could send me into labor. You just never know. Later that day, I was in the grocery store, having the worst contractions to date. I actually felt pretty good about going into labor. I had bloody show that night. The next morning, I ended up calling my midwives at 4 a.m. to see if I should even go in for the second dose of Prepadil, because I was having contractions 6 minutes apart. I was told that even if I ended up not going into labor, they could not administer Prepadil with my contractions that close together. So, basically, I just had to wait and see if I went into labor. This should be no surprise: I didn't.


Eviction Day


Diva Doula came back the next day. We basically snacked on labor cookies and got together snacks and everything I needed to go to the hospital. Diva Doula also taught Pop Culture Dad various pressure points and techniques to help me during labor. We talked about how my labor went with PCT, and for the first time ever, I realized that (save for my water breaking on its own), that I had made zero progress until I was given the dreaded pitocin monster. It was possible that I'm one of those unlucky ladies who will contract for days and days without any real progress, absent medical intervention.


The next day was eviction day. And, I won't lie: I was terrified. I had always planned on having a completely natural birth. Now, after more than a week of false labor, I knew I was going to get stuck with pitocin whether I liked it or not. And, let's face it, my confidence in my own ability to face pitocin without an epidural was very very low. I was also terrified, after having such a long period of unproductive labor, that I was going to end up either in labor for 24 hours or with a c-section... or worse, both.


My induction was scheduled for 7 a.m. on the 29th. Pop Culture Dad, Diva Doula and I left the house at the buttcrack of dawn and started heading (late) to the hospital, only to get a call as we were getting on the freeway that there were no beds available, so I'd have to call back in a few hours to see if I could come in. They ended up telling me to come to the hospital between 11 and 11:30. We got there at 11ish and had to wait a while. They hooked me up to the pit drip around 1. When I went in, I was 3 cm dilated and about 50% effaced. Pop Culture Baby was at a -3 station. So, yeah, not even close to anything happening.

Leaving for the hospital... again

A few hours went by, and the contractions were getting worse, but it still looked like I had a long time to go. Pop Culture Dad and Diva Doula were fantastically helping me manage my pain and sneaking me food and drinks. At 5:30 or so, I posted a message to the impatient mommies on our parenting group that the "aunties" were going to have to simmer down, because Pop Culture Baby wasn't making an appearance any time soon. The ladies were all on gender watch and tired of not knowing what kind of equipment PCB was bearing. Around 6 or 6:30 , my midwife checked me, and I was 100% effaced, but still only about 3 cm (but this time a "loose" 3 instead of a hard one) and at a -1. She asked if I wanted to have my water broken. We debated it for a while, especially the warning about how much it would suck. Eventually, in the interest of not being in labor all freaking night, I told her to go for it. Almost immediately after she broke my water, things really kicked into gear [shit got real, y'all!]. 


At some point around 7 p.m., I was just done. Diva Doula and PCD were absolutely fantastic, but I knew I had barely made any progress before all of the madness started, and I couldn't imagine being like that another four hours or whatever. So I started asking my midwife if it was too late to get an epi. She said "probably," and she and Diva Doula kept encouraging me to keep on, at least for a while. **WARNING WARNING HERE COMES THE TMI/YOU'LL-KNOW-TOO-MUCH-ABOUT-ME STUFF. LOOK AWAY NOW IF YOU REALLY DON'T WANT TO KNOW EVERYTHING** Then I had that "I need to poop" feeling -- not the "I feel like I need to poop, but it's really the baby pushing down" feeling -- a true, honest to goodness "guess I'm not backed up anymore" feeling. My midwife wanted to check me first to make sure I wasn't crowning, since "babies like to be born on toilets." I wasn't. I don't really remember this part at all, but Diva Doula informed me later that when my midwife checked me, I was 6 cm dilated. So I had made some progress, but I still had 4 freaking cm to go. I shuffled off to the restroom, only to find out once I got there that with the crazy contractions, I had trouble sitting down (and staying down) on my own. Pop Culture Dad and Diva Doula rushed in to help me. I "went," and then, all of the sudden, my ass was burning. Like, seriously burning. And I started thinking I was in that episode of "Bobby & Whitney" where Bobby had to help Whitney get out the stuck poop [hey, I warned you this would be TMI. If you're grossed out, your fault for not heeding my warnings]. So I'm complaining -- crying -- about my ass being broken, and my midwife, Debbie, checks me and says something like, "You know why? Cuz there's a head right there." Yeah, seriously. Classic. Debbie then flew into hyper mode and starts telling Pop Culture Dad and Diva Doula to hurry up and get me back to the bed before the baby falls out, and she's yelilng at the nurses to hurry up and get a table. I didn't want to move. I didn't have a choice. They carted me off to the bed, and got me back on it in a matter of seconds. Pretty much as soon as they got me on the bed (all of 10 seconds), I started pushing. Four big pushes in about 5 minutes or less, and Pop Culture Baby came sliding on out at 7:18 p.m.. As Diva Doula pointed out later, I went from 6 cm to 10 cm with a baby in my arms in less than 20 minutes -- that is intense. No tearing this time, either. 

Thanks, Debbie!

Honestly, I had absolutely no idea what was going on at this point. Diva Doula had to fill me in on some of the finer details later. After PCB popped out (literally), Debbie held her up so we could see the gender. Even looking, I had no idea [I swear I know what the parts look like!]. I think I was just still surprised there was a baby there. I still didn't know if I had a son or a daughter until Pop Culture Dad announced, "It's a girl!". I vaguely remember saying at some point after my eyes focused and I noticed that there was in fact a baby there, "Oh! And she has some color! Yay!". I had another beautiful little girl. A 7 pound, 12 ounce, 20.5" little princess (who, other than her much smaller size, slightly darker skin and brown eyes, and fantastic dimples, is an exact replica of her big sister, who is a pretty close carbon copy of me).


One of the best parts came after we were released to my room. My mom and Pop Culture Toddler were already there waiting on us. When the nurse wheeled me in with Pop Culture Baby, PCT walked up to us and said, "Hi, [Baby]. I'm your big sister." Tears. Flowing.




Everybody Wants the Diva to Dou Them

I didn't go into a lot of details of how Diva Doula helped me before and during my labor. For one, it's hard to go into details after the fact. I just remember her there duing the labor, constantly moving and things to do to help out, and her encouraging me along the way. I vaguely remember the little pep talks. They're all fuzzy right now, but I remember at the time, they really helped get me through. To use one of her favorite phrases, Diva Doula (aka Mrs. Christi Mooney of Serenity Birth in GA) was just AWESOME SAUCE. There is absolutely no way I would have been able to do a pitocin-induced, pain medication-free birth without her support. And I probably would have lost my sanity before the main event, too. Remember pregnant ladies: Google is not your friend; but a good doula is.
In fact, Diva Doula was such awesome sauce that the midwife on-call the morning after I gave birth told me how much Debbie had bragged about her, and they wanted to know what service she was with and how to refer her to other clients. You can imagine their disappointment when I told them she's not local. Thanks to Christi's dou-ing, my midwives all gave me the "Rockstar" award for the week.

Diva Doula and Pop Culture Baby

First day home with my girls

Pop Culture Laboring?

Like most toddlers (including me at this age), my daughter would easily tell you if she could that Sesame Street is her favorite children’s TV show. She likes a lot of shows, but she’s in love with Elmo, so when it comes to children’s TV shows, Sesame Street is the one. Also like many toddlers, my daughter is not a very happy traveler on most car rides that are longer than a few minutes. We don’t have an entertainment system in either car, but we do have a portable DVD player that I bought several years ago for plane rides [this was before iPods had video capability – that’s how long ago I purchased this]. So why, then, has it never occurred to my husband and I that taking along my daughter’s favorite children’s TV show on a car ride would make traveling with a toddler so much more enjoyable?

As I type this post, we are on our way to my ranch. My ranch is approximately 50 miles outside of the city, and about an hour and a half from our home. This is not an unbearable distance for adults, but for a toddler, it’s torture. We tried leaving close to my daughter’s naptime, so we could take advantage of the natural “baby Ambien” effect that the car tends to provide [though only when we’re within five minutes of our destination]. It didn’t work. So we invoked the powers of my daughter’s favorite children’s TV show.

Seriously, why didn’t we think of this sooner? The first DVD I put in is called “The Letter Quest and Other Fairy Tale Adventures.” In addition to a segment in which Elmo, Telly, and Abby go on a quest for the letter Y, it includes my favorite Sesame Street segment ever, the Shoe Fairy. In case you’ve never witnessed the Shoe Fairy episode, the Shoe Fairy is NPH [Neil Patrick Harris]. I. Love. Neil. Patrick. Harris. And even more than loving Neil Patrick Harris, I love NPH singing. And dancing. I know the Shoe Fairy song backwards and forwards. And my daughter is starting to learn the words, too. In any event, she always sings the chorus with me, “Shoes, shoes, shoes, shoes, shoooe, ooh ooh, shoes…”. Watching the Shoe Fairy episode while singing the Shoe Fairy song made for a fantastic car ride.

In addition to watching her favorite children’s TV show, my daughter was eating a pint of blueberries, popping them one by one, like most people do with popcorn. This has been the calmest I’ve ever seen her on a car ride of any length. It’s been well over an hour, and she’s in a better mood than she would have been had we just been home. She’s also been so sedate, it’s almost like she’s taken a nap. One thing’s for certain, we’re never going on another car ride without Elmo.

**Warning: Spoilers Ahead (though, I don’t know why it’s called “spoilers” when the episode has already aired, but whatever)

I don’t know what’s been going on lately, but it seems like surrogate mother stories are everywhere. First of the surrogate mother stories was the one I’d heard on the radio where the surrogate mom sued for custody. The second of the surrogate mother stories was the storyline on Glee where Rachel is on her surrogate mother search (Best. Show. On. Television). And the third of the surrogate mother stories was a doozy of a story my friend told me about a “non-surgical”surrogate.Actually, there were even more surrogate mother stories than those three if you count the various callers to the Derek and Romaine Show this past week who wanted advice regarding surrogacy or to share surrogate mother stories. Of course, out of all the surrogate mother stories I’ve experienced lately, the Glee story is my favorite.
So for those of you who aren’t Gleeks and are wondering who this “Rachel” person is, Rachel Berry is one of the main characters on Glee. She was conceived via surrogate, and has never met her surrogate (biological) mom. Although the surrogate was also her egg donor, this is not a closed adoption scenario, because her dads actually had a surrogate mom contract, and they each donated sperm. The joke in the pilot episode was that Rachel thought it was sweet that no one knows which one is her biological father. If you don’t get why that joke is funny, it’s because her father are different races. Unless her surrogate mother’s genes are very strong [which, maybe i don’t want to paint myself into this corner given my daughter’s coloring and that of other biracial children I’ve seen…], you can generally guess which one of Rachel’s fathers is in fact the biological father.

So during an episode entitled “Dreams” (with NPH!!!), the glee club members are asked to write down their deepest, wildest dreams. Although Rachel writes down something fairly obvious (to be a star) she later reveals that what she really wants more than anything is to meet her mother. Some shenanigans ensue, and Rachel “finds” a recording of her mother singing. This leads to some fabulousness wherein Idina Menzel (playing Rachel’s mother – love her!!) and Lea Michelle (the actress who plays Rachel) have a duet that left me weeping. I probably could have died a happy woman at that moment. If they had sung something from Wicked and been joined by NPH and Kristen Chenoweth, I very well may have.

Anyway, Idina Menzel is an obvious choice for the surrogate mother story line here. She and Lea Michelle could easily be sisters in real life. There was a really sad moment where Idina Menzel explains to another character why she has to make Rachel contact her rather than the other way around. She explains how she signed a surrogate mother contract saying she would not contact her daughter, and how she only saw her for a minute after she gave birth, when one of the nurses was cleaning Rachel off.

This whole scenario got me thinking – what makes someone a mother? I mean, we all know that there’s more than biology that makes a family. And we all know that submitting 50% of someone’s genetic material doesn’t make you a parent. But what happens when contract law gets in the way of emotion? Apparently, Ryan Murphy (the creator/writer/producer of Glee) and I were on the same page, because he actually tackled that issue in the next episode.

So, at the end of “Dreams,” Rachel has heard a recording of her surrogate mother [a duet, which brought me to tears], her surrogate/biological mother is waiting for contact, and I’m spending the next week wondering about the legal, emotional, and ethical implications of surrogacy and what makes someone a mother, especially when the surrogate mother is also the egg donor. Luckily, some of my wondering was out loud to other people, so I ended up hearing a pretty hilarious court case relating to the use of a non-surgical surrogate (think about it). More on that later…

Rachel didn’t know who her surrogate mother was, even though she’d heard her voice on tape. Rachel and some of her cast mates go to spy on their rival team, Vocal Adrenaline (seriously), and it is at this moment that Rachel realizes the voice on the tape, her biological mother, is Vocal Adrenaline’s coach Miss Cochran (played by the fabulous, incomparable Broadway diva, Taye Diggs wifey, and Lea Michelle doppelganger, Idina Menzel). Rachel confronts Miss Cochran, and they have a very awkward exchange. Rachel points out how similar she and her mother are because they’re sitting, not looking at each other, in a completely overly dramatic fashion, and yet they are both very comfortable that way. When asked about how she feels about the situation, Rachel says that she’s “thirsty,” and then she explains that when she was little, her dads would give her a glass of water when she was sad, so eventually it got to the point where she couldn’t tell if she was sad or thirsty. It is at this point her surrogate mother announces, “I can’t do this,” and leaves. My husband and I were mortified. Imagine the emotional implications of finding a 16-year old girl who’s never met her mother, giving her the hopes of a mother-daughter relationship, and then just bailing on her!

We find out later that the water story is what made Miss Cochran realize that she is just a surrogate mother and not a real mother. Rachel’s dads had raised her. Miss Cochran could not have any other children, so in forging a relationship with Rachel, she was trying to get her baby back. Instead she realized that Rachel isn’t a baby anymore, she’s never going to get her baby back, and Rachel doesn’t need her.

I have to disagree with the idea that Rachel doesn’t need her [as evidenced by the Lady Gaga outfit she needed her mother to make her because her “dads don’t sew,” and their attempt at it was disastrous]. Personally, I think children always need their mothers. I’m thirty-mumble-mumble years old, and even though my mom wasn’t there for me a lot of the time when I was younger, there are many times now when I need her. Yes, I’m grown and have my own family; but just like I often need the love and support of my dad, I still need my mom, too. I think children always need their mothers.

But I also think Miss Cochran was right in a sense. Yes, she’s Rachel’s biological mother, but (as she said) being a mother doesn’t make you a mom. Rachel has parents, and Miss Cochran is not one of them. I’m glad the episode wrapped up the issue of surrogate mother v. biological mom that was running through my head all week, but I was still saddened by the whole issue. And I really hope it doesn’t mean that Idina Menzel won’t make any more guest appearances – particularly if they could arrange for her and Kristen Chenoweth to appear on the same episode again (but maybe sing together? Something from Wicked, perhaps?).

The Cases

The first of the surrogate mother cases I’d heard involved a surrogate mother who sued the parents for custody of the child. You’re probably thinking the mother just wanted to get her biological child back. Au contraire mon frere. What makes this different from other surrogate mother cases you may have heard is that the surrogate contributed no genetic material to the making of the baby. Both egg and sperm were supplied by the parents; the surrogate mother was simply a carrier. So what happened – was this just an issue of a woman who bonded with her baby during the nine months of carrying her? Sort of.

What happened was, the mother (the biological/contractual mother) has a host of mental conditions she had not revealed to the surrogate. I am not sure if this disclosure was actually a part of the surrogate mother contract, but whatever these mental problems were, the surrogate considered this nondisclosure a deal breaker. Actually, I guess it wasn’t the actual nondisclosure that was the problem, the problem was that the mother was in fact crazy. Very much so. The surrogate feared for the child’s health and safety, so she sued for custody. And in an odd twist on surrogate mother cases, she won. Turns out that the parents had resorted to surrogacy because they had been rejected by several adoption agencies, including some abroad. Yes, she is that crazy. This raises the issue of whether some people just don’t have a right to be parents? I can’t say the answer would be the same in all surrogate mother cases, but in this one, the court decided NO.

The second of the surrogate mother cases I’d heard about when I mentioned to my best friend how the surrogate mother story line on Glee got me thinking about the question of what really makes someone a mom. She told me a story she’d heard from someone who’s spouse is a family law attorney. Apparently, the attorney has a divorce case where the couple is splitting up because of the emotional fallout of using a non-surgical surrogate. Never heard of a non-surgical surrogate you say? Oh, that’s just a fancy way of saying that the surrogate didn’t want to go through surgery to be implanted, so the husband and wife agreed that the husband would just have sex with the surrogate as many times as it took for her to get pregnant!! What the…?

I’m sorry, but that is the craziest of the surrogate mother cases I have heard. Why on earth would anyone agree to that?? And worse still, they actually signed a surrogate mother contract to that effect!! I am not surprised they’re getting divorced.