Obviously, we must open with Gus, our Featured Pet. Gus is a 4 yo French Bulldog who his human person, Andie, acquired after a particularly nasty romantic disappointment. He is the best friend a girl could have, and a great favorite of neighborhood children, who he never jumps on.
Andie reports that is is ALSO on the cover of her book, and she thinks the fame might be going to his head a little. (He’s demanded fancier kibble.)
Thanks, Andie, for sharing Gus with us! I am going to feature a kitty or a bun tomorrow, but there was something about Gus and his flowers that made me willing to do two doggos in a row!
My genius friend Samantha Powell wrote a great piece for the AV Club about the Met Gala:
Every red carpet is about money, as are the various events that they are held in service of, but that is not where we’re supposed to focus our gaze. The Oscars are ostensibly a celebration of the best in film. The Grammys are the same, but for music. And the Met Gala is a celebration of fashion as art. But the night is foremost about shoring up the financial health of the museum through ticket and table sales as well as loudly trumpeting the opening, with the assistance of the glitz and glamour that emanates from what has become one of the most exclusive parties of the year, of an exhibit that is a mighty draw for visitors. And as with every red carpet, the one set upon those iconic stairs plays the usual role of advertising venue for all manner of luxury brands.
Why talk about the money at all? This has long been the truth of the matter, the final advertising piece more and more each year. But this year’s theme presented more of a challenge when it came to the delicate balance between what the event is about on its face and the foundation it is built on.
The fact that for the most part the attendees and the designers dressing them didn’t take advantage of the chance offered them last night—throwing on an elaborate headdress here or an embellished dinner jacket there instead—points to the fact that the Met Gala has possibly become like all of the other red carpets we see throughout the year. There are now too many of all of those other concerns, the money and the branding and the immensity of the moment, for that turning away and acceptance, even for one night, of a different set of standards. The lights that now shine on the event have in some ways dimmed it.
Chuck Wendig on why you gotta stop tagging authors into bad reviews of their work:
You might note also that negative reviews are one of the ways we communicate with creators of products and arbiters of service in order to improve the quality of that product or that service — which is true! If someone at American Airlines shits in my bag, I’m gonna say something on Twitter, and I’m going to say it to American Airlines. If the dishwasher I bought was full of ants, you bet I’m going to tag GE in that biz when I go to Twitter. But books are not dishwashers or airlines. You can’t improve what happened. It’s out there. The book exists. You can’t fix it now. And art isn’t a busted on-switch, or a broken door, or a poopy carryon bag, or an ant-filled dishwasher. Those things are objectively broken. A book can be subjectively broken, but that’s it. It’s a wide swath of varying mileage. Further, the author of a book is just one person. Again, we’re an enamel-free tooth, a squirming nerve — when you tweet at American Airlines, you’re not tweeting at Dave Americanairlines, son of Walter and Karen Americanairlines. Dave’s feelings aren’t hurt.
As requested by a reader, my dry shampoo thoughts (I am mostly constructed of dry shampoo and injectable neurotoxins, as you know):
I have a lot of thoughts!!!! I will first name the only two products which have actively offended me by doing absolutely nothing whatsoever, which are: Ouai’s Dry Shampoo Foam, and Living Proof’s Perfect Hair Day Dry Shampoo. Plenty of people seem to like the latter, which, IDK, maybe YMMV. For me, I could detect literally zero change in the state of my hair.
If you have light colored hair, congratulations, you have a lot of choices. I hear fabulous things from blonde/light brunette/ginger friends about Drybar’s Detox Dry Shampoo, as well as Klorane’s Dry Shampoo With Oat Milk.
Generally speaking, if a dry shampoo says “clear,” it’s gonna be white. If it’s a powder and not a spray, you’ll hate yourself within fifteen seconds of trying to apply it.
Now, we come to MY speciality, which is dry shampoo for very dark hair. You CAN use any dry shampoo, you don’t HAVE to have one formulated for dark hair (my friend Jasmine says that the trick to making a white one work on dark hair is to apply it the night before, and then you don’t get that ashy residue that makes you look like you’re playing an old lady in a local theater production.
My friend Irin turned me on to Batiste’s Divine Dark, which was my go-to for ages. My issue, which I just planned on putting up with, is that it’s a little filthy: by this I mean when you’re massaging it through your hair, you get loads of dark residue under your nails, it comes off on your pillowcases, and unless you’re careful, it’ll leave tracks on the skin around your hairline.
Finally, in the knowledge that there must be something better out there, I asked around, and my friend Helen told me about Sachajuan’s Dry Dark Powder Shampoo, which is finally my Holy Grail product. When it goes on, you’re worried it might be too light, but it’s not, and it’s extremely clean and also you can brush/blow your hair out straight with it OR tease it up for volume, which I usually do. 10/10.
And now, my third birth story:
At some point in recent months, it occurred to me that my first birth story, hastily tossed off within 48 hours for The Hairpin, and my second birth story, delivered in GREAT detail for The Toast, were missing their natural counterpart!
Because my first two kids arrived before their due dates, I had flown my mom and my godmother-also-a-grandma to my children (who I wanted with me for the birth) in a bit early, so of course, my third baby was in absolutely no rush to arrive.
Because my godmother was scheduled to fly back home essentially ON my due date, which I never thought I would still be pregnant on, I felt acutely aware that I was on the clock for once. I didn’t want to rush the baby, so I changed her flight to buy us a few more days, but I also decided…it was time for a membrane sweep, which had been v useful to me in the past for jumpstarting labor.
You will be familiar from my second birth story about the nature of a membrane sweep, but this one was particularly…memorable. I was about 3 cm dilated going in, which is very my style (I tend to dilate and efface pretty early on, and it means literally nothing about when I will actually give birth, there are people who walk around for WEEKS dilated to like 5 cm, but it also makes me feel like the wheels are in motion.)
In order to get a really good membrane sweep, your midwife/doc has to be able to get up in there to break up those adhesions and really get the ball rolling, so 3 cm is great.
At this point, my midwife, well aware that my godmother, who I was DESPERATE to share this birth experience with, was about to leave town said: “one of our midwives is the Membrane Sweep Queen. It will hurt a lot, but I strongly suspect you’ll get your desired outcome.’ “Send for her!” I said boldly.
A few minutes later, a very young and beautiful woman arrived, donning a glove. “What I tell my students and the other midwives about membrane sweeps is: if your patient doesn’t yelp/scream/cry during, you might as well not bother.”
This was not encouraging. I did, however, have my husband with me, who had not been present for previous membrane sweeps. As requested, I took a deep breath, and she proceeded to insert her fingers into my cervix and MURDER ME. I could immediately tell that this was a) the most effective membrane sweep I had ever had, and b) hurt like a MOTHERFUCKER (Steve and I went very very pale during.) She then removed her hand from my vagina, proudly showing me her goo-and-blood-covered glove, and said: “you’ll be back here within 48 hours, pushing out a baby.”
Now, my godmother was due to fly out on the morning of August 30. The day following my membrane sweep was August 29th. I immediately channeled Annette Bening:
…but for giving birth. My mom and godmom retreated into the kitchen so as not to make me feel pressured, and I proceeded to a) bounce/roll on the damn ball, b) pace pace pace pace around the house, c) do one of the many labor dances on YouTube, and then d) ask my husband to give me the actual D. The latter activity, blessedly, resulted in my mucus plug releasing, which was an excellent sign.
And then I started to get mild contractions. The kind you can talk and walk though, but contractions nonetheless. I could hear my mom and godmom whispering “I think she’s having contractions” but I didn’t want to get anyone’s hopes up. By about 4pm, I had called my doula and said “I think tonight is the night,” and had called the midwife on duty to say “I think tonight is the night,” and called our babysitter to say “be prepared for a sleepover, I think tonight is the night.”
I then told my family “let’s just have dinner, and then we’ll see about heading in around 9pm.” This became “I cannot possibly eat dinner, I will 100% vomit, and maybe we should go in closer to 7pm.” This became “we are leaving for the hospital the exact minute the babysitter arrives.”
Now, because I tend to have super long early labors (like, 19 hours), no one really paid any attention to me. I waddled to the car and tossed in my hospital bag, saw the babysitter pulling up the driveway, came back inside, and said “we need to go to the hospital now.” Steve and my mom began slowllllyyyy packing phone chargers and iPads and stuff, so I went back to the car and leaned on the horn until they emerged. My godmother had her suitcase with her, because her flight was first thing the next morning, and if the baby DID come in the wee small hours, as they tend to, she was gonna be taking a cab directly from the hotel to the airport.
I had several contractions in the car, which I truly truly dislike (it’s v upsetting to be in a seatbelt and incapable of the wild moving around that helps distract you from the pain), and then I have zero memory of getting from the car to the birthing triage area.
My hospital (the University of Utah’s teaching hospital, which is a great place to give birth, especially with the midwives) has the triage area to make sure you are for sure about to have a baby, before they will let you have a birthing room. What this means, logistically, is they want to make sure you are at 6cm, or at least a cm or two past where you were when last seen by your care provider.
I was at 6.5, and a nurse perkily said “you know what that means?” and I was like “I GET A ROOM!” as though Oprah had just encouraged me to look under my seat.
Then I had to walk roughly 30 feet from triage to my birthing suite, during which time I had what felt like…a million contractions? I was in the shit.
As per my personal tradition, the minute I hit the birthing room I removed every scrap of clothing and climbed into the tub, which felt…amazing.
Let me now discuss the number of people on Team Nicole, all of whom were present in my tiny birthing suite (there was a bigger one available, but that one had no tub, and I NEEDED MY TUB.)
In the room: myself, Steve, my mom, my godmother, my doula, my doula’s apprentice, and my OB nurse.
At this point, there was a knock on the door, and a plumber arrived to fix the sink. We did not want him there, HE did not want to be there (I was nude and making “productive noises,” which are very low growls, basically), and visibly winced whenever I said “ohhhhh next one is coming NOOOOOOOO.” Finally, the nurse was like “just go, we’ll deal with not having a sink” and he left the room like the Roadrunner.
The tub felt wonderful, which, unfortunately, as I could tell, was beginning to slow my labor down. So, I said, “I am gonna get out of the tub, I’m gonna get on the bed, you’re gonna check me, and we’re gonna see where we’re at.” (I get very pushy in labor, no pun intended.)
She waited to check until I had JUST had a contraction, and was deeeeelighted to tell me I was at 8. I was also in a buttload of pain, because I was deep in the heart of transition, and no longer in my wonderful tub of hot water.
My midwife said my bag of waters was super bulgy and coming in and out of my cervix with my contractions, and she said “look, here’s the deal: I can pop that sucker, and I bet we’re gonna have a baby real dang fast.” This was a tough decision for me. I was in a huge amount of pain, but was still staying on top of it psychologically, and I was worried that if my water broke and things started happening really quickly, I would not be able to stay on top of it.
Now, my hospital, as opposed to the vast majority of US hospitals, offers nitrous oxide (they refer to it in Canada and the UK and various other places as “gas and air”) as not really an analgesic, but a way to distract you from the pain. You have to hold the mask yourself, bc then you’ll just drop it if you have too much. I decided to see how much it helped with my next contraction, and if it helped, I would let them break my water.
Because God laughs at our plans, I just randomly had an easy contraction. It had nothing to do with the nitrous, as I was soon to find out does jack shit for me personally. To this day, I swear they forgot to turn it on or something.
“Let’s pop that bag!” I said, optimistically. So, a crochet hook (I swear it’s just a sterilized crochet hook) appeared, and on my next contraction, as the bag bulged out, she popped that sucker.
There was a fair amount of meconium in there. Which is not great, it means your baby has pooped and may be breathing in the poop. My midwife was super chill, because this is very common, but also immediately placed a call to the NICU. About thirty seconds later, six doctors/students appeared in our again, VERY SMALL ROOM, and clustered in the corner where they do stuff to the baby when the baby comes. Hilariously, they were clearly terrified of my midwife and nurse, and were there just in case the baby needed help breathing, so they kept their mouths shut and played on their phones and tried to stay out of the way. They knew their place! (Also, NICU doctors and nurses are angels and it gave me a huge sense of security knowing they were there.)
As per the midwife’s guess, I immediately went from 8 to about 9.5, the .5 being a teeny lip of cervix over part of my baby’s head. She said I could just keep going until the contractions managed it (hard pass) or she could do something else painful to me, which would be to stick her hand in me on my next contraction and physically push back that lip (they call it “reducing.”)
As someone who drastically prefers pushing to contracting (especially during transition), I was like “let’s do that shit.”
It was…so much better than I had anticipated? It hurt, but not like a membrane sweep, and I was INSTANTLY fully dilated and ready to push. The urge to push came very quickly (it’s like throwing up but from your vagina, it’s beyond your control, all you can do is bear down and think about pooping and try to help your body do it.)
To briefly backtrack, the last part of transition had involved a lot of me saying “nononononononono I don’t LIKE this I don’t WANT this” and making the aforementioned low dying animal noises, which was really upsetting to my godmother, who loves me so so so so much and hated to see me in pain. My mom had watched me do this twice before, so she was okay, and Steve was…fast asleep on the couch. Steve’s physical reaction to emotional stress is to fall asleep, and since there is literally nothing for him to do, I have encouraged this. Sleep when you can, you’re about to have a newborn, you know.
So, like the two previous times, I reached over and smacked him on the leg and said “wake up, babe, it’s time to push.”
My first birth, I pushed for 3.5 hours. I do not think that was a great idea, and if I had a do-over I would have asked for some pitocin a little sooner. My second birth I pushed for twenty minutes.
This baby? Three pushes. None of us thought she would be coming so fast, so my mom wasn’t even in her preferred location (right in front of my vagina making beckoning gestures at the head) as Lo came out of my body. I kept saying “she’s…out?” “She’s…born?”
Before I got to hold her, the NICU team swooped in like The Avengers, took one look and listen at her to make sure she had not, in fact, aspirated a bunch of poop, said “congratulations, mom!” and filed silently out of the room. Because she had poop on her, I let my midwife and doula clean her up and toss one of those teeny diapers on her, and then she was on my naked chest while my midwife and nurse assisted in birthing my placenta and checking for vaginal damage (no stitches this time, but a beautiful crop of hemorrhoids.) They also started doing the necessary but shitty thing where every hour (probably they don’t do it QUITE that often, it just feels that way, especially when they wake you up to do it at night) where they push down on your uterus to make more stuff come out of it and encourage it to retract to its correct size. It hurts…so much. Anyway!
They put beautiful heated blankets on me, they gave me a snack, Lo started nursing, and it was a perfect moment. My godmother got to hold her almost right away, because she needed to go home, and that was a particularly magic moment for me which I will never forget.
Here is a little video of the aftermath, before I got cleaned up and moved to maternity.
It was a beautiful birth. Bittersweet, because we believe our family is now complete, but utterly magical. Except for the hemorrhoids.
Thank you for making it this far, if you did!
Here’s the reward for what I endured:
She’s the greatest.
For those who have made it so far, I lost another spiritual hero, Jean Vanier, this week, though his exit came after many, many decades of service and a very full life. He turned away from a life of incredible privilege to devote himself to people with intellectual and other disabilities, after touring French asylums in the early 1960s and being appalled at the conditions he found:
He began his work just as deinstitutionalization, which called for patients to be removed from psychiatric hospitals and integrated into the community, began to take hold internationally. Margaret A. Nygren, the executive director of the American Association on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities, placed him “at the forefront of a grassroots movement” toward that end.
As Mr. Vanier shed the habits of a naval officer to live more collaboratively with other L’Arche residents, he arrived at the fundamental realization that would inform his mission.
“The balance of our world frequently is seen as a question of power. That if I have more power and more knowledge, more capacity, then I can do more,” he once told Krista Tippett, host of the radio program “Speaking of Faith.” But “when you have power, we can very quickly push people down,” he continued. “And this is the history of humanity.”
Although driven by his Catholic faith, Mr. Vanier gradually led the L’Arche network into more ecumenical work. Observers described his theology as one of simple, concrete, tender acts: bathing a fellow human being, dining together, offering a reassuring touch.
Love to you all, always. xoxoxo, n
I absolutely LOVE birth stories, so please email me links or descriptions of any of your births and I promise I will read them with great delight. Birth is dangerous and it is also animalistic and if you are engaged in it, not to be totally dorky, I feel that you get to inhabit, however briefly, the divine.
This is beautiful, Nicole. I love reading practical, specific birth stories (as much as they terrify me). Thank you for sharing yours.