Who's That Knocking at My Door

Ten points if you get the obscure movie reference of the title.

The history:

One of Jimmy's best friends is a guy named Joe. I have talked about him before. Here.

Joe is a nice-looking, 50-something, Italian-American, never-been-married, consummate-playboy, Peter Pan syndrome-epitomizing, terribly-charming actor. Even though Jimmy's known him forever, and Jude considers him "Uncle Joe", he's the guy that I would NEVER set one of my girlfriends up with because the man is TROUBLE.

As I said in the post I linked above, which I'm sure none of you clicked on, over the many years, I have become something of a  mother/confessor/sister to him. He comes to me with his endless woman problems. He always flirts with me, but I'm pretty sure it's because he considers me "safe" and nonthreatening.

Joe's "women problems" are epic and endless. He is a hopeless romantic, who falls in love hard, then always manages to manufacture some tragic reason why they could never stay together. His girlfriends are usually wonderful women, who I like immediately. But then he always finds...a problem. He often obsesses. Can we say "restraining order"?

He idealizes women, putting them on such a lofty pedestal that they have no possibility of doing anything but falling. I think he idealizes me. I seem to be the wife/mother figure that he knows he could never have.

Over the years, he has moved back and forth between Los Angeles and New York many times. Presently, he lives in Manhattan. But when Jude was born, he was living in LA.

The Set Up:

When I was pregnant with Jude I gained 60 pounds. Shocking, but true. So...keep that in mind.

DISCLAIMER: Any man reading this, who wants to continue to idealize women...please stop reading now. The truth is about to be spoken.

I gave birth to Jude on May 6, 2003 at 6:38 a.m. at Cedars-Sinai Hospital. After birthing, we were taken to our hospital room.

Anybody who has endured a vaginal birthing experience knows that after pushing out an 8 lb, 6 oz, 21 inch baby, a woman's hoo-hoo is a disaster. Dreadful things like "ripping" and "stitches" happen. Not a pretty picture. Keep that in mind too.

I'm afraid I don't know if this is standard at every hospital, but at Cedars, after giving birth, they provide you with the following items:

1. Rubber surgical gloves filled with ice. One uses these as ice packs to reduce the hoo-hoo swelling. Every new mother is instructed to stick the icy glove between her legs and keep it there.
2. A girdle-like sheer nylon mesh thing - like the top of a pair of pantyhose. The new mother is told to put it on and use it to hold the aforementioned glove of ice on their poor, swollen hoo-hoo.
3. A hideously unattractive hospital gown, which opens in the back. 

Keep all of that in mind.

The Event:

On the afternoon after Jude's birth, Jimmy left the hospital to go home and feed the cat, and I was left alone in the hospital with baby Jude.

Now, when I say alone, I don't really mean alone, because at Cedars, the nursing staff is so annoyingly diligent that they NEVER leave you alone. About every 15 minutes they were knocking and entering and questioning and checking and fiddling. Aggravating and exhausting. They would not leave me alone.

At some point, Baby Jude, who was asleep in his tiny bassinet, woke up and started to fuss. I managed to drag myself out of the hospital bed and shuffled over to pick him up. When I reached him, there was yet another of the endless knocks at the door.

"Yes, what IS IT?!" I cried out as I bent over to pick him up, my back to the door, and accidentally allowed my hospital gown to fall to the sides.

You've guessed where this is going, haven't you.

The door flew open and in walked...Joe.

And there, right in front of his face, was my fat, naked ass, squished like a sausage into that see-through, diaper-like girdle, with a big ice-filled hand stuck between my legs.

Joe shrieked like a little girl, dropped the gift he was carrying and fled down the hall.

As soon as he had managed to return his eyeballs back into their sockets and stop hyperventilating from the horror of his vision, he returned to the room. By then, I had managed to pick up the baby, crawl back into bed, and arrange myself into a Madonna and Child-like tableau, in an attempt to erase some of the trauma from his mind, and restore for him some of the vision of perfection he had previously expected of a new mother.

We never spoke of this. I was a tad embarrassed. And he was almost certainly deeply scarred.

But I have to say, I was glad I remembered to get that bikini wax before I went into labor.

__________________________________

This post was inspired by...

Prompt #1: Who was at your front door?

Please visit Mama Kat for more inspired and inspiring posts!

Comments

[Andrea]

I know exactly of which you speak, and don't even have words for this scene. Just a knowing smile! Love your writing style!

[Peg]

OMG Gretchen! You had me laughing uproariously. I had to read it out loud to my husband. I could envision every single horrifyingly embarrassing moment! GREAT STORY!

[VandyJ]

Oh the indignity of giving birth. I got no ice pack, but did get those crazy ultra granny panties. You'd really think they'd do something about those hospital gowns.

[Allison]

Followed from MamaKat's...

This is hilarious.

I will never forget after my daughter was born I could not get her to breastfeed and we had a call into the Ped about it.
During a nap, my mom rushed to me with the phone saying, "It's Doctor Bob for you!"
I relayed the horrors of not being able to breastfeed and how my nipples were huge and flat.
He said he would pray for me and hung up...
Um, that's when I realized it was PASTOR Bob. Our preacher. Our Pediatrician's name is James.
HORRIFIED!

[Michele R.]

A rubber glove? wth? I got something that looked like a maxi pad that was super cold. And ladies--bring your own clothes! No need to wear that dumb hospital gown.
That was sort of sweet of him to see you in the hospital. He was/is sweet on you. But I know what you mean about all the annoying staff.

[Jan]

I love "giving birth" stories (I especially love to tell them in the presence of men), and this was a good one.

I laughed.

Hard.

Oh, and Allison? You had me ROLLING.

[VandyJ]

P.S.
My spin is up:
http://tttandme.blogspot.com/2012/02/spin-cycle-honeymoon.html

[lexy]

lol - joe screamed like a girl, dropped the gift he was carrying and fled down the hall. Awesome.

[Diane @ Philzendia]

OMG. This is sooo funny. I laughed hard. Love your writing style!

[Michele]

That poor man. He must have been scarred for a long time after. It makes for a great story.

Twenty years before you I gave birth and I didn't get any uber granny panties or ice filled balloons. What I got was nurses coming in every half hour to knead my uterus. Yes, you read that right. I called it pushing my uterus through my backbone though. After the first couple of times I told them I could handle it myself, thank.you.very.much.

[Arnebya]

No ice filled glove here either, but the mesh nonsense? Every time. And the nurses for us were like that too, didn't matter the time of morning or middle of the night, here they come, pressing unwanted hands down on too-sore body parts. I don't think I could have laughed harder than at Joe running down the hallway. That will carry me through the day, thank you.

[SuziCate]

This is hilarious!
...and the moral is...Joe will forever remain single!

[Sarah at 32Flavors]

Good gracious. I'm sort of glad you haven't talked about it. Let's all pretend it never happened.
I'm really surprised by the ice glove, because I had Ella around the same time in my tiny, local, midwestern hospital, and they had these lovely ice pads. It was a pad, but one of those ice things that you break something in it and it gets cold? Those were nice when you're hoo hoo was hurting. Oh how I hated the mesh underwear, though.

By the way, my spin is up! I think you'll enjoy it. http://sarahs32flavors.wordpress.com/2012/02/09/spin-cycle-honeymoons/

[Aimee]

Oh. MY. Well. Poor Joe. The Madonna tableau had me rolling.

Um, pain and horror of the whole c-section experience aside, I'm kinda okay with not needing any ice packs on my hoo hoo...

[Michelle]

You made me laugh out loud! How come in childbirth classes and talking with my obgyn, the mesh underpants were never mentioned? It was all about the pain and breathing and pushing and blood and gunk but not one word about the worst part: the underpants.

[Kendra]

I didn't have a glove I had an ice pack panty and it was amazing. A little ugly but amazing!

And really...this seems like a case of who was knocking at your back door! ;)

[Tiffany Barry]

Oh I'm crying I'm laughing so hard! After my daughter was born, they gave me an ice pack and a squirt bottle to spray on myself and "rinse" with after using the bathroom.

Post-birth is definitely not the most elegant of times in a woman's life! And we're about to do it all over again! Woohoo for swollen hoo-hoos!

Popping in from Mama Kat's
Tiffany at Mom's Daily Zen
http://www.momsdailyzen.com