Full Disclosure

SIX

You know I wasn’t that kid who played Mommy with dolls. I just never had that urge to to be a parent when I grew up. I was going to be a rock star, or at least live like one. Besides, you can’t ride a horse if you’re pregnant, so who would want that? Then my body obviously became a big part of my career, and let’s face it, that shit just looks like it fucking hurts. In fact, childbirth is the worst idea anyone’s ever had.

And then, once I was with Glen, the idea started creeping up on me. It continued to grow once we moved to our new place in Las Vegas. There were a lot of kids around, and I would have a weird feeling when I saw them. Was it maternal instinct? Gas?

I put it out of my mind until one morning when Glen and I were at home. I was on the couch, writing up a script on my laptop. Glen came in like he’d had a revelation.

“I want to have a kid,” he said.

“Ha, ha,” I said. “No.” I went back to typing.

“Serious,” he said.

The thought hung there in the space between us, just long enough for me to formulate a plan.

“Okay,” I said. “But there are terms. You have to do porn.”

“Uh, what?” He laughed. Poor guy thought I was joking.

“If I let you get me pregnant,” I said, “you have to do porn.”

“Well, why? That doesn’t make any sense.”

“Because if we ever split up, you can’t use it against me in court.”

“Well, I would never…”

I laughed ruefully and closed the laptop. “One, everybody says that,” I said. “Two, it might not even be your decision.” I have had friends in the adult entertainment business who have had their kids taken away from them by judges who don’t approve of their careers. These were instances where the mother and father were splitting amicably and had agreed on everything regarding custody, but the judge vetoed it. The decision, which was out of the hands of the parents, amounted to “Oh, she’s a whore. You get the kid.” I know a couple who doesn’t even follow the custody agreement, but if something happened the mom would be screwed.

“Let’s just level the playing field,” I continued. “So you can’t say I can’t have the kid because I did porn.” I have always been a realist. I was very aware of what men are capable of doing to hurt the women they once loved.

“That is so fucked up, Stormy,” he said, “but you’re kind of a genius.”

“I love you, too,” I said. “So those are my terms. Take it or leave it.”

“Well, I don’t know if I can,” he said. “What if I’m not good at it?”

“That’s also a good point,” I said. “The only way to know is if you try.”

So we started slow. I asked Keith to shoot a photo set for my website. That went great, so we did a scene with him filming us having sex as a POV thing. I didn’t throw him in the deep end.

Then I added him into scenes of some of the smaller films I was directing and always had him doing scenes with just me. One of the first was called Whatever It Takes, funnily enough. I never critiqued his work in front of people but trained him at home. The sex is completely different. Sex at home is about what feels good; sex on camera is about what looks good. Especially for the woman.

I then “graduated” him to doing a couple of bigger movies with me, which meant that he had a lot more dialogue and was more integral to the story. Glen killed it because he’s such a great actor. It’s a testament to him that he did so well, because I know I am really hard to do a scene with if I’m directing. I can feel the camera move down my body, and as soon as it’s off my face, I’m craning my head to look at the monitor.

This was strictly an insurance policy if we broke up, not about guaranteeing two incomes. He only shot for me, so that $600 or $700 he got paid amounted to $150 or $200 by the time I bought his plane tickets and paid the $200 just to have his STD test done. We probably did seven or eight movies when Glen said, “Okay, I did it. So we’re good to go.”

“No way,” I said.

“But I did porn.”

“You can always stand up in court and be like, ‘She did a hundred scenes in her career, and on the few that I did, I only worked with her.’”

“So what do you want?” he asked.

“You need to fuck other bitches.” He rolled his eyes. I was sex-trafficking my husband.

I cast him in Love in an Elevator and gave him the superhot Kirsten Price as his scene partner. This guy managed to go laterally to another Wicked contract star. He only ever worked with A-list girls, which is astounding compared to the career trajectories of other male performers. You have a hundred guys a day approaching agents saying, “I wanna be a porn star.” Unless you have a hot girl saying, “I only want to do my scenes with him,” the only way guys really get in is by starting at the very bottom. Guy #57 in the two-hundred-guy gang bang. Or starting in gay porn and switching over.

And so, I got pregnant with a baby girl. All because my husband had sex with other women while I watched and worried about their makeup and angles so they’d look their best.

I was instantly fat. I know girls whose tummies don’t pop out until they’re like six months along. Six hours after conception, it was like, “Yup, she’s pregnant.”

I had terrible morning sickness, but in all honesty, I didn’t mind being pregnant. Mostly because I didn’t have to work. The pregnancy was planned, and I did twice as much work the year before so I wouldn’t have to perform. And when I directed, I just sat in a chair as the crew fawned over me and brought me food. It’s not like I was going through what so many women in this country do, getting up and working five days a week at some job doing manual labor until their due date. I had it very cushy. Though I do remember a time when I was heavily pregnant and on the floor as Glen raised a leg over me so I could shave his taint before a scene. “Is this rock bottom?” I said aloud, genuinely asking the universe.

Glen still had to work hard, though. Some days more than others. He was doing a movie for me and had a scene with a woman I will never name, and you know I can keep secrets. He was doing promotional stills with her in another room when he came tiptoeing in, bashfully covering his dick. I was sitting in a chair, eating a plate of chocolate cake someone had brought the nice pregnant director.

“I don’t think I can do it,” he whispered.

I stopped eating, but only for a second. It was good cake. “What the fuck do you mean you can’t do it?” I said. I had written this big feature with a role tailored to him and he had already been established with two days of dialogue.

“Uh, she has hair in her nose,” he said.

“Then don’t look at her nose,” I said. “Fuck her doggy.”

He leaned in, smacking his lips like he’d tasted something bad. “Pussy’s a little gamy,” he whispered.

I lost it. I growled at him in a voice out of The Exorcist. “You get in there and you fuck that pretty girl and you make me some money.”

He slunk off and did just that. He did so well that as the scene was building to the climax she called out his character’s name and yelled “I love you.” At those words, Glen broke character and looked right in the camera with a mortified expression.

“Cut!” I yelled, furious that they’d blown the take.

Husbands, am I right?

Full disclosure: I gained ninety-three pounds while I was pregnant. I gained a full-size human in addition to my little baby. I mean, the physics of it were outstanding, with my huge tits and growing belly. I didn’t know your body could get that big.

My due date was Halloween 2011, which meant I was pregnant all summer in hot-as-hell Vegas. My solution to any discomfort was mostly to lie in bed and get super addicted to bad TV. I watched things that I would never watch now, like it was a job. When I hear people saying they binge-watched a show they DVRed, I think, Amateur.

Not me. I made a schedule with a chart of what shows were on. I even mapped out what to do if two of my shows were on at the same time—which to watch live and which to DVR in the other room. MTV’s reality shows Sixteen and Pregnant and Teen Mom were my absolute favorites because we were in it together. Those original Teen Moms, by the way, those are my girls. We did this together. I’m fifteen years older than them, but that’s beside the point.

Hoarders and Labor and Delivery were appointment television for me, as were reruns of the E! series Pretty Wild, about delightfully self-obsessed sisters, one of whom is part of the Bling Ring accused of robbing homes of celebrities like Orlando Bloom and Paris Hilton.

I didn’t watch Jersey Shore. I had some standards.

And when I was settled in for my programs, I needed my ice cream. My drug of choice was Ben & Jerry’s Strawberry Cheesecake. It has these beautiful pink chunks of strawberry and wedges of pie-crust-like cookie—heaven. I’d never had it before my pregnant body demanded it, and I haven’t had a bite of it since. But at around five months, I started eating a pint every night. Glen would have to go out and buy me one, because if he bought two or three, I would eat two or three. He would gradually buy out the stock in each of the stores by our house, slowly expanding his radius farther and farther until they replenished and he could start again.

One night, he was gone for a really long time. So long that I wondered not just Where is my fucking ice cream? but Is he okay?

Finally, he came rushing in the door with the ice cream. When I saw him, all my concern evaporated, and it went right back to the anger of a pregnant woman who’d been kept waiting. “What took you so long?” I snapped at him.

“I had to go all the way to the Walmart Neighborhood Market,” he said.

“Why’d you go so far?”

“Babe, you’ve eaten all…” He caught himself. “The stores around us aren’t good on inventory.”

I didn’t answer, just peeled off the plastic ring wrap and felt the satisfying release of the cardboard coming away from the ice cream. We can talk later, I thought.

“I got there and there was one left,” he continued, a tiny amount of fear sneaking into his voice. “And just as I was reaching for it, an old lady got it before me.”

My eyes got big as I took a second dive with my spoon.

“Then,” he continued, with shame replacing the fear, “I followed her around the store for fifteen minutes until she wasn’t looking. I stole it out of her cart.”

He had done the right thing, but still I wondered. “Why didn’t you just ask her for it?” I asked. “A woman might understand.”

“Yeah, but what if she said, ‘Go fuck yourself,’ and I had to fight an old lady for it?” he asked. “Oh, God, I just stole ice cream out of an old lady’s shopping cart.”

“Thank you, babe,” I said.

He kissed my head and sighed. “The only thing more terrifying than stealing ice cream from an old lady,” he said, “was coming home without it.”

Poor Glen, I had so many cravings. They weren’t weird like pickles, they were just extremely specific and, uh, time sensitive. To have it immediately was almost too late. The act of eating was enough of a middleman, thank you. Early on, I needed green beans, but that seemed easy.

Canned, fresh, I didn’t care. Later, Glen would know to just get whatever I craved and throw it my way, but we were new to this and he wanted me to have the best green beans. It was a day we were leaving Vegas to go to L.A. because he had a show.

“I know the best place to get green beans,” he said, so proud of himself. “Peggy Sue’s.” Peggy Sue’s 50’s Diner is in Yermo, California, almost exactly halfway between Vegas and L.A. “You know you’re going to have to pee halfway there,” he said. “I bet you they have fucking amazing green beans.”

“I’m in!” I yelled.

As we drove through the desert, I just kept thinking about those green beans. As we got off the I-15 freeway, I could taste them. Peggy Sue’s is so cute, an original 1950s roadside diner made to look like you went through a time warp. I could not have cared less in the moment. I ran to the bathroom to pee, then squeezed into a booth.

The waitress came over, all done up like 1954, wearing a turquoise waitress uniform with pink trim and a matching cap and apron.

“What can I get you, hon?” she asked.

“I’ll have the meat loaf, with mashed potatoes, and…” I paused, like everyone knew what I was about to say. “… the green beans, please.”

“We just ran out of green beans,” she said.

She said it so nonchalantly. Going so entirely off-script that the director in me wanted to fire her on the spot. Instead, I burst into tears. Huge, face-to-the-ceiling, bawling tears. I was sitting in the middle of the desert crying my eyes out because I felt so pregnant and all I wanted was green beans.

The waitress looked at Glen and said, “She must really like green beans.”

He nodded and asked for a minute. Glen came over to my side of the booth and held me. “I know,” he said. “I know.”

We decided early on that we were going to have a home water birth with a midwife. I don’t think that pregnancy is a condition, and I don’t want to go to a hospital full of germs unless there’s a reason. I also heard something horrible: hospitals don’t let you eat or drink during labor. Fuck your ice chips, I was doing this at home. We interviewed midwives and we found a lady that I instantly connected with and liked, Sherry. Our plan was that she would be there as an adviser, and Glen would deliver our girl in our tub. The best-laid plans…

Sherry gave us a list of things we needed to have for our home birthing kit. Glen took on the job of getting everything on the list. Sterile gloves and things like that. He would come home every day with something, and he’d proudly cross it off the list.

I can’t remember what the very last thing was, but when he brought it home, he showed it to me, then pulled out a small green aquarium net on a stick. “And I got this!”

“That wasn’t on the list,” I said. “The baby is not a fish, and she’s not going to fit in that.”

“It’s in case you poop in the water!” he said, so proud.

Every range of emotion crossed my face in three seconds. It went from “Ooooh, how ingenious,” to “Oh, God,” disgusted, to “Awww, he is so sweet,” and then horrified that my husband even knew I was capable of pooping. Because we were not that couple. I’d never even heard Glen fart or burp. We believed in separate bathrooms, so outside of sex, our bodily functions were mysterious to each other. The thought that I might poop in front of him, and possibly on him if he’s in the tub with me—Oh, God. It scared me to a point where I thought, Okay, maybe we won’t do this. But then I remembered the “no food” hospital rule and decided this was worth the risks.

My dignity requests that I tell you this is the last we will speak of the net, because it would never be used, thank you.

We were all set in the weeks leading up to our baby girl’s October 31 due date. And then Halloween passed. And then the next day. Then a week. I was as big as a house and had no one to blame but me, but now my ice cream baby didn’t want to come out. My friends told me I needed to schedule an induction, but I didn’t want to go that route. “This baby’s going to come out with a driver’s license,” I said.

We tried everything to get her out. Pregnancy massage, acupuncture, spicy food, sex. None of it worked. Two weeks went by and there was still no baby. Finally, a really good sale put me into labor. We were walking around the Las Vegas North Premium Outlets, an outdoor mall near our house. I got really excited over a two-for-one sale on Juicy Couture leggings. I felt a cramp, and I’d never had any false labor pains, so I knew it was go time.

When we got home it was about five in the afternoon, and by eight o’clock the contractions were every three minutes. We called the midwife and she rushed over in her minivan. I went from zero to seven centimeters in about five hours, so they thought it would be quick. “You’ll have this baby before midnight,” Sherry said.

I thought so, too. From my tub, I could see a high window in the bathroom. I watched the sun go down, I watched the sun come up. I watched the sun go down, I watched the sun come up.

Two days of contractions, every three to five minutes without a break, and no baby.

I tried walking, I tried lying down. I couldn’t sleep and was so nauseous from pain, I couldn’t eat. I would take a sip of Gatorade and throw up two sips’ worth. Sherry kept checking the baby’s heart rate, and she was totally fine. It never dipped, and she wasn’t in distress. So we kept trying.

They broke my water for me with a needle. It sounds like it would hurt, but it just feels like you just peed on yourself. That didn’t work, and I was still stuck at seven centimeters. Glen slept here and there, and finally I slept in the tub. Sherry took a photo of Glen and me both asleep. I’m in the tub, of course, my head on the side, and Glen is curled up on the bath rug. We’re holding hands, even in sleep.

I woke at about 2 A.M. The midwife had gone downstairs to lie on the couch in the guest room. Glen was still sleeping on the mat. I was enormous in the water, and in between contractions, I looked down. I will never forget this moment: my belly churned, went completely flat, and then stuck out again.

“Glen!” I screamed. “Glen. Glen. Get Sherry.” He raced out of the room, and I couldn’t stop shaking.

Sherry came up and was very calm. “Step out of the water,” she said, “and let me check you.” She knelt to examine the baby’s positioning, and as I remember the half-second that a look came over her face, I have to stop typing to collect myself. It was puzzlement, concern, and then real stark fear before she managed to hide it.

“We gotta go to the hospital,” she said.

“What?”

My baby had had enough. She had backed up and flipped herself over to a breech position. “If this doesn’t work,” I imagine her saying on some primal level, “I’m coming out feetfirst.”

“I am calling it,” Sherry said. “You can still have the baby naturally, but I am calling it. We have to go. You have been in labor for forty-eight hours and your water’s been broken for twenty-four hours. We’re going.”

There is nothing like being in full-blown labor and you’re leaking and your husband is trying to put a diaper on you and dress you. Sherry wanted a bucket to put under me in the car, but all we had was a popcorn bowl. They waddle-walked me out to the car. I was so dehydrated and out of it, but I had one moment of clarity when they opened the door to my Escalade.

“Not in my Escalade,” I yelled to Sherry. “We’re taking your minivan.”

We three burst out laughing. “This is an eighty-thousand-dollar vehicle,” I said. “I am not giving birth in it.”

So there I was in a minivan, sitting over this bowl.

“IF I HAVE THIS BABY IN A POPCORN BOWL IN A MINIVAN…,” I yelled as we raced to the hospital. “I WORKED SO HARD TO GET OUT OF LOUISIANA. YOU ARE NOT GOING TO DRAG ME BACK TO MY ROOTS.”

We got to the hospital at close to 3 A.M. And this is important for the world to know: the intake nurse at St. Rose Hospital was a fucking bitch. Lady, please come to a book signing and stand in line so that when you get to me I can call you a bitch to your face. She gave us attitude because we weren’t preregistered at the hospital and made it as clear as possible that she was not a home-birth supporter.

I was already terrified, but now I was worried that I was going to deliver this baby with a doctor that I had never met before. And in walks Dr. Steven Harter, the most sought-after obstetrician in Las Vegas. With his pro-mom approach and amazing bedside manner, women plan their entire births around his availability. And here he was, on rotation that night.

“We think that you are too tired to push and your body knows that,” Dr. Harter told me. “Because if it finished dilating, you won’t have the strength to get the baby out. So, your labor is stalling. Here’s what we’re gonna do. We’re going to give you an epidural so you don’t feel anything, which just means you can take a nap. You won’t feel your contractions, and I bet when you wake up you’ll be refreshed and ready to push.”

“Okay,” I said, “sounds great.”

The anesthesiologist came in to give me the epidural, and Glen’s face went white at the sight of the needle. The anesthesiologist put it in, and the pain went away immediately. I was so thankful, I tried to kiss the anesthesiologist.

Thirty seconds after my pain completely went away, hunger pangs started, as if my stomach was going to rip itself open. I hadn’t eaten for two and a half days, and the epidural couldn’t mask that. There was no way I could sleep when I was this hungry. A nurse happened to come in to ask if there was anything she could do for me.

“I’m starving,” I said. “Is there some food—”

“You can’t have anything to eat,” she scolded. She said something else, but all I heard was “Blah blah blah ice chips.” And she left.

I waited until that door closed.

“Glen, come here,” I said. “Closer.” I reached up my hand, as if to gently touch his face, and I grabbed him by the throat.

“Vending machine. Now.”

“But she said…”

I tightened my grip. “Okay,” he croaked out.

He came back with an armful of stuff. “I didn’t know what you wanted,” he said. “Pick what you want.”

“Yes,” I said, grabbing everything.

I ate everything and then passed out. Glen immediately fell asleep in a chair across from me because he was so exhausted, too. Two hours later, in came the nasty intake nurse.

She pulled back my covers and shrieked. I was covered in crumbs and wrappers.

“WHAT?” I said, with all the menace I could muster. “What?”

She huffed and walked out, saying she was going to tell the doctor. Snitch. Dr. Harter came in and was cool about it. “It’s fine,” he said. “You’ve been through a lot.” He checked my cervix and there was still no progression. He told me the only thing they could do was give me Pitocin. I had been against inducing, which is what Pitocin is all about, but I was willing to try anything at that point. Besides, every hour I was at the hospital, I was running up a bill. All I was hearing was cha-ching, cha-ching.

At seven in the morning there was still no progress, so I scheduled the C-section. Now, I already told you that I was paranoid about being in a hospital. I have to tell you that I also had an irrational fear that someone was going to give me the wrong baby. Judge all you want, but that’s the kind of thing that would happen to me. I knew it takes like a minute to get the baby out and twenty minutes to get you back together, so I made Glen promise that when they took the baby out of the operating room, he had to go with her.

Fun fact: when they give you a C-section, most doctors strap your arms down. Dr. Harter said he could take the straps off, thank God. “You promise you’re not going to sit up and reach down and pull out your own organs or punch me in the face?”

“I promise,” I said.

Glen had his camera and filmed the whole thing. It is graphic as fuck and it took me a long time to watch it. It’s very… red.

Dr. Harter had his iPod going during the surgery and was rocking out to Led Zeppelin. The moment my daughter was born, Alanis Morissette’s “Thank U” filled the room. Once again, Alanis was there with just the right song at just the right moment. Dr. Harter pulled her out and said, “Oh, boy!”

“What?” I said. “It’s a girl, right?”

“Oh, yeah,” he said. “She’s just so big.”

He handed her off to the nurses, and they took her over to a warming cart to weigh her. She was almost nine pounds and long, twenty-three inches. But the room was very, very quiet, with only Alanis singing.

The baby wasn’t crying.

I know from the video that the nurses looked quizzical and started rubbing the baby. Glen put the camera down. In the video, you just see the floor and only hear us talking.

“Wha—what’s wrong?” he says. “Something wrong?”

They don’t answer but focus on rubbing her.

“Step back for a second, sir,” says a nurse.

“What’s wrong?” Glen asks again.

“WHAT’S WRONG?” you hear me scream.

Our baby let out the smallest cry.

“All right, she’s good,” says the doctor.

Then my husband let out the biggest cry. Glen, who had stood by me through all this, who had been so scared for me and for her, broke.

You just hear him sobbing on the video, sputtering out, “She’s—” Sob. “So—” Sob. “Beautiful.”

It sounded so funny and ridiculous that I slapped my hand to my forehead. As soon as he left with the baby and two of the nurses, the remaining nurses broke into laughter. I started to laugh and they had to yell at me. “Stop laughing!” one said. “Stuff is gonna fly out of you.”

“Well,” said the doctor, “he’s an emotional guy.”

“Yeah,” I said. “He feels things.”

“All right, look,” he said, conspiratorially. “I made your incision especially low and very small. I’m going to take extra time closing it up.”

“Oh, thank you,” I said.

Dr. Harter smiled. “I’m gonna have you back in front of the camera in no time.”

I had never told him who I was, but he recognized me. I smiled back at him. And yes, I have the best C-section scar. I love my fans.