Keep the Shears Away

This time last year I didn't have much hair on my head, because I had volunteered to shave it all off in the name of charity for St. Baldrick's Foundation. I had started writing a big blog post about this four and a half months ago, but it got pushed to the wayside for reasons I don't even recall. My original intention with that unfinished entry was to pimp out my friend Ben, whom I had convinced to do the same thing I did, which was a bigger sacrifice for him because he likes his hair much more than I do my own.

Going bald is liberating. July 2013.

This morning I found myself contemplating hair again, because since the time I shaved all mine off I have gone back to get one trim. In one year, I only got my hair cut once. I know people who follow that "every six weeks" advice and go see their hair stylist all the freaking time, but I'm just not that kind of person. My hair doesn't matter much to me at all. In fact, when it starts getting long, it starts to annoy the crap out of me, and I contemplate drastic measures such as shaving it all off again.

My daughter does not share my sentiments about hair and doesn't loathe her own the way I do mine. Hers hands freely in her face most of the time, and it's a fight on the best of days just to get her to let me or my husband comb it. I don't blame her. I remember being young and getting the worst tangles in my hair, and my dad having to sit me down in front of the couch with a hair brush that he'd work and tug and pull and hack at for hours until it was clear.

I realized this morning that in just a little over two months, my baby girl's going to be turning 4, and I have never once cut her hair. All that mess you see in the picture above? Still those gorgeous locks she was born with. She has never had a trim in her life. 

We've discussed it before. I've asked her if she wants a hair cut, but she flip-flops between answering me yes and no, and it's never a subject she brings up on her own. So I've just never had it done. I haven't seen any reason to. There's nothing wrong with her hair. I think it's beautiful. It falls perfectly in a natural part on the left side of her head without having to really put any work into it. Sometimes she lets me put it up in a "high pony," and for ballet we always put it up in a bun, but otherwise she's perfectly content to sweep it out of her eyes while she's running around having fun.

My wild child riding a pony for the first time at the 2014 Summit County Fair.

Her hair comes up in conversation sometimes, especially with the in-laws. Her grandmother (husband's mom) has asked before, seemingly innocently, "When are you going to get her hair cut?" My answer remains the same: whenever she wants to get her hair cut. 

My niece commented once about how you have to get your hair cut regularly for it to stay healthy. Apparently this is something her mother told her, but I don't believe it's the least bit true. Personally, I think it's something hair stylists tell their clients to convince them they need to come back "at least every six weeks for a trim," just so they can have a steady income. Propaganda.

This morning I found myself Googling "why get a haircut" and not being able to find any hits, except, of course, from hair stylists. People who make their living by cutting hair, or selling beauty products to make your hair shiny or bold or not frizzy or... They've tried to sell me a lot of crap in those salons, and almost convince me every single time, but I'm sorry... I'm not going to pay $20 for a bottle of shampoo that's only going to last me a week when I could spend $2 on one that will last me a month or two instead.

My niece Sydney, who will be (holy crap) 15 in a couple of days, had her baby hair for the longest time, too. I'm pretty sure no shears had touched her head even by the time she starred in my wedding 11 years ago as one of two flower girls. Her curls were the most adorable thing in the world. I always thought she was, up until I had my own kids, anyway. 

My niece when she was tiny like Lilah, but obviously with bangs.

Every time I think about taking my daughter to get her hair cut, I remember this woman I knew when I was a teenager. For the life of me, I can never remember her name, but she was the sweetest woman who knew all of us, and helped out on all the school musical sets with costumes and make-up and all that. I talked to her quite a bit my Junior and Senior years because I was the Stage Manager for two of our high school productions (The King and I and then Bye, Bye Birdie).

What I remember most about this woman, besides her unending kindness, was the fact that she had never, in her entire life, ever, got her hair cut. She always wore it in this long, tight braid, and it was so long that she had to fold it up and secure it back up at the back of her head. I think of her whenever I contemplate taking Lilah to the salon to get her "First Haircut" that seems to be such an important milestone for parents everywhere. Not for me, though.

Until the day comes that I'm being begged and whined to for a haircut, I'm just going to let my daughter's hair grow wild and untamed like her personality. It's not hurting her, or anyone else. I don't think it looks "unhealthy" or anything either. Though it is a pain in the ass to find her hairs in everything all over the house, including dinner sometimes. We know it's hers, because she's the only person in the house with long hair right now!

Also, she's blonde and I'm not.

For now, we're skipping that "milestone" in favor of natural beauty. Which reminds me... Next article I should talk to you all about make-up. Yeah. Three years old and we're already in love with cosmetics. Thanks so much, ballet recital!

The Usurper's Rise to Power

Today we celebrated Amelia's first birthday. I already told you about the day she was born, plus some, so I won't get all repetitive here. This past weekend we had family and friends join us in celebrating her day of birth a couple days earlier than the actual day. On this day in history, though, February 3rd, the future challenger to the Overlord's throne was born, and today we're going to talk about how we buttered her unsuspecting sister up by going out and having some private family fun.

Officially 1 year old today!

Apparently, my mentioning the birthday party that we had on Saturday inspired a bit of fun conversation in our secret Nerdling Moms group on Facebook. Mostly we talked about cakes, and shared a billion pictures of all the cakes all of us have ever made for all of our kids. Then we advanced into talking about birthday parties in general. One of my friends, Susan, told us about how she is absolutely drawing a blank on what to do for her daughter's upcoming 5th birthday. Housing the party off-site from her own house is a must, because she can't accommodate the number of guests she expects. In this bit of back and forth on suggestions and frustrations, she mentioned this place that I had never heard of, and now I'm going to tell you all about it.

Amelia's cake, by the way, was Daniel Tiger's face.

One of the biggest drawbacks about living in Ohio is that three months out of every year playing outdoors is pretty much not an option. It's cold, and when it's not snowy, it's slushy. Even if it's neither snowy nor slushy, it's still too cold to spend more time outside than it takes to lean out my door and collect the mail. We might as well be hibernating. In fact, I wish we could. Unfortunately, there are these things called jobs that people have in order to make money to pay for those things called bills. I don't work, but I still have these two little monsters to care fore every day.

Those two little monsters, by the way, love to play outside. When it's warm, I pop them in the double stroller and walk them either a mile to the park or a mile to the library, depending on my mood. The park is where it's at, though. They love to climb and swing and run around like lunatics. Especially now for the Usurper who only learned to run around like a lunatic about a month ago. Unfortunately, all that energy gets locked indoors during the winter. We can't go to the park because of the above-mentioned cold, and snow, and forget it.

My husband and I have talked about the significant lack of indoor activities for kids, particularly playgrounds. The nearest thing is the McDonald's Play Places, and those are steadily becoming extinct, I think mostly due to the increase in stupid people throwing lawsuits at the company because of their own stupidity. You know, like the coffee. But we (my husband and I) have talked about how awesome it would be to start our own business, if we could afford the start-up costs and get a loan, and build indoor playgrounds, because to the best of our knowledge they do not exist.

This brings me full circle back around to my moms' group conversation. Did you know that indoor playgrounds DO exist!? Neither did I! I knew about indoor giant inflatable parks, thanks to my friend Jen. But straight up playgrounds? No idea! Until this morning.

AMAZONE

To make the Usurper's first birthday special for just the four of us, we took the girls to this awesome indoor jungle gym and party center known as Rockin' Robin's Amazone, in Medina. Mucho many supreme thanks to my friend Susan for informing me of its existence and dropping me a link. This place . . . is AMAZing! I think it's also the only place within a hundred mile radius that houses an entire video game arcade, the likes of which I haven't seen since Aladdin's Arcade in the mall, ages ago. They also have laser tag! It's like a freaking nerdling paradise up in there! And the girls LOVED it. And it only cost us $12 for as much time climbing and sliding as we wanted!

The prices are equally AMAZing! They have a large selection of snacks, pizza, and beverages to choose from at wonderfully reasonable prices. There are also a handful of special bundles and packs that include tokens to use in the video arcade. They had quite a fun selection of merchandise, too. I think my only complaint there is that they were lacking in baby and toddler apparel. I totally would have bought both my girls a shirt if they had them in their size.

She's never going to remember this day, so I took lots of pictures to show her. I know she had a lot of fun, though. Her sister did, too! On the way home, we stopped by Toys R Us to spend the gift card her Papou gave her for her birthday. Based on the things she didn't get, we finally made our decision to blow some money on a toy she's going to outgrow and got her this Fisher Price Laugh and Learn Crawl Around Car:

She likes this toy so much that every time her sister gets in it, she actually yells at her. Serious, flat out, screaming. I'm sure if she knew the words she'd be saying, "Lilah get out of my car!" And she has this adorable way of scrunching up her face, squeezing her eyes shut, and squealing in outrage. I need to get that on video some time.

Her second favorite toy was a gift from her Uncle Benji and Aunt Sarah: the Fisher Price Laugh and Learn Song and Story Chair. Fisher Price has seriously been pumping out some really awesome toys lately. They aren't obnoxious noise-makers either. Except for the fact that this chair went all possessed this morning at about 6:00 AM, waking me up and forcing me to grumpily crawl out to the living room to shut it off. Virgil, our cat, was sitting on the back of the love seat staring at it in fascination, because it was just playing itself.

They really hit it out of the park with this toy, though. Two of Amelia's favorite things are sitting on chairs her size and books. She might not be able to actually read them yet, but she just loves flipping through the pages of every single tome she can get her grubby little hands on. And it's for that reason that we concluded that she has been upgraded from a Level 0 Human to a Level 1 Wizard. All I have to do now is put together her character sheet and build her a spell book. My fellow D&D nerds will know what I'm talking about, and yes I do seriously plan on putting together a toy spell book for her.

This leads me to the next best ingenious idea my husband and I came up with as a potential starter business. Starting with our own children, we plan on making them character sheets to update every time they have a birthday. Next year on this day, Amelia will level up to 2, and we'll edit accordingly. Lilah is already a level 3 something-or-other. We think bard because she's in ballet and loves to sing, horribly off-key, just like her mommy. Though that's an awfully cruel class to stick my kid with. Poor bards. Always with the negative reputations.

Over all, I'd say Amelia's first birthday party weekend was a roaring success. We had a larger domicile in which to accommodate all our guests. People enjoyed themselves immensely, as far as I could tell. The cake was delicious, though the Usurper didn't get to eat any. The food was spectacular, thanks to my wonderful husband. The presents were just perfect. Her big sister's unpredictable, unexplained emotional meltdown aside, we had a good weekend. And I'm awfully proud of myself for this little last minute corny idea that I had and put together.

And I'm grateful to everyone who put up with my craziness.

The Invasion of the Usurper

"No really. I come in PEACE!"

My first experiences with pregnancy tests were mystifying. I remember buying a two pack so that we could be absolutely sure I was pregnant. We bought the cheapest test we could find because our budget was too low to afford the top-of-the-line name brands. I would say that in retrospect we should have just shelled out the extra bucks, but when I get to the story of my second-born it's clear that price doesn't really matter.

I made my appointment with my first ever official OBGYN (Paragon) when I was pregnant with Lilah, and went in assuming that they would give me a pregnancy test in the office to make absolutely sure. Imagine my surprise when I was simply led into a comfortable office and given a welcome packet and some papers to sign. I was told "Congratulations!" and sent on my way. I asked the midwife about the pregnancy test, and she said, "Wait. You don't know if you're pregnant?" So I had to explain to her....

No. We were not 100% certain we were pregnant. I actually ended up taking three tests to make sure. Every single one I took came up with the same result. The lines were faded and it didn't look as if even the test could tell for sure one way or another. So I had hoped that they would confirm my suspicions at this office visit. She scheduled me for an ultrasound the following day and it turned out I was right. That's a relief for someone who's always had a regular and predictable menstrual cycle. I was starting to suspect I was having one of those phantom pregnancies, because I wanted a baby so bad.

Fast forward nine months from that point and you've already read that story.

This story is not about Lilah, but pregnancy tests are how we open the tale. Exactly one year, five months, and twenty-three days after Your Future Overlord came into this world, I walked half a mile up the road to our local Dollar Store to pick up another pregnancy test, which cost me one whole dollar, while my husband as at work, to confirm whether or not my suspicions were true.

One test.

One dollar.

One undeniably positive result.

I did not expect to have much luck in getting a result as unmistakably clear as the one you see above. Given my previous experience with trying to determine whether or not I was right about my first-born, I was absolutely stunned when this happened. So stunned that I took a picture! This test should have come with a Genie inside to tell me just how certain it was that things were going as planned. Minus dejected Aladdin wandering away. I was so thrilled that it took every ounce of willpower in my being not to text my husband right away to tell him what I had done. I'm proud of myself for managing to wait until he got home from work. It probably helped that I had a demanding toddler keeping me distracted.

We announced we were expecting #2 at a Father's Day brunch at my sister-in-law's house that year. I didn't do a very good job of hiding it. I'm sure I was glowing so brightly the news could be seen from outer space. I said to my sister-in-law, "We have an announcement to make." To which she said, "What. You're pregnant?" Ding! Her mother-in-law said pretty much the same thing. So much for surprising everybody! Haha! We saved our worldwide Facebook announcement until after we got our first ultrasound.

Jamie and I had talked about having kids since before we even got married. That was one of the selling points that sealed the deal of spending our own personal eternities together. We both wanted children. Before we ever started having any, I knew I wanted three. He tells me he's happy with however many I want to give him, even a hundred, even if we adopt. 

Now that I have two I've been rethinking my original plan. One child is a piece of cake. Two? Two is hard.

If I had known then what I know now... I probably would have still gone through with it. 

During our discussions, we talked about how close we wanted our kids to be in age. I remember a young man I knew more than a decade back, before I met my husband, telling me about how he and his brother grew up to be the best of friends. They were only a year apart in age. Such a testimony from someone I knew, though not exactly well, left an impact. I carried that concept with me up until the day Jamie and I decided we were ready to have children of our own.

So we planned to have our second one close enough in age to Lilah so that they could be friends. Not so close that it would be painful for me, though. One cesarean had been pretty rough. I wanted to try to go for a VBAC with the second one, having felt like the complications Lilah gave me cheated me out of that experience. I was still at an improved, healthier weight from my first pregnancy, having only lost twenty pounds of my ending pregnancy weight a year and a half after her birth. While mentally I was totally prepared for it, and the doctors assured me that I was a prime candidate for vaginal delivery, fate decided otherwise yet again.

Whereas my firstborn came to us three weeks earlier than expected, our second child came one week late.

On Superbowl Sunday.

At my 40 week well-visit, the doctor told me that if she didn't come by the weekend then they would schedule a c-section for me for the following week. Doctors apparently don't like to let babies gestate longer than 41 weeks. I guess that can cause unwanted complications if they cook that long. Baby #2 must have heard her eviction notice, because she started to put in some effort that morning starting at 7:00 AM.

That was the first time I ever felt contractions. They weren't strong, but I felt them. Just like they're described on just about every single website on the great wide Intrawebz. I kept a log, timing them. How long they lasted. When each one started. Until about 3:00 when I called the nurse's hotline at the hospital, because my doctor's office was, of course, closed. They told me to come in. I did.

Get this monster out of me!

I was 41 weeks pregnant. Fat. Tired. My feet had been swollen for practically a month. I could hardly breathe walking down the stairs. I was done and ready to get that baby out of me! She was making an admirable effort, but not enough. My preliminary exam showed that I was not even dilated a single centimeter! Still, the doctors wanted to admit me and hook me up with some pitocin, because she had been in there for so long. It was time, they said, and I wholeheartedly agreed.

We ended up watching the Super Bowl in the birthing room, because what else was there to do! We were more prepared this time around. I had my bag packed a month ahead of time. We brought my husband's laptop and availed ourselves of the free hospital Wi-Fi. I walked laps around the maternity triage. An hour later, they checked me and were happy to report that I was one centimeter dilated. I was starting to feel stronger contractions. I rolled around on the yoga ball. I whimpered and whined. Another hour later, they checked me again. Still only one centimeter.

Eventually the doctor came in. He looked concerned. He told me that generally they liked to see a progression of one centimeter every hour after the administration of pitocin. That wasn't happening with me. He said if I didn't start progressing soon he was going to have to do a c-section, that the longer this went on the greater the risks became.

I was tired. I finally asked for some drugs. They gave me morphine. When the doctor came back in some time around 10:30, he still looked concerned. I was ready to get that baby out of me! So I gave in, and at 10:54 PM on February 3, 2013, the Usurper to the throne of Your Future Overlord came into this world.

She's been a daddy's girl ever since.

We named her Amelia, because Doctor Who. Some time years before, after Lilah was born, I remember seeing a name rather frequently in magazines and online articles. So we chose that as her middle name simply because I liked the look of it. Also: Charmed. Thus was the Usurper dubbed with the name Amelia Paige.

Her sister is solely responsible for the majority of all the other nicknames we've called the little monster since. Sometimes she's Mia. Other times she's Millie. Don't ask me why, but I find myself referring to her as Bugbear now and then, too. Probably because she's grown into a little, unstoppable, bulldozing toddler. Did I mention her first birthday is less than a month away already!?

At 8 pounds, 8 ounces and measuring 20.5 inches long, she came out a big bigger than her sister. I imagine a world when as teenagers they'll be sharing clothes from the same closet. Hopefully peacefully. Without arguing. If the Usurper keeps growing the way she has been, that future may be closer than I initially predicted! This time last year, her sister was wearing the same size clothes she is now!

Did I mention that raising two kids is hard? You know . . . it's easy to forget that when there are moments like these:

"Bye, Ma! We're goin' to the moon!"

Your Future Overlord

I want YOU to be my Mommy.

You're going to hate me right off the bat when I tell you that all of my pregnancies were planned. The first one ended in a miscarriage at seven weeks. It was really a nothing thing to me. A mild disappointment and nothing more. They told me the "remains" were going to be buried in a group plot on the hospital grounds, and I could visit any time I wanted, but I was a little weirded out by the concept that it was anything more than unfinished cells. I moved on without any grief period whatsoever.

My second pregnancy went full term, though. We conceived right away, just like we did the first time. I said to my husband, "Let's make a baby." We did what needing doing, this one stuck, and a baby was born from it nine months later. A baby I was referring to as Your Future Overlord long before she came into this world.

The joke is that I didn't want to be the mother of a future President. Why be President of the United States when you can be Master of the Entire World? I wanted my child to aspire to greater things, to be a conqueror of nations! Mostly I was just influenced by video games and giggled at the idea of any child of mine bossing around a bunch of hapless minions.

My friends in the freeform role-playing community took it to mean that I intended on training my spawn to duel, and they hoped to see him or her in a decade or so on the Rings of Honor site doing a better job of gaining rank than I ever have. I do not discount this possibility.

I'm sure all of that goes right over the heads of more than half of you, which is why I provided some links. You're welcome.

So anyway!

With our first child, my husband and I agreed not to learn the gender until it was born. This was in part due to the fact that if it should turn out to be a girl I did not want to be overwhelmed with an onslaught of pink. I hate(d) pink with the passion of a thousand fiery suns. I wanted to keep it out of my house for as long as humanly possible. Mostly we just wanted to experience the surprise of being told "It's a boy!" or "It's a girl!" at the hospital.

Though we've already established I'm not a religious person, I am not entirely averse to the idea that the supernatural exists. (I do believe in fairies! I do! I do!) I've always felt there was something more out there, and frankly the idea that humanity is the superior species is too arrogant for my blood. But I believe in the power of belief, because I'm pretty sure everybody (my mother-in-law especially) cursed me by insisting it was going to be a girl.

Nobody bought me girl things, though. I insisted on gender neutral everything. Even if I did know ahead of time it was a girl, I wasn't going to buy pink butterfly bedding and pink polka-dot high chairs and car seats and.... No. Just no. I didn't want to drown in the pink and frilly that is much to my dismay automatically associated with my gender. I avoided all of that for at least the first three months of my firstborn's existence. 

But I may be getting ahead of myself.

My first full term pregnancy was not perfect. I weighed merely 93 pounds when it all began. I was still recovering from years of assault on my body from bad teeth filling me with poisons. The skinny thing with the baby bump in the picture above is not a woman I was really proud to be. I was even a smoker, and didn't manage to give it up until I was 5 months along. Sorry, kiddo.

There were three concerns with my pregnancy. The first was, of course, that I needed to quit smoking. The second was that I needed to put on more weight. No lie. My midwife put me on a milkshake-a-day diet, which I found impossible to keep up on. The third concern was that my baby had a single artery umbilical cord. None of these were actually very life-threatening to me or the baby, but there loomed the possibility that birth defects could occur. None did. And I don't think any of these factored into what really happened.

So my due date was set to October 27th, 2010. I kept joking that I hoped the baby camped in there a little longer so I could have a Halloween baby, because that would be cool. Come that final month, however, I was just ready to be done with it all, because I had ballooned out to add half my original body weight, my feet were swollen, I wasn't sleeping comfortably at all, and my ribs felt bruised constantly up under the left side. Turns out her head was wedged up there all that time, because...

On October 4th, 2010, we had another ultrasound done. Due to the condition of the single artery umbilical cord, and my size, and this being my first pregnancy, the doctors ordered me to have a lot of ultrasounds to keep up on the baby and make sure it was developing all right. On that day, the ultrasound tech made a concerning discovery. She said, "I can't see anything. There's no amnio in there to cushion anything." All we saw on the screen was a mass of gray, which was odd. So she sent the results to the doctor and had us wait in the lobby.

We waited . . . and waited . . . and waited.

Patients were called back. Those same patients left. Hours and hours of playing solitaire on my smartphone. Waiting. Until we realized that we were the last people in the waiting room, the sky was getting dark outside, they were turning down the lights, and it occurred to us that we had been waiting there until closing time. Finally, someone fetched us and took us back to talk to a doctor.

The doctor explained the situation to me, but I don't remember much besides him saying, "So. How would you feel about having that baby today?"

The baby wasn't due for another three weeks! It had never even occurred to me that babies could be born early! I had been hoping for a natural birth! I wasn't ready! We didn't even have a mattress for the crib! Or a car seat! Our baby shower had only been a few weeks ago! I didn't have a hospital bag packed! I was starting to hyperventilate! Not really, but it was a near thing.

I said to the doctor, "Well if you think it's best." He said he did and then got on the phone to call the hospital to set up a cesarean for me. They wanted to get the baby out of me, because my mysteriously vanishing amniotic fluid was not good. It was weird. I hadn't been leaking anything. You'd think I would've noticed something like that.

So the doctor called the hospital, and I remember that conversation rather clearly. Maybe not the precise words, but the gist I recall well. He bargained with the surgeon for a few minutes. Apparently there had been thirteen c-sections scheduled for the following day! 13! The day after wasn't good enough, he said. I needed this done tonight or tomorrow. Since she was so full up tomorrow, the surgeon agreed to do my surgery that night.

My husband and I went home to pack our overnight bag in a panic. I'm sure I didn't have half as much in it as the books and websites suggest. But I also know I put in twice as much of the things I didn't actually need, like a baby naming book.

We already had names picked out. I don't know why I took the book, other than a panicked moment of, "What if I change my mind at the last minute!?" That didn't happen, though. The truth is I was dead set on the name for a boy. Still am, if we ever have one. The girl name I wasn't too sure about, though, until they put her in my arms for the first time. I smiled, looked at her teeny little face, and the first thing I said to her was, "Hello, Lilah."

Her first name came to me in a dream. I think I was only six months along at the time. All through the pregnancy I had been scouring the Internet and books in search of the perfect name. I had my heart set on an R name for a while, but couldn't find the right one. Nothing went well with the middle name we had already decided upon: Jayne. Yes, she is named after Jayne Cobb from Firefly. My favorite character from my favorite (unfortunately cancelled) television series of all time. 

Middle name, check. First name? Um.

So I had this dream that took place in my step-mother's house. The baby was born. For some reason Jamie and I were staying there. That's odd when you understand that I haven't spoken to my step-mother for several years, since my father died. She wasn't even invited to our wedding. But I guess my pregnant dreams wanted me to feel like I was home, somewhere, and built this dreamscape around her house. 

My eldest brother Mike was in this dream, and I left him in the living room with the baby while I stepped out to talk to my husband, who was smoking on the front porch. I said, in my dream, "What do you think of the name Lilah?" He said, "I like it."

This same scene played itself out the following day on the back patio of our loft bedroom apartment. Except it was day time and my brother Mike was not present. Oh. And the baby was not born yet. In my dream, apparently I'd had the baby and still hadn't decided on her name. I had some pretty wicked pregnancy dreams before she came into this world. Like the one in which I gave birth to quadruplets, and they were all girls!

Thank goodness I only had the one for real!

Your Future Overlord was born October 4, 2010 at 9:06 PM. She weighed 5 pounds, 13 ounces, and measured only 17 1/2 inches in length. She was born three weeks early, and was so tiny that her head literally fit in the palm of her daddy's hand.

We were given the biggest room in the maternity room. It came fully equipped with a chair and a sofa, with enough room for a dance party to take place in. The maternity room was so quiet that first night. The following morning, all the spare rooms filled up fast! Thirteen scheduled c-sections! Ricky Lake really wasn't joking when she made that movie.