"Oh, hi baby."

Delivery of my first child bordered on nightmare. The second time around, I was determined to do things differently.

The Portmanteau is pleased to welcome back Carrie Radford as a guest essayist. Carrie wrote a hilarious piece in 2023 about motherhood (Should I bring Wine to Playdate?). She’s writing for us again in what is quickly becoming the Annual Essay on Motherhood. Enjoy.

I’m not naturally a kid person, and I was never really sure if I wanted children.

I was an au pair briefly in my 20s for a French couple in London. The children, aged 6 and 8, were spoiled rotten and loved taking advantage of my naive sincerity. They made fun of me in French, which I didn’t speak, and constantly caused trouble then vehemently denied any wrongdoing. I felt hopeless as they looked at one another, laughing. “Why would anyone ever want to have kids?” I thought to myself. 

So it was as much a surprise to my husband as it was to me when I woke up one day in our small one bedroom apartment off DuPont Circle in Washington, D.C., during the midst of the pandemic and said, “I think we should start trying.” That was nearly four years ago. And in November 2023, I gave birth to my second daughter.

It’s surprising that I had a second child at all, given that my first delivery was…less than optimal. And when I say less than optimal I mean it was a nightmare. Margot, my first daughter, was a breech from 32 weeks on. We tried everything to get her to flip. I mean everything. Hanging upside down. Ben held a flame near my toes. The doctor tried to manually, and very painfully, flip her. She, however, was stubborn and refused to comply with our acrobatic, pyrotechnic demands. So we scheduled a C-section. Those last few weeks were hard, but it was the actual birth that merits nightmare status.

For whatever reason, the spinal tap failed. I was in excruciating pain, and when my screams tipped them off to what was going on the anesthesiologist pumped me full of a cocktail of drugs, including the hallucinogenic ketamine.

Now, I’m a very anxious person. The idea of taking an Uber to the airport while trying to wrangle my daughters makes me break down and cry. Even something as simple as running late for work basically induces a panic attack in me. So hallucinations while giving birth is probably my worst nightmare. But there I was on the operating table in extreme pain while people dug around inside my body. And then I started seeing things. Colors began exploding all over the room like in those kaleidoscopes you play with as a child.