Caroline Rhea Rants About Mommyhood
Toss the Parenting magazines aside. Nothing is perfect or even close to it after giving birth and new parents want to read REAL stories to empathize with right? Of course right! Finally a fun compilation of hilarious and true parenting stories is available in one book entitled, Afterbirth: Stories You Won’t Read in a Parenting Magazine ($16, amazon.com). To celebrate the release, a gaggle of new celebrity parents congregated at the Triad Theatre on the Upper West Side in Manhattan to share their stories – and among them was Caroline Rhea, who will also be at the next “Afterbirth” show on May 6 at 7:30pm, also at the Triad Theatre (158 West 72nd St., 212-362-2590) .
“I love all of it. I cry a lot,” she told CelebrityEverything.com in an exclusive interview about being a new mom to Ava Rhea Economopolos. “The first thing in the morning, she wakes up and smiles and has the hugest smile on her face. I’m so grateful for every second. Today she had a poopie and it was in her neck and not in her pants, but I was still fascinated by her!”
She even loves the breastfeeding. “I understand Salma Hayek. It is the most bonding moment. You feel like the neediest person alive because you are staring the person you’re feeding in the eye like, ‘Do you like this? Is it good?’ She puts her little tiny had over my giant boob like, ‘This is all mine.’ And when I go out now, all I want to do is go home.”
But breastfeeding wasn’t always this fun for Rhea. Below is her story.
RHEA: I accept it all – making out with Derek in my backyard in 1978 and ruining my brand new painter pants with grass stains. I accept that we thought we were going steady, except he made out with Dorothy Hamill-haircutted Susan the following weekend and broke my heart. I accept my camp counselor Rob married the next f**king woman he met and couldn’t wait, I accept Melanie getting the acting prize in my school, even though my mother screamed “Recount!” I accept that I passed on auditioning for “Everybody Loves Raymond” because I didn’t think the script was that good. I accept that every choice I made – every right turn not left, every show that failed or was cancelled were the greatest days of my life. I accept that my father, OBGYN who liked Star Wars and liked to be called OBGY-nobie delivered 30,000 babies and died too early from lung cancer, and 32 days later at 43 after unsuccessfully undergoing fertility, my boyfriend and I conceived naturally with God. I accept there are miracles. And I accept the fact that if I did one different thing on Oct. 20th, my long-awaited angel would not have arrived – Ava Rhea Economopolos – and I have explained to her already that the Economopolos is silent.
Ava was born Oct. 20th, 2008. On Oct. 19th I was on the couch, 14 years pregnant, looking like a Volkswagen Bug up sideways. My mother says all the movie stars are pregnant; I have movie star feet – Schrek. I weigh well over Oprah. The baby is ready, waving her hand out of the side of me as if hailing a taxi to go to the hospital. We are ready to meet each other. I have seen her on so many high-def 3D sonograms, I have started my own website – MyTubes.com. I have gestational diabetes which I’ve controlled by denying myself all food with flavor, except one carb every other Tuesday. For the first time in my life, I’ve lost 12 pounds and I’m pregnant! I yell at my mother and my boyfriend, “I am not breastfeeding! It’s disgusting! It’s my body don’t you dare tell me what to do with it!”
March 4th – I can’t stop breastfeeding – I love her, I love breastfeeding and I love Salma Hayek. I had a C-section, thank God, which came with an epidural, which I really wish had been given to me in month seven. Lori, the nurse that looks like a porn star, hands me baby asking, “Are you going to breastfeed?” And looks at me like, “Do you love your baby? Do you want your baby to have a low FICA score? Then you’re going to breastfeed.” It’s the most political choice you’ll ever make, but what they don’t tell you is that it’s the most painful thing on earth and that’s what the epidural is really for. My little beautiful angel has a row of tiny shark teeth. They ask you, “Has your milk come in? Sometimes you can’t tell.” I say, “Really? I have pontoons of milk on my old body – I’m a hovercraft of dairy! I float! It’s come in!”
It is excruciatingly painful. My mother tells me, “You don’t have to do this. I never did and you turned out fine.” I immediately flash to a session at my shrink’s as a teen, telling him I have low self-esteem and then walked through his screen door.”
The nurse is trying not to be judgmental saying, “Shall I bring the baby to you to feed or would you like to feed her FORMULAAAAAAAA???” I’m seeing pitchforks and hearing satanic music saying, “I’ll feed her! I’ll feed her!” So two weeks later, Ava has lost too much weight, and she’s not latching. So I hire a lactation consultant, which is a completely fictional made up job. Rhoda Rosenberg from Brooklyn arrives at my house. She has long hair and is in a skirt you know she’s had since the 70s. She bursts in the door, “I’m sorry I’m late! Let’s start. Why don’t you take off your shirt?” OK. So there’s Rhoda, my boyfriend and my baby nurse and we’re all watching my boobs. Rhoda says, “It’s the baby’s fault! Pinch her cheeks and rub her jaw. Do you mind, I’m just going to adjust the baby’s lips onto your breast?” Um, uh! It’s like at the airport when they say, “Do you mind if I feel under your bra and all the way around?” Um yes! Rhoda says, “Your nipples are cracked and bleeding. I think you should breastfeed naked.” Um, really? That will cut down on the neighbors looking in. Why would I breastfeed naked? “Oh, the baby should be naked.” Then she pulls out this My Breast Friend – and I feel like a has-been waitress asking, “Want some cigars?” And then she smashed Ava’s little face onto my boob. And then Ava spoke for the first time and said, “You know, I’m really not that hungry. I want the lady from Brooklyn to leave.” Eventually we laid on the bed, and she latched on! Now my boobs are voice-activated; she cries and I let down [milk]. Unfortunately my neighbor has a 3-week old and after I feed Ava and walk down the hall and hear it crying, I’m like, “NO!!” I have to get headphones for my boobs.
Then Rhoda calls and says, “I was thinking about your nipples. You should soak them in shot glasses in salt water.” I ask, “Do you see my boobs? They are a size 50G – I don’t need shot glasses – how about a vase?”
Now people ask me, “What are you doing now?” I tell them, ‘I just had a baby.’ And they say, ‘What else?’ I tell them I just opened a small restaurant and I only have one customer but she eats there eight times a day and loves it. I tell them, “Everything is homemade, and even if she vomits, she comes back the next day.”
