My Life Through The Eyes of my Pelvic Floor (So… My P*ssy?)

Welcome to It's Open with Alana Glazer. This week's episode is going to be so low. I'm a little nervous about it because I'm going to be talking about my life through the eyes of my pelvic floor, which some would argue is my pussy. Listen, I'm coming today exactly as I am, no makeup, just I don't know as I was before I filmed, I didn't change, I'm just here as I am and I wonder if you'll accept me. We'll see, come on in It's Open. I want to talk about my body today because women's bodies and women's health is purposely obscured such that women have a somewhat secret language of whispering to each other about what is happening to our bodies, what has happened, warning signs, because so many doctors don't know about women's bodies. So I have had a long journey of awareness with my pelvic floor which started at age four. When I was four years old is when I remember starting to have chronic pelvic floor pain, chronic. I would have spells that were very painful, that felt, that were like spasms. I would hold tension in my pelvic floor and it was very painful, it was hard and painful to like pee, I couldn't relax. What also happened at age four is my house was robbed, my house was robbed and like family, jewelry was stolen, this is one of two times that my house was robbed in my life. So that has been something that I've connected to this pain starting, feeling invaded and scared and holding my tension in my pelvic floor and it was kind of became a secret, a sad and scary secret I kept that I felt like was something that was my fault, that was wrong with me. Crazy, crazy. You know this is a new way of looking at it, of saying it out loud to an audience. Wow, so it's hitting me differently too. So I kept this secret from age four until I was seven. It was painful, I couldn't describe it, I didn't have the words for it. At age seven, I was in gymnastics competitions when I was a kid. Whatever, I was a gymnast and also like in the 90s that shit was, I guess it still is like a money making scheme in a truly abusive gymnastics context that was very much that kind of like mill, you know what I mean? I also did dance competitions later which was much more of a healthy situation. But the gymnastics people was this family owned gymnastics farm essentially and they're like, you're going to make it to the Olympics and I was like, well then I better be ready for the Olympics. And I'm a person who's like creative and ambitious and puts pressure on myself and by the time this comes out, I will have turned 39 years in and finally I'm like, I can sort these things out. So it makes sense as I look back on my life like feeling like, oh, I want to be seen, I want like a container to organize my ambition and whatever gymnastics talent I had, but it was a container for me to put my energy into, put my focus into and to take myself seriously. And yeah, that was like such a 90s thing and some like, you know, promise of a ticket to somewhere. And I was very, you know, wanting that to be, I don't know, wanting to be successful in a way. And at this point it was that. And I didn't tell my parents, I didn't tell my parents there was like one time when, oh my gosh, this, you know, I was doing these like burpees and they made me do 100 and I was a little kid and I was like, I was sobbing after and like, you know, I tried to like hide it from my mom. And it was like, it was a really, it was, I tried to hide it from my parents. In fact, I ended up breaking my elbow because this teacher Barbara refused to spot me. I was like, I can't do this move. And she was like, do it, you can do it. If you don't do it yourself, you know, and I like literally took a like, somewhat of a like suicidal dive to the from the high bars to the ground and broke my elbow. And I did it to be like, this will be my ticket out of here. So dark and sad. But I, I couldn't otherwise articulate to my parents like, this is abusive. It doesn't feel right. It's not fun. There was like, some like sick pressure that I was putting on myself that I took a long time for me to sort out. And I remember, you know, when my elbow was broken, my little yellow and purple cast yellow was my favorite color, purple was Dreya, my best friend's color for favorite color. And I had this cast, like I was in the bath and I had the cast, like on the bath edge. And my mom, like from the outside of the bathroom, was like, Elana. And I was like, yeah, and she was like, if you don't want to do gymnastics anymore, you don't have to. And I was like, yeah, I don't. And she was like, okay. And I like remember her like walking away and having this moment in the bath to myself being like, yes, yes. Oh, I don't have to do fucking gymnastics anymore with these crazy ladies, this just this crazy family of like sadistic sisters. And you know, my family was like, close and or relatively close, I think we're closer now and have a much more deeper and healthier understanding of what closeness truly is. But like they were lovely, my parents were so sweet and accepted us in all different kinds of ways that I didn't see my peers finding acceptance in their families. And yet still like the culture was so oppressive. And I was like a precocious kid. Part of me, you know, thinks like, wouldn't I like step up and say this to my parents, but like I, there was something very tight about me, which is like, was held in my pelvic floor, this tension. So all this to say, so now you're getting a sense of like the anxious and should be told depressed kid that I was, but from ages four to seven, I'm not telling my parents about this pain that's consistently showing up in as episodes. And then now you really have this example with, with gymnastics, like, I'm like, no, I'd love to go. And it's like, you would like in the evenings after school, you don't want to just hang at home, like, so fucking strange. And actually, my mom was a part time telemarketer. Maybe she would like drop me off on the way to gymnastics, because it was in the same like, lonely, mini mall complex of like businesses. Oh my God. I wonder, I have to ask her if that was like my way to feel like close by to my mom who was working at night. Like, Oh, she drops me off. She's over there and she'll pick me up on her way out. Oh my God. So we're driving my God, the fucking mischievous of my parents who were like, there was genuinely a middle class at this time, my parents were like, genuinely middle class, struggling, but not certainly not destitute and had their parents as a support system if, if the bottom fell out. But, you know, genuinely middle class, spending our money on gymnastics gear and to enter competitions, it's a scam. What a fucking scam. And unless I don't know, unless you make it to the Olympics, like, what, where the fuck do you draw the line? Anyway, so we're, we're going to this meet this gymnastics meet upstate. And we're, my brother came to, so it's like my whole family and Elliot's older than me, just like biting his time while his little sister just gymnastics meets crazy. Anyway, so we're at a rest stop. And I was on the toilet in the bathroom in the public restroom and my mom was outside and I like just needed a second to like, relax my pelvic floor. And I felt like self conscious, like my mom's waiting for me. You know, I could say I'm pooping, but like, I certainly couldn't lie. I couldn't lie then I can't lie now. And I was like, I was like, I just need a second. And I forget the way in which I told her the exact words I used, but I was like, actually, like it hurts. And I just am taking a second. So, okay, we wash our hands, we go back in the car. And I like, I forget, I forget, I remember one word I'll tell you in a second, but I forget exactly how I, I wonder, man, I wonder what it was that I said, like, I actually have pain, it hurts in my vagina, like I forget, I wonder what it was. But I was like, it feels and I remember and I was telling both my parents and Elliot's in the car too. And I was like, it feels like salty. This is the word I remember using salty because it's stung. And it was making me think of salt in a wound. And in fact, I'm thinking of my vagina as a womb at this time, and inaccurately thinking of my pelvic floor as my vagina. But you know, I thought it was only my vagina and I thought it was and that was the word I use. And something else I'm like realizing right now in like development is I didn't masturbate as a kid. I was very like afraid and ashamed. I thought I was in trouble if I were going to touch my body in a pleasurable way or find pleasure or have a relationship with myself in that way. It felt strange and very far away and very dark and shadowy in my mind, like, oh my God, that's something so shameful, I can barely even think about it. You know, because I have friends, I'm remembering a childhood friend who as grownups, or at least, you know, college age kids or just after college, she was telling me she started masturbating at five and knew these feelings. And I was like, like, this is, you know, this is like so a lot of Glaser and potentially very a lot of Wexler, like, I see that as a damn gift. I think it is gifted when people can own their pleasure at a young age and access it. But, you know, sexual development starts at a young age. And I think a lot of my chronic pain was stemming from a fear and shame about what is a natural sexual development. So I remember saying salty and like, man, fucking 90s ass suburbs sitting in the car with our like stupid haircuts. So that was the first time that I told them about this pain. And I think after that, I was perhaps telling them more as pain was occurring, because at age eight, we finally told my doctor, my pediatrician, Oh, God bless this sweet old Jewish man who had no fucking clue what to do and prescribed yeast infection, cream, which I think was a generally numbing situation, and was also like, not appropriate, not not that he was inappropriate. He was absolutely uneducated, ignorant, and doing bad doctoring at this time, not like malpractice. I'm just like, he did not know it was if I was eight years old, it was 1995 and he didn't know what the fuck did not know what the fuck. And then I just kind of managed until eight years old, I think I managed until I was like 15, which is the next stop at a doctor's office. Hi, hi, real quick, just jumping into your regularly scheduled programming to show you some new shoes and offer you an incredible discount. Okay, so let's start with these sigh sandals. They're from Stuart Whiteman's new collection in black. 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I grew up on Long Island. There's like, uh, you know, Queens is excuse me, Brooklyn is Kings County, then there's Queens County. These, these are part of what is Long Island, but they're, you know, municipally New York city, then there's Nassau County, which is, um, diverse, but violently segregated, but has a lot of Jews where I grew up. Uh, Suffolk County is like, it was always conservative, was never Jewish, um, was like German potato farmers, like white, white, OG white. And then I grew up with like Italian and Irish kids as well. I would say that was the, the leading culture, but it was just like very, very white and segregated group with people who are not white also, but socially and culturally and narratively, they were not centered in my middle school and high school experience, um, in Smithtown on Long Island, which was conservative than it was. I mean, it's so Trumpy, but it like grew, it went Q Anon. We're talking Q Anon up in the library, but this is just the loudest voice people, Long Islanders, where I grew up when shit like this has happened. People have stepped up and been like, no, you put the like queer family books back on the shelves in the library. Like it's, it's kind of amazing. Um, all this to say what I'm remembering is Kelly, poor Kelly being like this cool girl who would like play the bimbo as a safety measure and defense, a defense mechanism, but like she was so, I wonder where she's at now, but Kelly, um, Kelly, uh, who was like, I remember hers being like, yeah, I wake up at like five AM to put on my makeup, like a literal child waking up at five AM and school is at seven 13 cruelly waking up at five AM to start applying her walls of makeup, like, like paint on a wall, you know, and that, that was like middle school to me. And like, I was such a nerd. I am still best friends with my best friends from this time. I'm still best friend. They're my best friends from kindergarten, Andrew, Eden, Daniel, Jenna, Andrea, Cara, like these are still my best friends. And especially Andrew, Eden, Daniel and I were like queer kids who like did not, you know, like Eden and I were like kind of trying makeup, but it was like, it's just so, so crazy to think about, you know, and like I had my like boobs started coming in at like fourth grade. My mom was like scared of my body and, you know, scared of my body, which is like, you know, I was scared of my body. And this was probably felt right, like in the home. And my brother's four years older than me. So I never overlapped with him other than first and fifth grade, but never in middle school. And we didn't overlap in high school, but Eli is gay and he was, you know, dealing with this himself. And then also we were one of the very few Jewish families. And there was much racism, much anti semitism, much homophobia and like what people knew of trans existence was transphobia. This is the culture that I grew up in, very like uncomfortable and like no space now at 39 looking back and being like those years from age eight when I was at my doctor's office to age 15, like each eight is like third grade, like, I don't know, it's just like, there's this like shadow, like where I just, I can't see through it. I have these feelings of like, Oh God, in my middle school, dude, I graduated high school with 700 kids. My school had 3000 children moving like cattle shoulder to fucking shoulder. You get four minutes to run from one side of the building to the other side of the fucking building. There's no space to know who you are, you know, and like, so all this to say I was pelvic floor wise, I was having a lot of pain regularly, and it was debilitating. And I would, I would go to the bathroom and I was, I would get so hot in class. If I had pelvic floor pain, and I was like, you know, to my own body, I'd be like, girl, fuck, you know, just this harshness of like, there it goes again, bitch, you know, like to myself, as though I could a, control this, be as though, you know, this harshness itself is where the pain is coming from inside of me, you know, I would get so hot in my cheeks, and then go to the, you know, one of the three stalls in the nearest public restroom that might as well have been, you know, at a gas station. It was just like, just such a big old fucking gen pop mill of bodies, my middle school and high school. And I would just like sit on the toilet and be like, ow, fucking, ow, ow. And I, it was spasms that was happening, spasms, your rethral spasms I later came to learn, which we'll catch up with this, but it was UTI like symptoms with no UTI. It was so painful. I had no, I was a totally helpless, totally fucking helpless. And it felt like, you know, like I really, I've always, I'm very true to who I am and who I have been. Like I've always been this person and I've always, I always wanted to go to the city and like go be who I was like meant to be. And like part of this, as I'm thinking about it through the eyes of my pelvic floor now, it was like, maybe I will be pain free there. Maybe I will be, you know, maybe something will be uncovered that I can discover or be and maybe someone will speak the language. Well, I get to ninth grade and God, it's 347 is the road and this doctor, a urologist was on this road, Dr. H something, this guy that perhaps I was articulating so much about the pain that my mom was like, let's figure something out or something. And then also I feel like at this time, I feel like at this time I understood, I got the phrase interstitial cystitis, could it be or cystitis, cystoscopy, because he was saying a cystoscopy. So interstitial cystitis, I believe means like interstitial intervals of spasms. So I must have been equipped with this, this articulation because I remember going to this doctor or maybe he told my mom and I this that it was interstitial cystitis. And dude, I'm telling you, I was 15 years old, my mom and I are sitting in this office with this, you know, white male doctor behind a desk. And he's like, he said something to the effect of well, it's interstitial cystitis. And we could look in your urethra with a camera and it's called a cystoscopy, but it won't give you any relief. And it doesn't matter what we find, essentially, he literally, I will never forget, I don't really remember his bland face. I don't remember like the words he said, but I will never forget that he laughed at us in our faces about the helplessness of the situation. And it's like beach, you're a urologist, right? But going back to this thing of like women, it is laughable Dr. H bland face, but like, you know, help, nope, absolutely not and laughed at us laughed I was a kid, I was 15. Megan Kelly may say this is arguably not a kid, but that's a kid 15 is a is a child. Again, here we go back to the systemic pedophilia that is running our government and unfortunately, the Billy knows that are running our world. That's a child was 15 and this doctor laughed and my mom and I were equally dehumanized, humiliated. I remember the feeling of embarrassment between us, her feeling embarrassed at her helplessness, me feeling embarrassed that I'm causing this shame on her, fucking horrible. I remember high school same thing. I'm like, okay, running to the bathroom when it when an episode occurs, just to catch my breath because it was like breathtaking chronic pain. And it would come on, I wouldn't know what it was, I would know what it was. I'm still doing my nerdy thing with my best friends for queer kids just whatever I'm doing a thing, not knowing who we are and not having like sexual experience until senior of high school, when we actually had a rift in our friendship. And I feel like I must have filled that rift with my first boyfriend, my first real boyfriend in high school who was I am so lucky he was such a nice boy, so nice, and so kind. And this was the first time that I was having real sexual experience and sex. So I can't quite remember any correlation. No, no, actually, I do pain between having sex and afterwards having to like recover because I had so much tension in my pelvic floor. Yeah, I guess it was like, I was so tense. And like, I didn't because I didn't masturbate, it's not like I was like, knowing how to command my own body or my own pleasure of, Oh, I'll relax into this, you know, it was much more of like, I can fuck, let's fuck, you know, which like, by the way, I started when I was like 17, like, that was my how I operated until I met my husband, who, you know, we just had the kind of love and partnership where he could like literally guide me and it's like about an unwinding, by the way, that took fucking years to so my high school boyfriend, who was like, just so, so sweet, so sweet, and such a good boy and good guy, you know, he was, um, I remember communicating to him the pain and him being patient about it. But I still couldn't quite articulate what was happening when I needed. And I wasn't, I certainly wasn't taking enough time for my own pleasure, still wasn't masturbating on my own. Something that I missed as a kid was pleasure, learning pleasure, so that I knew what wasn't right. And here I was in this very fortunate situation to have like a sweet and lovely boyfriend, but I didn't have the baseline of private secret pleasure with myself to know that like, this is a little, this is a little painful. I only knew pain. And then, um, and then I knew sex and sex was also a relief from the pain. It was a something else. It was B, like it felt good to like, you know, somewhat forcibly like open up, relax, you know, there's some, some sort of like, I don't even know how to say it and it like kind of sounds funny, but like, you know, like a massage, but it's sex, you know, so whatever, like, like that pretty much something in this area, not totally articulated. Um, so it felt good too, but there was like a recovery and sort of like almost a price I would pay in a way. Um, but it really felt good intellectually and spiritually to be having sex and creative, creating an experience in this way that I was too scared to have on my own. I was too scared to, like, too internally homophobic to have safely with girls and my friends, um, before then sharing this with, you know, a boy who's like across the line of gender, right? Um, so I was fortunate that he was such a sweet boy and we had so much fun and such a good time. He was smart, a smart kid. He would come over and just talk to my parents and talk and talk and talk. He was half Jewish and his dad was the Jewish one was kind of a dick, was a dick, was just a dick and, and, uh, insecure about being a short Jewish guy on Long Island where there's all these fucking Italian guys, whatever. And then my family was just so Jewish and Jewish and my mom was Jewish and my dad was gentle and he was like, oh, he would just fall into them just like my best friend Daniel would fall into them. Um, such a sweet boy. And so that was like a good experience, you know, but also like draft one, you know, so I was with this high school boyfriend from my senior year of college, the middle of the, excuse me, the middle of the senior year of high school into the middle of my sophomore year of college, two years. And, um, it was almost a protective measure to go to college and not have even the option to hook up with anybody else, protective spiritually, because I wasn't cool and relaxed and open enough like that, you know, um, and protective in a literal way because campus rape, um, literally. And especially at that time it was, I went to college in 2005. We're talking to height of Lindsay Lohan being tortured publicly and we're calling it success. Brittany Spears being tortured cut publicly and we're calling this success very confusing. Paris Hilton, you know, being whatever by Ashton Kutcher and we're like, she's so lucky, you know, whatever the fuck was going on in the Von Dutch era, um, is when I entered school, oh my God, cowboy boots in New York City. Oh my God, Jesus, just honestly traditional, uh, or I'll just say not traditional, but, um, uh, a very captured and closely controlled concept of femininity, just revamped and revamped and washed and dried and then put out again as though it's new. So fucking boring. Um, and, uh, so protectively I'm not hooking up with anybody, I'm not trying to, and, um, I'm visiting my, my boyfriend went to Binghamton and he's visiting and I'm visiting him and having no sex for periods and then having sex for a weekend because we're seeing each other. I found very painful. Um, it was too much too soon or whatever. This is also how sweet is this boy. He got me my first vibrator. How sweet, so sweet. And it was so meaningful and life changing because I was too ashamed to get it myself. And for some reason, you know what I just paused internal homophobia. Zoey Lister Jones is a episode and the experience of making that, that was a turning point for me. That was like a more spontaneous interview than I've ever had. My husband and I were like talking about afterwards, like this was a new level and also like her sharing her internalized misogyny was, uh, changed me because I was surprised because I idealized her in a certain way and her internalized homophobia. I was like totally man and like my own sexuality for myself. I'm, I'm, is like partially internalized homophobia. Why I wouldn't, why I didn't want to like cross the line of knowing what that pleasure of orgasm was. So sweet boy gets me a vibrator. That feels good, but even still these, these, um, bouts of having sex and then no sex and then lots of sex over a weekend and then no sex. I, he, um, left a visit where we had sex over the weekend and I was in freshman year at NYU and I was taking a shower and the pain of these urethral spasms caused me to faint. I fainted in the shower and I woke up so scared, so confused what, where am I? You know, I don't know if you've ever fainted, but you're literally like, I'm a being on a planet. Like it's like you're in space, you know, it's fucking crazy. Um, so I call my parents, I fainted, they drive in immediately, pick me up and take me home and we like somewhat figured out, you know, we needed to figure it out. I got, I went to a psychiatrist, oh, oh, oh, this pill pusher, but I got what I needed at the time. He was right, but one of those guys who's a psychiatrist who meets you for seven minutes. Um, but what I got on was, uh, you know what, I'm not going to like talk about a label of a drug, a brand, but I'll say it was an anti-depressant that was not only a serotonin reuptake inhibitor, but also a norepinephrine uptake inhibitor, not only serotonin, which is like about dopamine, but also norepnephrine, which is pain receptors. So I was, it also helped me manage pain. It really, really did and really helped. And we found a urologist, like we could have found it if we pressed the gas hard, but like I didn't ask my parents to press the gas hard, but this made us all very scared. Press the gas hard on finding a urologist right in my little town, St. James. So he took me seriously, was so calm and kind about my interstitial cystitis. You know why? Because his daughter had it. This brilliant guy, Anand Giradharadast, is this just a writer and, uh, like thought leader that I know who's so brilliant. We were once at this luncheon, um, uh, that we were just talking about, we just got right into it, talking about feminism. And we were talking about how I'm not saying this is true of this doctor's ilk or personality or spirit or whatever, but Anand and I were laughing at the concept of men becoming feminists only when it's organized around their mother, their wife, or their daughter. They got to either come out of that pussy, get into that pussy, or wipe that pussy to be a feminist. And this doctor, God bless him. He was incredible. I have no idea who he was before this, but like the only way I could find a doctor who knew what the fuck I was talking about was because he recognized the problem in his daughter and he fortunately happened to be a urologist. So he was like, my daughter has this, we have gotten treatment for her. It really helped. So what this doctor taught me about was, uh, hydro-distention, hydro-distention, distending with water. So it's a procedure where you just, you fill the bladder with water to stretch it out, force it to stretch and relax. And then you drain the water and then you swish some, um, medicine around and then drain the medicine out, but switch the medicine around the walls of the bladder that are like pain, pain meds. And I did this procedure three times. You go under for it. I did this procedure three times at age 20, at age 22 and age 24. And it really helped, hydro-distention. It really helped. It's non-invasive. You know, it's a catheter, but it's non-invasive and it really fucking helped. And it like lasted in my mind for two years, but you know, we're talking, we're ending this at age 24. I'm 39 now. I really understand. After I started therapy when I was 17, boy, did I fucking need it. But I, I started this analysis that I'm in six and a half years ago. And now I really understand, like I was saying the sexuality thing and the robbery causing it at age four. Like I didn't, I didn't know this until this latest therapy practice that I'm in. And you know, the mind-body connection. Well, guess what, bitch? The mind and body were always connected until the power structure that we live inside disconnected it. And now, now, you know, they sell it to you as, oh, we're connecting it back for you. It's been separated. Let's talk about the systems that separated it. All this to say, I now understand like the mental emotional context with which I developed this chronic pain. So age 24. So I started comedy when I was 19. I'm doing comedy every, and, and by the way, that's probably also part of what, why I fainted, you know, it was pain. Yes. That was the immediate cause, but part of it, I was like, I'm in New York City. I want to do comedy. And it's fucking scary. Well, from age 19 to 2024, excuse me, from age 19 to 24, I'm doing comedy every night, stand up, sketch, improv, at least five nights a week. And when I was, I met Abby when I was 19 also. And that age 22 is when I started making the web series. And Abby was 25, the web series of Broad City. And by age 24, we were so nuts, we made 35 short films. I'm telling you the mental emotional context here. It's two parts that by age 24, I maybe I buried the lead, but whatever, it's fucking long form, I was pain free by age 24. And this was two, for twofold, I think first of all, it was the first time that I, it was the last time that I got this procedure done this hydro distention. But I also had a container for my art. It was Broad City, the web series. But I was doing comedy, but I was on a track, we had built the train tracks and built the train cars, and we could just put the fucking contents in the train cars and run it and run it and run it. I felt found I felt. And also Abby, you know, oh my God, like, you know, we're looking at each other like, girl, we got this. And it's not even to say, Oh, we got we had got this because it became a TV show. It was truly the process of knowing there was a container to put all this energy and obsessive compulsive disorder and anxiety and depression into and be productive with it. Fucking God love Broad City. I fucking love it. But I'm, you know, for me, it's a personal thing. And at age 24, that was part of what got me pain free. What also got me pain free was, oh my gosh, I'm forgetting her name now. Her name was Christie, but this incredible, incredible Texas born physical therapist and she went back Latham, Christie Latham, she went back to Texas to serve the people of Texas, her, her amazing pelvic floor physical therapy services. So this ranged from exercises to I had literal knots, like you have a knot in your back. Oh my God, that's such a hard knot in my labia, in my labia, that she would like deep tissue massage out by like pressing into and pressing and pressing and pressing until it broke up. It was like, dude, it was fucking insane. We would put these like, 10s unit nodules on, I guess on the labia. I don't even know, but something where I would do a kegel and then I would watch this like this like sort of measurement on a scale. And the needle would never go back down to zero because my pelvic floor was holding, holding, holding all the tension. So it was like so interesting and helpful to see. And I would sit on ice, I would just straddle ice. I would also use heat. I learned all these, all these techniques. And at age 24, between this final, this third hydro distention procedure between Christie Latham's incredible guidance and physical therapy practice and between my creativity, finding a partner, finding a container, I became pain free, literally fucking pain free. I was having, I was like sexually active. You know, like it's not even like, oh, sex hurts. It was like, sex was an indicator for certain things about this condition. But it's not, that wasn't really the cause, right? It was all these things. So I'm 24 and pain free. Thank goodness. Thank fucking God. I had chronic pain expressed through my pelvic floor from ages four to 24, 20 years of debilitating chronic pain that would send me home. And I'd be like, I'm out for the night, you know, as a teenager, as a college kid. And I couldn't explain to people. And at age 24, I was, I became, I earned becoming pain free. So I didn't have, I didn't have pain. I met I was 25. And when I was 33 is when I got pregnant. And when I got pregnant, I was like, I want to do pelvic floor physical therapy again. There's something narrative here where I want to revisit what that was, but now in this new context. And I not only Emma was a patient at origin, physical therapy, but I became an investor in origin physical therapy because it is incredible, especially because they take health insurance. So I had copays of $9 baby. And I started, I happened to be in LA shooting this Apple show, Lord and Miller show on Apple called the after party. I was in LA, which is where their only flagship is currently. And I was going to the office to do physical therapy pregnant while I was filming this show. And it was awesome. I just, just the knowledge, just the conversation with my body, with my pelvic floor was so wonderful leading up to pregnancy, where I remember learning that your diaphragm is actually your entire torso from your throat to your pelvic floor. And it's like opening up a coke can, you can have power in holding your breath and pushing like in birth. And you can release that power by opening the coke can, you know, hard breath, soft breath. But this being joyous and celebratory. And after the triumph of, you know, releasing myself from a 20 year chronic pain prison. So, you know, funny enough, Oh, and also I had a doula who was like wild. She was like Kathleen Turner. She looked like Kathleen Turner. She sounded like Kathleen Turner, which looked like my grandma Blanche, but didn't sound like my grandma Blanche, but like incredible older, just sort of curvy older lady with white and gray hair. And I was like, I'm not going to use an epidural because I'm a natural bitch. And she was like, you're going to use an epidural. She didn't say it like that. But she was like, I highly recommend an epidural. Just eliminate the pain so you can have as fun and good an experience and as pleasurable and experience as possible. And for me, that was the right decision, bitch. So when I started, I had three false alarms, which I cover in my, Oh, I don't cover the first three. I cover the final false alarm and my standup special, uh, human magic, but I had three false alarms. But the third false alarm was the day before I actually did go into labor. So I go into labor and I was like, I'm going to labor at home for as long as I can. And that ended up being, um, 24 hours. So 24 hours at home. And it was hard, but it was nice to be at home. And I didn't do like a shower because I didn't like a warm shower actually relaxes your body and slows it down. No, I just was like, I wanted to fucking eat. You can't eat once you go into the hospital. Cool. Really, really smart. Probably like based on like 1930s fucking whatever laws and, uh, research. But, um, yeah, for 24 hours, I was at home and the contractions were getting shorter, but not that much shorter. They ended up being, maybe there were two minutes, no, from seven to like four minutes in 24 hours. But my doula, Kathleen Turner, lol was like, um, it's time to go to the hospital, my dear, it's time to go to the hospital. I'll meet you there and let's go get an epidural. Epidural, by the way, scariest part of the birth for me. Oh, that was the only time I was crying. Sobbing. Oh my God. Sobbing. Hold, you know, holding onto my husband, just a full on baby. It was COVID too, by the way. So I had to go into the hospital, make sure I was in labor before my husband could come in, which was a way better situation than women who had to fucking give birth for the first time with no partner there because of COVID. Anyway, so I am in labor, David can come in and I get the epidural and lose my fucking mind. Um, it's 24 hours at this point. And then with the epidural, oh, and when I got there, I was only two centimeters separated. You have to get to 10 to have a baby. So 24 hours of labor from seven minutes to four minutes between the contractions, and I had only gotten two centimeters wide. Crazy, right? To me, I thought this is really painful and so intense. I must be at six or whatever. No, just two. And then this physician's assistant was like, give me one second and she puts her fingers in me and she does this and she got me to three and a half centimeters naturally. And she was like, yeah, I just do this. She said, they call me golden fingers and she whisked herself away. I was like, that was a fucking bitch who opened my vagina to three and a half centimeters and golden fingers. Okay, bitch. Yes. So then I go get the epidural, which normally slows down contractions, but however, and opening, but not, not for me at hours 25 to 36, I went from three and a half centimeters because of golden fingers to nine. It's about it's early in the morning on a Tuesday morning and in 2021 in June. And so once I got to nine centimeters open and it's Tuesday morning, my doctor was like, girl, let's do this. So she gives me what she called a kiss of pitocin, which is the like induction medicine. And that gets me from nine centimeters to 10. My labor was because of the epidural because of all of my physical therapy, guidance from origin physical therapy, how in touch I was with my body, it was so fun. It was so fucking fun. It took me four pushes, which means four contractions. So they're just a few minutes apart, four different times. So it's like, when you, when you push, push, push, push, push, push, go, go, go, you're just going for the full two minutes. And my little athletic OB, she's like, fucking, you know, I don't, you don't know this until you're in the birth. She's a coach. She's an athletic coach. Push, push, push, push, push, push, push. The first push, she magically turned my daughter's nose, you know, the nose is supposed to be up facing the clit. My daughter's nose was down facing my but who the first push she gently takes this newborn infants, you know, half a fetus, half a newborn infant at this point and twists her up, gets her in the right position. Oh my God. Oh my God. Breathe, breathe, breathe. Okay. Here it goes. Here it goes. Go, go, go. It was so amazing. It was so fucking cool. And then three pushes and then rest, three push, rest, push, and the baby's out. Oh my God. It was so amazing. And somehow David was filming somehow. It was so cool. It was so cool. And for this to be, oh my God, for this to be like to close that narrative with all that pain and sadness I had had with my, oh my God, all this pain and sadness that I had experienced with my public floor was so empowering and so amazing. And this tiny little bitch, my old beach is like fucking rocking it bitch. And the nurses are like, yeah, dude. And David and my doula and she was like, huh, you know, and David, David's like magically filming the moment that we find out it's a girl and it's like so, so incredible and she's so beautiful and I'm so lucky she was so, I'm so, we're so lucky she was so healthy and she was incredible and just immediately took to breastfeeding. I was so just lucky, just fucking lucky. And she crazy, she had her head on my chest and she lifts it up and turns it around and like newborns don't normally have neck strength like that. And we all a hush comes over us. We're like, we're like, holy shit, just so lucky. And so that was so empowering. And I, so I will, I will, I'm going to end it there. There's obviously postpartum stuff. But I think that might be for another time because this is so narratively sweet. And if you've been listening, thank you so much. That was amazing. That was thrilling and exciting. And I hope I wonder what you think. Tell me what you think. This has been an exclusively human made production. This has been a star picks production. I want to thank my creative producers, Annika Carlson and David Brooklyn, especially for being with me through the process of getting here and in recording this. I also want to thank my creative producers, Kelsey Kiley, Madeline Kim and Glenis Mahar. I want to also thank the people who make this have made this set look so beautiful and so soft and powerful. That's Lexa Krebs, that's Nicole Moppen and Kevin Deming. I want to thank Ray Moventura for the musical sting and the graphics that we love so much. I want to thank Tova Liebowitz, who remains just a fucking awesome editor and collaborator. And I want to thank the band Don Her for this outro musical sting. And I want to, I'm going to add our booker Amanda Jane Stern and our ad sales partner, Deanna Spinelli, for their partnership as well because damn, I can't do this alone. It takes a lot of people, as you just heard. If you like this show and this project, subscribe to the channel and like the video and comment. I really, really, really want to know what you think. And I hope you have a great day. Bye.