My Children are a Pain in my Ass

Motherhood has broken me, literally. 

There's a very good chance that Motherhood will break you.  The sleep deprivation.  The food aversions.  The psychological manipulation.  

But did you know that motherhood can literally break you?

I'm not talking about the odd broken toe we've all suffered at the hands of a high chair or a rogue toy.  I'm talking about a fractured tailbone sustained by giving birth.  That's right, my friends, ushering my firstborn child into the world left me with more than roadkill vag, it also resulted in a hairline fracture to my coccyx.

According to my extensive research on Dr. Google, it's actually relatively common to break your tailbone during labor - your own super human strength coupled with bearing down puts a lot of pressure on your ass region - but no one warned me about this particular birth side effect.  Oh sure, they tell you that you'll be bleeding from your nether regions for nigh on a month, but where were all those well-intentioned busybodies ready to warn me about the fact that I would have to spend the rest of my life sitting on a donut pillow?!  How come nobody bothered to give me a heads up that while my vajayjay would someday return to a semblance of its original self, my tailbone would haunt me till the day I die?  And let's not even mention that fact that as a writer the primary thing I do all day is sit, which means my children are, quite literally, a pain in my ass.

Honestly, the Muffin Man's delivery was rough, but since I'd never given birth to a child before, I didn't know that it wasn't supposed to be quite so painful.  I just figured they called it "labor" because it's a shit ton of work and calling it something else would be like my ex-boyfriend referring to himself as a "producer" when he was really an "assistant": false advertising.  Heck, if you go the natural, un-medicated birth route, you figure it's probably going to hurt a little bit, even with all that self-hypnosis stuff, right? 

Noah was sunny side up, meaning that instead of coming out face down, he came out face up, which makes giving birth much harder and more painful.  If I'd had a different OB, one who wasn't as supportive of my hippie birthing choices and wasn't so experienced with natural birth, I would never have been allowed to have a vaginal birth with a baby presenting face up.  Long story short, getting a baby who is not in the optimal position to come out of a very small hole takes a lot of physical strength.  The last time I got that kind of whole body workout was sometime before I got married when I still cared what I looked like in a bikini.  The point is, when you're putting all of your 50 extra pounds of baby weight on a small, rather fragile bone on your backside, especially if you're kind of bony to begin with, you might fracture something.  You won't know it right away, but if you still can't walk six weeks after giving birth and it hurts to sit up, you probably broke your ass bone.  Trust me, it's as humiliating as it sounds.

Here's the bad news: there is nothing you, or your Doctor, can do.  Your ass will basically be broken for the rest of your life.  You will hate taking long car trips and riding in airplanes, especially if you are traveling with your children because you will suffer the double indignation of being stuck in a small space with your offspring and knowing that they are the reason your ass hurts.  There's a very good chance you will invest in a padded toilet seat, and you will probably end up purchasing a donut pillow and carrying it around with you like you are a 90 year old man with severe hemorrhoids.

But there is one (very small) piece of good news, as my OB pointed out: your next time at the labor rodeo will be a whole lot easier, because your tailbone will know to get the Hell out of the way.