by Grace Mirchandani

Created on: June 03, 2008   Last Updated: February 17, 2009

You see it all the time on Television. The perfect women with the perfect makeup and hair, grunting with clenched teeth, tightly holding the nurse's hand as a trickle of glistening sweat runs down her brow...a few pushes...a scream...and then BAM!...A beautiful baby! If only it was as glamorous as that.

The reality of childbirth can actually be quite disturbing.

Think about it.

The membrane of liquid surrounding your baby, consisting of slime and fluid, bursts inside of you, sending anywhere from a trickle, to a gush of fluid down your legs. If you don't receive this watery gift naturally then you get to be prodded by a doctor with a hook shaped like a crochet needle to pop your sack like a balloon.

The contractions hit you like a ton of bricks, bringing with them waves of nausea and pain that even the bravest women find hard to handle. These fun little moments start out short in duration and far apart in time then become disturbingly long and close together. Most women barf from the pain. This can go on for hours and hours. Sometimes it goes on for days.

By the time your ready to push, about fifty or so hands have been in your crotch to check if your cervix is ready. That is, to make sure it's open far enough for a baby's head to fight through it. At this point, you are more exhausted then you've ever been in your entire life and doubt your ability to finish the job.

You have the overwhelming urge to poop. Imagine taking five laxatives and you're not allowed to go until the doctor says so.

Your legs are spread open and there are giant lights and many unknown faces inches from your most private areas. The doctor is most likely a stranger because you went into labor either late or early, and your doctor is in Florida at a golf tournament. So there you lay, exposed and ready to push.

Each push feels like hot irons pressed against your flesh. The blood pounds in your head and capillaries burst in your eyes, face, and shoulders from pushing so hard. Fluid, blood, and feces make their way out onto the table as you push so desperately to get your ordeal over with. A woman can push from twenty minutes to hours and hours.

At last, as long as no complications arise, the baby is introduced into the world and the bloody slime-covered infant is given to the mother. Daddy or the doctor cuts the chord the chord which looks like a thick grayish-purple vein, that is often still beating and pulsing as it's snipped by what look like kitchen scissors.

As if all of that hard work wasn't

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