July 31, 2018 • 39 mins
Beth and Peter finally get into the birth story – the good one. In early 2016 Beth and Peter find themselves in financial trouble, with a broken down minivan and 2nd baby due at any minute. Do they make it to the hospital? Does Beth’s sister’s Honda Fit come out unscathed? And what is so special about the parking lot of the local School of Rock? Answers to these questions and more.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:12):
Hello, and welcome back to another episode of We Knows Parenting.
I'm Peter McNerney Bethel real married couple with children, not experts.
That's the deal. That's what this show is all about.
Now this episode, Beth, this is a very special episode.
Well you can tell from the enthusiasm in Beth's voice
that this is a very special episode and that we're
(00:34):
going to break the rules in the format. The rules,
the rules, the strict rules we've set forth and the laws.
It's lawless over here. And we'll be honest. We're doing
this so we could go on vacation. We don't have
to record next week. Um, that is why this is happening.
But it's a really good idea. Um, now that I've
(00:54):
undercut the specialness of the why don't you tell people
what is happening? Oh my gosh, that's a good idea.
So in one of our very first episodes, we very
casually mentioned that Maven was born in a car, and
to the chagrin of several listeners who wrote in as
a real tease and a real did we have complaints
(01:17):
about that? We had at least one review and somebody
else was like, you can't drop something like that and
not explain it. But in our defense, we recorded sort
of a pilot for this show a while ago, and
we talked about that a lot, and then we recorded
over the other episodes and we just never ended up
releasing that early episode. Yeah, we we trashed a lot
of episodes because we started recording and then so in
(01:39):
our mind we had talked about it already. Yeah. It
also was an incredibly long and meandering episode and now
we're going to try to give it to you a
little more quickly. Yeah, and we got a fun game
that I'm explaining to Beth as it goes. So we've
told this story a lot and we've sort of got
it down, but there are differences in how we all
(02:00):
based on our perspective, as you might imagine, Yeah, based
on the fact that one of us um experienced this,
Like I said, different perspectives. So what I have if
it's unclear this episode is going to be about birth, Yes,
that's true and all the things connected to it. Okay,
(02:21):
bat So how this is gonna work is We're going
to take turns telling this story and we each get
exactly sixty seconds before the other person takes over the story. Okay,
do you want to start the story, because, as you mentioned,
this is more your story than mine, because you actually
did it and I was just there. Okay, alright, synchronize
(02:42):
your watches in three to one go Okay. So the
sale begins long ago, the year twenty fourteen. We uh
move up to Westchester firm, Brooklyn with the expectation that
we're about to have a baby. We manage to only
move up here one week before our son is born. Um.
(03:04):
We planned to do a home birth with the aid
of some very nice home birth midwives, with a also
additional backup plan of being able to go to a
hospital if necessary with these other midwives that they work
in concert with. So, Um, what happens is we go
see the movie Gardenings of the Galaxy at the movie
theater after we've finished painting three rooms of our apartment. Um,
(03:28):
good a bed that night, and I wake up in
the middle of the night and my water has broken. Uh.
What problem here is that once your water breaks, if
you're not having contractions, there's a risk of infection, which
leads us to believe that a home birth may not
be possible. So, more specifically, as a home birth might
be fine, but if anything goes wrong. The backup midwives
(03:50):
have a policy where they will not accept a transfer
uh if the water has broken twenty four hours before
labor started, So we didn't want to the all turnative
would mean that if anything went wrong for the home birth,
we would end up in the emergency room, which is
Beth's greatest nightmare. So we decided to go. After a
full day of trying to induce labor, which was not
(04:12):
successful through acupuncture and drinking castor oil. Um not me, Beth,
we decided to just go straight to plan B, which
is to go to the midwives at the birthing Center
in the Sleepy Hollow. So we drive there early in
the morning, We meet our doula, We get there, and
(04:35):
what begins is a very long uh and typical first
birth in in that uh uh it's it's it's more
difficult than than I would not say typical. It's um common,
it's common for births of you that long, but it's
(04:56):
not um always the case that it is somewhat of
a back labor, which means that the position of the
baby is not great. Um. We later realized um via
my dula and my subsequent birth that my hips were
not lined. One of my hips was like locked up,
which is the thing that happens to a lot of people,
(05:16):
and you wouldn't necessarily notice it's a problem unless you're
trying to squeeze a baby out of your hips. Um.
And so anyway, it was a very long, very incredibly
painful labor where Bryn was his head was pressing on
a nerve in my hip. Um. And the thing about
back labor is that it not only takes longer, but
it's more painful. And um, it's hell on earth. So
(05:41):
that labor happens. Bryn is born stubborn and big headed.
He's born at four thirty in the morning. And it's
exhausting because it's you know, you've had eighteen hours of labor.
Obviously more exhausting for Beth. I don't need to apply.
It was exhausting for me. Um. And uh so Brenda's
(06:03):
brand is born. We we learn a lot of things.
It's a big day. Your mind is blown. Uh. It's
an insane thing to go through too. I can't imagine
going through it myself. But witnessing nous is of course
life changing, and it's beautiful and we cried and all
of that, and suddenly we had a little baby boy,
(06:24):
and uh we took him home. So I want to
backtrack a little bit to say that moving to the
suburbs meant we needed to get a car, and uh,
luckily your family had an old Toyota Sienna that they
were going to get rid of in a twelve year
old minivan that they gave to us, and so we
suddenly had a car and that was fantastic. So cut
(06:45):
to I'm pregnant with our second child. Uh, this time around,
I'm talking to Madula, trying to avert the horrible labor
of the previous child, and she recommends going to a chiropracture,
which the chiropractor realizes my hip joints locked up, she
loosens it up. It's much easier to loosen your joints
up while you're pregnant because of the relaxing hormone that
(07:07):
loosens everything up in your body. So I'm feeling ready
and then are are What I have been telling Peter
for months is that we needed a new car. And
I specifically said we need to get a hon to
c RV and Peter said, no, we can't afford a car.
And I said, well, we have to get one because
our Mini Vandor is about to fall off, and I
don't want to have the door fall off in my
(07:28):
car when I'm driving two small children around. And he
continued to say, no, we can't afford it, and I
continue to say, well, we need a new car. And
then he takes our car in for inspection a week
before Maven is do and I'll tell you what happened.
First of all, we definitely could not afford a car, like, like,
in no universe could we afford any car. We had
(07:52):
no money like. This was a year where I thought
we were going to run out of money and I
didn't know what we're gonna do, and it was really stressful,
and Beth and I would fight about it, and she
was just optimistic. She said. I was like, we can't
afford a car. She's like, well, let's go look, the
universe will provide. I'm like, you're insane. We need money.
And so I take this car in for inspection a
week before Maven is born, and it fails the inspection.
(08:16):
And this woman says, I would not drive this with kids,
Like the wheels are literally going to fall off. So
to fix the car would be more money than buying
another like clunker. So I sell this thing for four
hundred dollars a week before my daughter is born, and
so I was like, Okay, we figure out how to
(08:36):
get to the hospital. So we borrow Beth's sisters Honda Fit,
which is like it's named very tiny, uh car. So then, um,
you know, this time around, we decided, you know, we're
just going to deliver with the midwiese at the hospital
birthing center. We're not going to bother with the homeborke
thing because our kids gonna be in the way. He's
(08:57):
gonna be whining, and it's we just didn't feel like
dealing with the gamble at this point. So we have
this plan in place where barring my sister's car, and um,
I think Maven was like about a week overdue. I
started having contractions. We uh, it's well, it's it's yeah,
(09:21):
we have this time right here. So we I started
having contractions around maybe like five or six pm at night.
I you do the usual thing where you try to
go to bed and get some rest because you don't
really know how long this labor is going to drag on.
You don't want to head to the hospital too soon
and wait around um and Peter goes peacefully to sleep. Well,
(09:44):
you just gave me five seconds because you keep jumping
in five secons just so well. I was just saying
before I thought was so funny is your parents came
like to help out for the pregnancy, and that your
mom had a certain amount of time off from work,
and Maven was so late that it just kept going
and it was an hour after they left to go
back to box. This is like a known thing that
(10:04):
women's bodies relax when they feel safe and comfortable. So
if you have people hovering around you, watching you, waiting
for you to go to labor, your body's like, no,
I'm not. They were literally gone for an hour and
you turned to me and you just went, oh yeah.
Your sister came over because to stay with branding case
(10:26):
that happened. So anyway, we're like, oh, okay, this might
something might be happening. Let's go to see sleep. And
as a dad, you're told like, get the rest early,
don't have you know they're gonna need you later. So
I took this note very well, almost too well. So
then Peter goes to sleep. I am moaning away next
(10:46):
to him all night long. He's sleeping, peaceful, peacefully. Um,
I was sort of enjoying the fact that I was
not being bothered. We had planned to have our dula
come over and labor with me before we went to
the hospital at all. And you know, Peter's sleeping, I'm moaning.
I was just sort of enjoying the fact that no
(11:06):
one was bothering me, So I didn't wake anyone up
for a while, um, And it was nice to be
left alone. And then, um, you know, it's like six am.
People are starting to wake up. I asked Peter to
call the midwives, um, to see if we should start
(11:26):
hating the hospital because things are getting pretty serious. And
he said, hold on, I gotta take a quick shower.
And then, uh, so are we have our dually come
over trying to help us out? Peter's taking over freeze.
This is where this is a contentious part of the
story about the timing of things, because I do not remember,
like you definitely did not say call the midwives, and
(11:47):
I responded, well, I'm gonna take a shower first. There
was we were timing contractions and they were nowhere close
to where they said they should be. When we should call.
So I took a shower. I'm gonna I'm gonna assume
that you're correct on the time. You didn't time any
contractions at that point, Yeah, okay, let's say that I didn't,
(12:09):
and I think that I did. After the shower, we
were certainly timing contractions and they were not long. They
weren't long enough for the guidelines that they were given,
like this is when you should call, and when you
should worry is when this happens. And that never happened.
And but we called the duela and she's like, yeah,
you know, I think I'll come over. It's probably I'll
(12:32):
come on over. And then before the doueler shows up,
your water breaks, like right before. So okay. One thing
that happened with Bryan was I was in labor for
eighteen hours and then I was like feeling like a
literal dead person in the hospital, and Peter, you didn't
feel like walking to the cafeteria of the hospital, so
(12:52):
you decided to eat off of my hospital after I
had not, you know, eaten or drank in eighteen hours.
So I was pretty annoyed by that. Um And then
I tried to prepare you for this labor, saying, I
need you to be focused on me. I need you
to focus on time and the contractions because I'm going
to be in labor. I'm going to be out of
(13:13):
my mind. You need to be on top of this stuff.
And you said, yeah, yeah, yea, yeah, of course, it's
crazy that you're even accusing me of ever not being
on top of these things. I'm perfect, man. So then, uh,
you didn't wake up a single time in the middle
and night, you gotten the shower before timing my contractions
(13:37):
in the morning, your time is okay. So you try
to have it both ways on this all the time
when you tell the story, which is you're like, Peter
slept through the whole thing. He wasn't paying attention to
me at all. And then you're like, it was so
nice to be alone and not have anyone bugging me.
So for a few this is my time. I didn't
(13:57):
talk during yours, and so so that I think that
was more beneficial to you than the opposite. Anyway, it
was my job at time the contractions, and I did
and again they were never as long as I was
told to wait before we called, and we called people,
blah blah blah. The water breaks and we go, oh,
oh God, is this water breaks? And I go to
(14:19):
get like a pH balance strip um because obviously it
was the water had broken. But then the doorbell rings
and it's the doula and uh. Before this we called
the midwives and they were like, uh, should we come in?
And they're like yeah, should we wait for the doulah
or come straight in? They're like, ah, you got time
wait for the doula. Okay. What I will say is
(14:39):
that no woman I know would sleep through another person
laboring next to them for like a full eight hours
and not get up at some point to check in
and time some contractions. Anyway, what happened was our Dula,
who is very lovely, walks in the front door as
my waters breaking and I had put on an adult
diaper as one is when your water breaks, and she
(15:02):
walked in as this is happening, and I had like
a severe contraction with a lot of um things coming
out of me. So I decided to change the diaper
into a fresh diaper. As she was walking in the door,
she saw me pulling this disgusting diaper off my body
and she, as a lovely Austrian woman, she goes oh,
(15:23):
we need to go. So we run as fast as
I can hobble outside to the car. Sylvie gets in
the car with us. I I didn't realize at this
point that I had been fully dilated to what was happening.
That was my water and your your water had been
(15:43):
holding Maybn in and so the second that thing broke,
that baby was right down in the shoot. She ready
to come out. So Sylvie says, okay, to be So
by walking out of the car, this is what I'm
doing at this point is just shimmying Maven's head further
and further down the birth canal because there's literally nothing
(16:05):
holding her in at this point. Um. So then we
get in the car. You get into the car and
Sylvie has you be on your knees facing out the back,
so you're behind me. I'm driving, She's next to you,
and you're on your knees facing outward. We get we
started driving and we have a twenty five minute drive
ahead of us to this birthing center. Five minutes down
(16:26):
the road. I hear you in the back say I
want to push, and Sylvie says, do not push. Yeah,
So again this is like means I want to push
as some people who have been in labor will know.
It's not like a conscious decision. It was like my
body was like it's time to push. And so then
at this point, I um didn't even push a single
(16:48):
time with this labor, which is kind of insane. I
just had a contraction that kind of like shot Maven's
head out of my body, and so her head was
kind of hanging out of my body. Are ulias? Sylvie
pulled my pajama pants down to expose her and uh. Peter,
still driving, turns around from the back seat looks looks
(17:09):
are beat red daughter in the face as she's hanging
out of my butt, and he says, should I pull over? Uh?
So our doula is like, yes, pull over. So at
this point we call up the midwives, get them on
speaker phone for Sylvie. So they're walking her through, just
like checking to make sure the cords on around the neck,
blah blah blah. Peter gets out of the car to
(17:32):
call nine one one while Sylvie is on speaker phone
with the midwives. So I call nine one one and
there's this whole thing. You and I are shockingly calm,
like even when I said, like, should I pull over.
It was the earnest I was like, should I pull over?
Is that the right thing to do? And I call
nine one one and I was so weirdly polite. I
was like, Hi, my name is Peter McNerney. My wife
(17:56):
is giving birth to a baby in our car right now.
We're outside the School of Rock in uh Mamaronack, New York.
And like, oh, we'll be right there. The I get
back in the car after this very short phone call,
I look in the backseat and Beth is holding Maven
in her arms. I then just pull out my phone
(18:22):
and I take a picture and it is a bizarre,
beautiful moment. I will say, just it's yeah, it's beautiful.
But also my first memory of Maven was seeing a
glob of ship on her face in the back seat.
We were woefully unprepared to give birth in a car.
We had like one towel with us, so we're like,
(18:44):
Maven's wrapped into towel. It's a mess. It's my sister's car,
So it's very funny that we've made an enormous mess
of the back seat. Um, you know, Sylvie is a mess.
She's been delivering this baby. Um, the police show up,
and uh, this officer turns to you and says, I
(19:06):
heard somebody's having a baby in here. And you gesture
to the car and say, we took care of it,
as if you did anything. Um, and then uh, the
E m T s pull up, which is really what
appeared to be one e m T And then like
two young boy E m t s in training who
(19:27):
then approached the car to see me naked from the
waist down holding a baby, and they're like wide eyed.
Put a blanket around me to get me into the ambulance,
and maybe it's still attached to me via the umbilical cord,
which weirdly is sort of like the home birth I
always dreamt of, except inside of a cop. So a
couple of things. One that cop gave me a high five,
(19:48):
and I was jokingly saying we took care of it.
Obviously I did, had nothing to do with it. But
we'll say after the baby was born. That was only
then did I see how tense Sylvie was and I
realized it. We were so calm, like, oh, that was easy,
because we're just so ignorant about how dangerous that can be.
And it was only afterwards that I was like, oh,
(20:09):
that was intense. So you guys get in the ambulance.
You started driving. I started following in this destroyed cond
of fit, and it's ten minutes down the road. They're
taking us to a different hospital than ours. Ten minutes
down the road I'm following. That's when I finally start
to calm down, Like the adrenaline hits and I burst
into tears all by myself for like two minutes, and
(20:33):
then clean myself up before we get to the hospital. Okay,
So I resent the implication that I was ignorant of
what could go wrong in a birth, since I had
been researching this heavily for multiple years. Um, what was
happening to me was that my body was coursing with
major hormones because a life changing moment was happening. I
(20:56):
was creating life on Earth. So no, I wasn't ignorant
of what I could go wrong. I was just operating
on like an animal instinct. Um that. So I got
into the ambulance with Sylvie, and then at that point,
I just as covered in ship and blood. Was could
not have been happier because my labor was over, and
(21:19):
my first labor with Brand was so incredibly long and excruciating.
All I could think about was how happy I was
to have a baby outside of me that appeared to
be healthy and safe. And uh, I was so glad
to avoid the hospital. I avoided all the annoying parts
of the hospital where people are probing you and injecting
you and doing all the things you don't want to
(21:41):
deal with. So we arrived at the hospital and they
wheel her straight into a delivery room where she delivers
the placenta um which went without incident. And there is
a danger too when you have a really quick birth
that the your uterus, which goes through this natural sort
of shrinking period after birth. If you're birth really fast,
(22:06):
it's sort of can leave room. There's a danger of bleeding,
dangerous level of bleeding. And so they had to make
sure that was okay. And so they were massaging her
um abdomen and delivered the will send to no no issues. Yeah,
I mean they did um find like a big blood
cloud in there, but that's pretty standard. I think they
(22:26):
like do they do this uterus massage after you give birth,
When you think you're finally done being in pain, they
rub your stomach harder than you've ever had anyone rub
your stomach. That's very painful and apparently necessary. Um, but
everything was great. And so then we're sitting there in
a hospital thinking to ourselves, Wow, we thought were in
(22:47):
for maybe like a whole day of this and it's
over and we're so happy. And I'm kind of a
laughing to myself because not only did we lose our
car a week prior to this, but we've now destroyed
a second car. So I was kind of amused. And
that's when I tweeted. I decided to tweet at Honda
and say, uh, Honda, I just gave birth in the
(23:10):
back of a Honda a Honda fit. It's a mess.
Can I have a free car? Can I have a
new one? Can I have a new car? A new one?
Which is a really funny tweet? And Beth Well and
true Beth fashion, you know, didn't tell me she did this.
We're sitting in a recovery room for the next couple
of days. You know, you spent a lot of time
on your phone because you're killing time. And also we're
(23:32):
well rested compared to last time you were well arrested.
I had not slept the night before because I was
in labor compared the baby compared to the time before,
you were in much better shape than you were after Bread,
like you were awake. Sure, but I mean to describe
me as well arrested when I hadn't slept that night before.
(23:53):
You're absolutely right, yes, yes, yes, I was well arrested.
So it was decidedly uh, calmer in that room, less
emotional than the previous time. So we're on social media.
I post the picture of Beth holding may Ben immediately
after she's born, and I announced that this has happened.
(24:16):
And uh, I started, of course, getting a ton of
likes that I posted on Facebook, and I'm just doing,
you know, on an unhealthy way, just refreshing the likes
all day. And then hours passed and I tell Beth,
I'm like, Beth, I'm thinking I'm going to get a
thousand likes on Facebook. That's crazy. Uh and uh and
then that's when you turn to me and go, oh, yeah,
I tweeted about this well ago and it has thirty
(24:39):
five thousand retweets. I was like, what, yeah, so, uh,
some comedy friends had retweeted it and it had sort
of like gone viral. So then we were like in
the hospital getting all like getting like pressed requests, like
people I know and like other random websites were calling,
(25:02):
asking for interviews, asking for like photos of the baby
and stuff, and we were so it was just so
funny and they were and everyone's like, so is Hannah
giving you a car? And we're kind of like, I
don't think so, Like that wasn't that wasn't like really
the goal as much as it was like a joke,
Like I don't think if you had asked me at
the time, I wouldn't have been like, yeah, we're definitely
(25:23):
getting a car out of this um, but yeah, of
course not, because that's insane. Uh So we start getting,
uh a lot of people commenting on these things, and
then once the things go viral, we start getting these
absurdly nasty, stupid comments things like, uh, look at that,
(25:45):
Like that's not a cute baby. It looks like a
rotten mango, Like what the funk is wrong with that? Dad?
Why didn't he stop driving when he took that picture?
And so then there's there's articles about it, and then
there's articles about people missing interpreting the other articles. There's
one article that says a woman gives birth in car
jokingly asked for a new one. Joke goes over the
(26:07):
head of Internet urals. So then we get a call
from a corporate Honda and they're kind of like, we're
not going to give you a free car, but we
think this is cute. We're gonna give you, uh, like
a rental car. We're going to clean out this Honda
for you. And what they did was they took my
sister's car into the dealership. They replaced the backseat, they
(26:29):
did it, gave it a cleaning, which was thousands of
dollars in damage. Yeah, and they in the meantime, they
replaced her air bags that had been recalled and she
was like on a wait list for that, so she
kind of lucked out. And they give us a very
swanky rental car. Yeah, and they gave they gave us
a rental car with like a couple of big boxes
of diapers in it. They were very nice. But at
this point, so we go so this all happens, like
(26:52):
we communicate them while we're still in the hospital, and
it's blows our minds that that they reached out to us. Uh,
it was like so cool. It was more obviously more
than we expected. Uh. And then we go home, we
get that car, I get that car sorted out, they come,
they give us the rental, they take that and that's
all amazing. And then we're home for two days when
(27:15):
we get another tweet. But at this point I had
been saying to Peter, like, I it's not that I
that's what I expect them to get a car, but like,
I just didn't think that this whole situation happened without
a reason, especially because I had been saying for months, like,
we're going to get a car. So I kind of
was like, you know, it's just weird to me that
they didn't give us a car, because it feels like
(27:37):
because happening for a reason. And of course, if you
listen to this podcast, you know that I wasn't listening
to that at all, because that's it was nonsense. And
so two days later, we're home and I'm like, well,
we still don't have a car. We can't afford one,
but I haven't had time to focus on it because
(27:58):
we have a baby. And Laza Honda in Brooklyn tweets
at Beth and says Beth Newell, asking you shall receive
We would like to offer you a free three year
lease on a brand new Honda CRV. So at this
point we're like, is this a joke? Are they just
trying to cash in on this and like get some
(28:19):
publicity or something. But uh, it's very very funny because
for months I had literally been telling Peter, we need
to get a Honda c RV with what money? With
the Universe's money. Uh So then uh, we get on
the phone with these guys. They're like, hey, one of
our employees had this great idea where we give you
a free car, and then he got us all on
(28:41):
board with it, and um, you know, we're just like
really happy to be able to do this for you guys.
We love the story. Blah blah blah. So uh pretty exciting.
We take like a two week old baby and or
toddler all the way down to Brooklyn. So we're in
Westchester and they're like, would you mind coming down and
maybe take a some pictures? And I'm like, I'm a
(29:02):
commercial actor. I am not above this at all. So
I take my whole family down to Brooklyn. As much
as I don't want to try to do my hair
and make up when I'm two weeks postpartum, I'll do
it for a free car. Um. So we yeah, we
get ourselves all dolled up. We go to Brooklyn, but
we get there. You're taking my time and we get
there and uh, you know, it's a free car. It
(29:25):
still takes a couple hours, which is pretty intense with
a brand new baby, but normally buying a car, which
I hear takes a very long time. I told us
when we were sitting there, like they were like, this
process usually takes like eight hours or something. Crazy. I
just can't imagine. It took us less than two. We
paid the taxes, uh and um, you know, like eight
(29:48):
hundred bucks, and then we signed to this this lease
and we have this car. They took a bunch of
adorable photos of Brand holding the keys to his new
car and being a cute little toddler. Uh, this is
the part where we should have brought someone else with
us to do this. But we then had to leave
a dealership and drive back to Westchester in two separate
(30:11):
cars with me with a very small baby in the back.
Do you know what? We made it and we got
home and for me in the So we have this
Honda c RV. We've had it for two years. We
have one more year on this free lease, and then
we can either give this car back or we can
buy it. And in that time we are now in
(30:33):
a situation where buying this car is not an insane thing.
At the time, like we were, this was a thing
that would have ruined us to like need to buy
a car, we couldn't afford it at all. And then
since then the universe gave us exactly what we needed.
(30:53):
And then when we need to buy this car, we're
going to be okay, We'll be able to do it.
And now I have no more argument. Logic is not
a thing. She she respects it even less in some ways.
I will say, like both times I was pregnant, towards
the end, I feel like you, I would like to
try to stress me out about money stuff, which is
(31:14):
like not a good thing, not a good thing to
do to someone who's nine months pregnant. And it's just
like raging with hormones um and carrying around like a
huge watermelon belly all the time. But I at some
point he was the very end of parmees. I was
in the grocery store and this man walked by and
he and I think I was like a little bit
stressed but he was like, babies bring blessings, and he
(31:35):
just walked by, and I was like, this feels like
a sign. Like there's just like weird things that have
happened with both these both births where I've just been like,
what that's crazy. Yeah, I had the same thing, like
the you know, I'm an actor in addition to all
the other weird things that I do, and and a
big part of what I do during the week is
(31:58):
I go to auditions, mostly commercial auditions, which are you know,
fine whatever. You book a commercial and it's really great
money for a day's work. And uh, I got a
commercialation a long time ago, and I went on tetitions
for years and barely never ever really booked anything because
I was a twenty two year old who looked thirty.
And the second Brin was born. Uh, right after that happened,
(32:23):
I booked a Super Bowl commercial and suddenly had healthcare
through through SAG and and like it's that I don't
believe in any of this stuff, but boy, it's it's
getting harder to not when the universe goes oh. Because
I was always so stressed about money because I'm like, Beth,
look at this graph. We're out of money in three months,
(32:46):
and your reaction it would be this like, I don't
want to think about it. You're just trying to stress
me out. I'm like, what are we gonna do? And
I understand, like obviously I'm making a pregnant woman stressed,
but I I was so freaked out and I've felt
like I was like alone in this and uh and
then it all just like we didn't change, nothing really changed,
(33:09):
and it worked out. I mean this is not true
for everybody. I mean, of course not, but for us,
um oh boy. I'll also say when we were driving
to hospital to have BRNN, I was very stressed, bad
(33:32):
about the fact that we had to go to the
hospital because I didn't want to go to the hospital.
And on the drive to the hospital, there was like
a rainbow above us, which was kind of weird because
it wasn't really a very like rainy day or anything.
And then also a crane flew by overhead, which is
like looks remarkably like a stork, and I was just like,
(33:53):
it feels like these are positive signs, like it's going
to be okay. And then when I was in labor
with May then I was seeing flashes of images in
my mind of like birds and airplanes, and I was like,
I feel like she's telling me she's just going to
fly out of me. And I was like, that's connection.
(34:17):
I well, because I had been telling my friend Erica,
who does who does Buddhist chance she chanced specifically four
things as part of her specific like sect of Buddhism,
and I was joking with her and my friends. I
was like, Erica, will you just like chant for this
baby to just like slide right out of me? Because
the first labor was so painful. So then like when
(34:38):
I was seeing those images, I was like, oh, I
think she's really just going to fly out, and I
and I had the thought like I wonder if she's
going to be born in the car. But then I
was just so crazy out of my mind and labor
that I just moved on. You know. My favorite part
thinking back of all this, that's there's so many favorite parts,
(34:59):
but one thing they really sticks out is again, we
went through this process and it was so fast that
of course it was exciting and it was emotional and
it was weird, but we didn't really have space and
obviously again we're in very different mental headspaces during this,
(35:20):
but there's adrenaline in both of us and it is
sort of like, what are we doing? What we have
to do? And for me, I'll just speak for myself.
For me, it was like and it was no, because
for me it was okay, We're okay, the core is
not around the neck. That's fine, let's pull over. I'll
call nine one one. We're here. Great, high they've taken
care of We're in the ambulance. We delivered the placenta. Cool,
We're in the waiting room. And I was like, all right, great,
(35:41):
and then I start it's when I call my family
and I start telling the story. It was specifically when
I called my brother Andrew and I was like, well,
I would like to introduce you to your niece. Maven
Grace McNerney was born in the parking lot of the
School of Rock this morning at seven thirty, in the
back of a car. And he goes what and he
(36:03):
flips out like and that, and I was so taken aback.
I was like, whoa, it's not that weird, and that
was about it. I was like, no, this is very weird.
The funny thing to me, I think, is like for
people who haven't been in labor, and even some people
who have the idea of giving birth in a car
is horrifying to them because they start thinking of everything
go wrong and that it's like scared to you. But
(36:24):
to me, having been in labor, my ideal is to
not be in labor anymore, no matter what is happening.
So the idea that you give birth in the car,
it's like, sure, it's bad if there's complications, but the
fact that the baby comes on the car is just
a blessing because the baby has come out. Don't plan
(36:45):
on it, you know, if something goes wrong, it's not
a good place to be. But if it goes perfectly
and you only had to leave your house for five minutes,
that was a big win for us. I just think
it's funny because people assume that when if they hear
me off and say, they assume it was like a
very stressful experience, and I'm like, no, it was great.
It was so great. I really I really recommend it.
(37:11):
I don't recommend it, but I do enjoy that it
has happened. Um, I really recommend midwives, I highly highly
recommend doulas. I don't recommend home birth. I didn't want
that you did want that, but it was your birth,
so I obviously was gonna talk you out of it,
(37:31):
but I was really happy we ended up where they
were saying at the hospital though after this labor they
were like, you'd be an excellent candidate for home birth
after no. Yeah, I mean you basically are. You did it.
You did it in a Honda fit. Google Honda Fit
people and see how small a card this is. I
(37:53):
will say, if you're planning on doing home birth, or
even if you're not, go to the chiropractor while you're pregnant.
Just at least get checked out in it up. You
don't necessarily have to get multiple treatments if they discover
nothing's wrong, but at least you checked. And that, my friends,
despite the fact we totally threw out the sixty seconds
(38:13):
at a time rule at a certain point is the
story of Maven and that has been We Knows Parenting.
You guys can find us online on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter
at we knows pod um. If you guys want to
(38:33):
contact us with questions or comments or any crazy birth stories,
we would love to hear them. You can email us
at we knows pot at gmail dot com, or you
can leave us a Google Voice message at three four
seven three eight four seven three. You can also find
that number in the descriptions in all of our social
(38:54):
media accounts or on our website, we knows parenting dot com,
and of course you can find Beth to myself on
Twitter on Twitter Twitter, it's a website. We're only twins
are allowed when on our instagrams. We have a lot
of funny videos of our children and we're gonna I'll
post the pictures of um Maven immediately after being born
(39:18):
in the Honda fit and us at at the Honda dealership.
Um so you can check those out. Check out the
Story Pirates podcast for all your kids family entertainment needs,
and we will see you next time by
Hello, and welcome back to another episode of We Knows Parenting.
I'm Peter McNerney Bethel real married couple with children, not experts.
That's the deal. That's what this show is all about.
Now this episode, Beth, this is a very special episode.
Well you can tell from the enthusiasm in Beth's voice
that this is a very special episode and that we're
(00:34):
going to break the rules in the format. The rules,
the rules, the strict rules we've set forth and the laws.
It's lawless over here. And we'll be honest. We're doing
this so we could go on vacation. We don't have
to record next week. Um, that is why this is happening.
But it's a really good idea. Um, now that I've
(00:54):
undercut the specialness of the why don't you tell people
what is happening? Oh my gosh, that's a good idea.
So in one of our very first episodes, we very
casually mentioned that Maven was born in a car, and
to the chagrin of several listeners who wrote in as
a real tease and a real did we have complaints
(01:17):
about that? We had at least one review and somebody
else was like, you can't drop something like that and
not explain it. But in our defense, we recorded sort
of a pilot for this show a while ago, and
we talked about that a lot, and then we recorded
over the other episodes and we just never ended up
releasing that early episode. Yeah, we we trashed a lot
of episodes because we started recording and then so in
(01:39):
our mind we had talked about it already. Yeah. It
also was an incredibly long and meandering episode and now
we're going to try to give it to you a
little more quickly. Yeah, and we got a fun game
that I'm explaining to Beth as it goes. So we've
told this story a lot and we've sort of got
it down, but there are differences in how we all
(02:00):
based on our perspective, as you might imagine, Yeah, based
on the fact that one of us um experienced this,
Like I said, different perspectives. So what I have if
it's unclear this episode is going to be about birth, Yes,
that's true and all the things connected to it. Okay,
(02:21):
bat So how this is gonna work is We're going
to take turns telling this story and we each get
exactly sixty seconds before the other person takes over the story. Okay,
do you want to start the story, because, as you mentioned,
this is more your story than mine, because you actually
did it and I was just there. Okay, alright, synchronize
(02:42):
your watches in three to one go Okay. So the
sale begins long ago, the year twenty fourteen. We uh
move up to Westchester firm, Brooklyn with the expectation that
we're about to have a baby. We manage to only
move up here one week before our son is born. Um.
(03:04):
We planned to do a home birth with the aid
of some very nice home birth midwives, with a also
additional backup plan of being able to go to a
hospital if necessary with these other midwives that they work
in concert with. So, Um, what happens is we go
see the movie Gardenings of the Galaxy at the movie
theater after we've finished painting three rooms of our apartment. Um,
(03:28):
good a bed that night, and I wake up in
the middle of the night and my water has broken. Uh.
What problem here is that once your water breaks, if
you're not having contractions, there's a risk of infection, which
leads us to believe that a home birth may not
be possible. So, more specifically, as a home birth might
be fine, but if anything goes wrong. The backup midwives
(03:50):
have a policy where they will not accept a transfer
uh if the water has broken twenty four hours before
labor started, So we didn't want to the all turnative
would mean that if anything went wrong for the home birth,
we would end up in the emergency room, which is
Beth's greatest nightmare. So we decided to go. After a
full day of trying to induce labor, which was not
(04:12):
successful through acupuncture and drinking castor oil. Um not me, Beth,
we decided to just go straight to plan B, which
is to go to the midwives at the birthing Center
in the Sleepy Hollow. So we drive there early in
the morning, We meet our doula, We get there, and
(04:35):
what begins is a very long uh and typical first
birth in in that uh uh it's it's it's more
difficult than than I would not say typical. It's um common,
it's common for births of you that long, but it's
(04:56):
not um always the case that it is somewhat of
a back labor, which means that the position of the
baby is not great. Um. We later realized um via
my dula and my subsequent birth that my hips were
not lined. One of my hips was like locked up,
which is the thing that happens to a lot of people,
(05:16):
and you wouldn't necessarily notice it's a problem unless you're
trying to squeeze a baby out of your hips. Um.
And so anyway, it was a very long, very incredibly
painful labor where Bryn was his head was pressing on
a nerve in my hip. Um. And the thing about
back labor is that it not only takes longer, but
it's more painful. And um, it's hell on earth. So
(05:41):
that labor happens. Bryn is born stubborn and big headed.
He's born at four thirty in the morning. And it's
exhausting because it's you know, you've had eighteen hours of labor.
Obviously more exhausting for Beth. I don't need to apply.
It was exhausting for me. Um. And uh so Brenda's
(06:03):
brand is born. We we learn a lot of things.
It's a big day. Your mind is blown. Uh. It's
an insane thing to go through too. I can't imagine
going through it myself. But witnessing nous is of course
life changing, and it's beautiful and we cried and all
of that, and suddenly we had a little baby boy,
(06:24):
and uh we took him home. So I want to
backtrack a little bit to say that moving to the
suburbs meant we needed to get a car, and uh,
luckily your family had an old Toyota Sienna that they
were going to get rid of in a twelve year
old minivan that they gave to us, and so we
suddenly had a car and that was fantastic. So cut
(06:45):
to I'm pregnant with our second child. Uh, this time around,
I'm talking to Madula, trying to avert the horrible labor
of the previous child, and she recommends going to a chiropracture,
which the chiropractor realizes my hip joints locked up, she
loosens it up. It's much easier to loosen your joints
up while you're pregnant because of the relaxing hormone that
(07:07):
loosens everything up in your body. So I'm feeling ready
and then are are What I have been telling Peter
for months is that we needed a new car. And
I specifically said we need to get a hon to
c RV and Peter said, no, we can't afford a car.
And I said, well, we have to get one because
our Mini Vandor is about to fall off, and I
don't want to have the door fall off in my
(07:28):
car when I'm driving two small children around. And he
continued to say, no, we can't afford it, and I
continue to say, well, we need a new car. And
then he takes our car in for inspection a week
before Maven is do and I'll tell you what happened.
First of all, we definitely could not afford a car, like, like,
in no universe could we afford any car. We had
(07:52):
no money like. This was a year where I thought
we were going to run out of money and I
didn't know what we're gonna do, and it was really stressful,
and Beth and I would fight about it, and she
was just optimistic. She said. I was like, we can't
afford a car. She's like, well, let's go look, the
universe will provide. I'm like, you're insane. We need money.
And so I take this car in for inspection a
week before Maven is born, and it fails the inspection.
(08:16):
And this woman says, I would not drive this with kids,
Like the wheels are literally going to fall off. So
to fix the car would be more money than buying
another like clunker. So I sell this thing for four
hundred dollars a week before my daughter is born, and
so I was like, Okay, we figure out how to
(08:36):
get to the hospital. So we borrow Beth's sisters Honda Fit,
which is like it's named very tiny, uh car. So then, um,
you know, this time around, we decided, you know, we're
just going to deliver with the midwiese at the hospital
birthing center. We're not going to bother with the homeborke
thing because our kids gonna be in the way. He's
(08:57):
gonna be whining, and it's we just didn't feel like
dealing with the gamble at this point. So we have
this plan in place where barring my sister's car, and um,
I think Maven was like about a week overdue. I
started having contractions. We uh, it's well, it's it's yeah,
(09:21):
we have this time right here. So we I started
having contractions around maybe like five or six pm at night.
I you do the usual thing where you try to
go to bed and get some rest because you don't
really know how long this labor is going to drag on.
You don't want to head to the hospital too soon
and wait around um and Peter goes peacefully to sleep. Well,
(09:44):
you just gave me five seconds because you keep jumping
in five secons just so well. I was just saying
before I thought was so funny is your parents came
like to help out for the pregnancy, and that your
mom had a certain amount of time off from work,
and Maven was so late that it just kept going
and it was an hour after they left to go
back to box. This is like a known thing that
(10:04):
women's bodies relax when they feel safe and comfortable. So
if you have people hovering around you, watching you, waiting
for you to go to labor, your body's like, no,
I'm not. They were literally gone for an hour and
you turned to me and you just went, oh yeah.
Your sister came over because to stay with branding case
(10:26):
that happened. So anyway, we're like, oh, okay, this might
something might be happening. Let's go to see sleep. And
as a dad, you're told like, get the rest early,
don't have you know they're gonna need you later. So
I took this note very well, almost too well. So
then Peter goes to sleep. I am moaning away next
(10:46):
to him all night long. He's sleeping, peaceful, peacefully. Um,
I was sort of enjoying the fact that I was
not being bothered. We had planned to have our dula
come over and labor with me before we went to
the hospital at all. And you know, Peter's sleeping, I'm moaning.
I was just sort of enjoying the fact that no
(11:06):
one was bothering me, So I didn't wake anyone up
for a while, um, And it was nice to be
left alone. And then, um, you know, it's like six am.
People are starting to wake up. I asked Peter to
call the midwives, um, to see if we should start
(11:26):
hating the hospital because things are getting pretty serious. And
he said, hold on, I gotta take a quick shower.
And then, uh, so are we have our dually come
over trying to help us out? Peter's taking over freeze.
This is where this is a contentious part of the
story about the timing of things, because I do not remember,
like you definitely did not say call the midwives, and
(11:47):
I responded, well, I'm gonna take a shower first. There
was we were timing contractions and they were nowhere close
to where they said they should be. When we should call.
So I took a shower. I'm gonna I'm gonna assume
that you're correct on the time. You didn't time any
contractions at that point, Yeah, okay, let's say that I didn't,
(12:09):
and I think that I did. After the shower, we
were certainly timing contractions and they were not long. They
weren't long enough for the guidelines that they were given,
like this is when you should call, and when you
should worry is when this happens. And that never happened.
And but we called the duela and she's like, yeah,
you know, I think I'll come over. It's probably I'll
(12:32):
come on over. And then before the doueler shows up,
your water breaks, like right before. So okay. One thing
that happened with Bryan was I was in labor for
eighteen hours and then I was like feeling like a
literal dead person in the hospital, and Peter, you didn't
feel like walking to the cafeteria of the hospital, so
(12:52):
you decided to eat off of my hospital after I
had not, you know, eaten or drank in eighteen hours.
So I was pretty annoyed by that. Um And then
I tried to prepare you for this labor, saying, I
need you to be focused on me. I need you
to focus on time and the contractions because I'm going
to be in labor. I'm going to be out of
(13:13):
my mind. You need to be on top of this stuff.
And you said, yeah, yeah, yea, yeah, of course, it's
crazy that you're even accusing me of ever not being
on top of these things. I'm perfect, man. So then, uh,
you didn't wake up a single time in the middle
and night, you gotten the shower before timing my contractions
(13:37):
in the morning, your time is okay. So you try
to have it both ways on this all the time
when you tell the story, which is you're like, Peter
slept through the whole thing. He wasn't paying attention to
me at all. And then you're like, it was so
nice to be alone and not have anyone bugging me.
So for a few this is my time. I didn't
(13:57):
talk during yours, and so so that I think that
was more beneficial to you than the opposite. Anyway, it
was my job at time the contractions, and I did
and again they were never as long as I was
told to wait before we called, and we called people,
blah blah blah. The water breaks and we go, oh,
oh God, is this water breaks? And I go to
(14:19):
get like a pH balance strip um because obviously it
was the water had broken. But then the doorbell rings
and it's the doula and uh. Before this we called
the midwives and they were like, uh, should we come in?
And they're like yeah, should we wait for the doulah
or come straight in? They're like, ah, you got time
wait for the doula. Okay. What I will say is
(14:39):
that no woman I know would sleep through another person
laboring next to them for like a full eight hours
and not get up at some point to check in
and time some contractions. Anyway, what happened was our Dula,
who is very lovely, walks in the front door as
my waters breaking and I had put on an adult
diaper as one is when your water breaks, and she
(15:02):
walked in as this is happening, and I had like
a severe contraction with a lot of um things coming
out of me. So I decided to change the diaper
into a fresh diaper. As she was walking in the door,
she saw me pulling this disgusting diaper off my body
and she, as a lovely Austrian woman, she goes oh,
(15:23):
we need to go. So we run as fast as
I can hobble outside to the car. Sylvie gets in
the car with us. I I didn't realize at this
point that I had been fully dilated to what was happening.
That was my water and your your water had been
(15:43):
holding Maybn in and so the second that thing broke,
that baby was right down in the shoot. She ready
to come out. So Sylvie says, okay, to be So
by walking out of the car, this is what I'm
doing at this point is just shimmying Maven's head further
and further down the birth canal because there's literally nothing
(16:05):
holding her in at this point. Um. So then we
get in the car. You get into the car and
Sylvie has you be on your knees facing out the back,
so you're behind me. I'm driving, She's next to you,
and you're on your knees facing outward. We get we
started driving and we have a twenty five minute drive
ahead of us to this birthing center. Five minutes down
(16:26):
the road. I hear you in the back say I
want to push, and Sylvie says, do not push. Yeah,
So again this is like means I want to push
as some people who have been in labor will know.
It's not like a conscious decision. It was like my
body was like it's time to push. And so then
at this point, I um didn't even push a single
(16:48):
time with this labor, which is kind of insane. I
just had a contraction that kind of like shot Maven's
head out of my body, and so her head was
kind of hanging out of my body. Are ulias? Sylvie
pulled my pajama pants down to expose her and uh. Peter,
still driving, turns around from the back seat looks looks
(17:09):
are beat red daughter in the face as she's hanging
out of my butt, and he says, should I pull over? Uh?
So our doula is like, yes, pull over. So at
this point we call up the midwives, get them on
speaker phone for Sylvie. So they're walking her through, just
like checking to make sure the cords on around the neck,
blah blah blah. Peter gets out of the car to
(17:32):
call nine one one while Sylvie is on speaker phone
with the midwives. So I call nine one one and
there's this whole thing. You and I are shockingly calm,
like even when I said, like, should I pull over.
It was the earnest I was like, should I pull over?
Is that the right thing to do? And I call
nine one one and I was so weirdly polite. I
was like, Hi, my name is Peter McNerney. My wife
(17:56):
is giving birth to a baby in our car right now.
We're outside the School of Rock in uh Mamaronack, New York.
And like, oh, we'll be right there. The I get
back in the car after this very short phone call,
I look in the backseat and Beth is holding Maven
in her arms. I then just pull out my phone
(18:22):
and I take a picture and it is a bizarre,
beautiful moment. I will say, just it's yeah, it's beautiful.
But also my first memory of Maven was seeing a
glob of ship on her face in the back seat.
We were woefully unprepared to give birth in a car.
We had like one towel with us, so we're like,
(18:44):
Maven's wrapped into towel. It's a mess. It's my sister's car,
So it's very funny that we've made an enormous mess
of the back seat. Um, you know, Sylvie is a mess.
She's been delivering this baby. Um, the police show up,
and uh, this officer turns to you and says, I
(19:06):
heard somebody's having a baby in here. And you gesture
to the car and say, we took care of it,
as if you did anything. Um, and then uh, the
E m T s pull up, which is really what
appeared to be one e m T And then like
two young boy E m t s in training who
(19:27):
then approached the car to see me naked from the
waist down holding a baby, and they're like wide eyed.
Put a blanket around me to get me into the ambulance,
and maybe it's still attached to me via the umbilical cord,
which weirdly is sort of like the home birth I
always dreamt of, except inside of a cop. So a
couple of things. One that cop gave me a high five,
(19:48):
and I was jokingly saying we took care of it.
Obviously I did, had nothing to do with it. But
we'll say after the baby was born. That was only
then did I see how tense Sylvie was and I
realized it. We were so calm, like, oh, that was easy,
because we're just so ignorant about how dangerous that can be.
And it was only afterwards that I was like, oh,
(20:09):
that was intense. So you guys get in the ambulance.
You started driving. I started following in this destroyed cond
of fit, and it's ten minutes down the road. They're
taking us to a different hospital than ours. Ten minutes
down the road I'm following. That's when I finally start
to calm down, Like the adrenaline hits and I burst
into tears all by myself for like two minutes, and
(20:33):
then clean myself up before we get to the hospital. Okay,
So I resent the implication that I was ignorant of
what could go wrong in a birth, since I had
been researching this heavily for multiple years. Um, what was
happening to me was that my body was coursing with
major hormones because a life changing moment was happening. I
(20:56):
was creating life on Earth. So no, I wasn't ignorant
of what I could go wrong. I was just operating
on like an animal instinct. Um that. So I got
into the ambulance with Sylvie, and then at that point,
I just as covered in ship and blood. Was could
not have been happier because my labor was over, and
(21:19):
my first labor with Brand was so incredibly long and excruciating.
All I could think about was how happy I was
to have a baby outside of me that appeared to
be healthy and safe. And uh, I was so glad
to avoid the hospital. I avoided all the annoying parts
of the hospital where people are probing you and injecting
you and doing all the things you don't want to
(21:41):
deal with. So we arrived at the hospital and they
wheel her straight into a delivery room where she delivers
the placenta um which went without incident. And there is
a danger too when you have a really quick birth
that the your uterus, which goes through this natural sort
of shrinking period after birth. If you're birth really fast,
(22:06):
it's sort of can leave room. There's a danger of bleeding,
dangerous level of bleeding. And so they had to make
sure that was okay. And so they were massaging her
um abdomen and delivered the will send to no no issues. Yeah,
I mean they did um find like a big blood
cloud in there, but that's pretty standard. I think they
(22:26):
like do they do this uterus massage after you give birth,
When you think you're finally done being in pain, they
rub your stomach harder than you've ever had anyone rub
your stomach. That's very painful and apparently necessary. Um, but
everything was great. And so then we're sitting there in
a hospital thinking to ourselves, Wow, we thought were in
(22:47):
for maybe like a whole day of this and it's
over and we're so happy. And I'm kind of a
laughing to myself because not only did we lose our
car a week prior to this, but we've now destroyed
a second car. So I was kind of amused. And
that's when I tweeted. I decided to tweet at Honda
and say, uh, Honda, I just gave birth in the
(23:10):
back of a Honda a Honda fit. It's a mess.
Can I have a free car? Can I have a
new one? Can I have a new car? A new one?
Which is a really funny tweet? And Beth Well and
true Beth fashion, you know, didn't tell me she did this.
We're sitting in a recovery room for the next couple
of days. You know, you spent a lot of time
on your phone because you're killing time. And also we're
(23:32):
well rested compared to last time you were well arrested.
I had not slept the night before because I was
in labor compared the baby compared to the time before,
you were in much better shape than you were after Bread,
like you were awake. Sure, but I mean to describe
me as well arrested when I hadn't slept that night before.
(23:53):
You're absolutely right, yes, yes, yes, I was well arrested.
So it was decidedly uh, calmer in that room, less
emotional than the previous time. So we're on social media.
I post the picture of Beth holding may Ben immediately
after she's born, and I announced that this has happened.
(24:16):
And uh, I started, of course, getting a ton of
likes that I posted on Facebook, and I'm just doing,
you know, on an unhealthy way, just refreshing the likes
all day. And then hours passed and I tell Beth,
I'm like, Beth, I'm thinking I'm going to get a
thousand likes on Facebook. That's crazy. Uh and uh and
then that's when you turn to me and go, oh, yeah,
I tweeted about this well ago and it has thirty
(24:39):
five thousand retweets. I was like, what, yeah, so, uh,
some comedy friends had retweeted it and it had sort
of like gone viral. So then we were like in
the hospital getting all like getting like pressed requests, like
people I know and like other random websites were calling,
(25:02):
asking for interviews, asking for like photos of the baby
and stuff, and we were so it was just so
funny and they were and everyone's like, so is Hannah
giving you a car? And we're kind of like, I
don't think so, Like that wasn't that wasn't like really
the goal as much as it was like a joke,
Like I don't think if you had asked me at
the time, I wouldn't have been like, yeah, we're definitely
(25:23):
getting a car out of this um, but yeah, of
course not, because that's insane. Uh So we start getting,
uh a lot of people commenting on these things, and
then once the things go viral, we start getting these
absurdly nasty, stupid comments things like, uh, look at that,
(25:45):
Like that's not a cute baby. It looks like a
rotten mango, Like what the funk is wrong with that? Dad?
Why didn't he stop driving when he took that picture?
And so then there's there's articles about it, and then
there's articles about people missing interpreting the other articles. There's
one article that says a woman gives birth in car
jokingly asked for a new one. Joke goes over the
(26:07):
head of Internet urals. So then we get a call
from a corporate Honda and they're kind of like, we're
not going to give you a free car, but we
think this is cute. We're gonna give you, uh, like
a rental car. We're going to clean out this Honda
for you. And what they did was they took my
sister's car into the dealership. They replaced the backseat, they
(26:29):
did it, gave it a cleaning, which was thousands of
dollars in damage. Yeah, and they in the meantime, they
replaced her air bags that had been recalled and she
was like on a wait list for that, so she
kind of lucked out. And they give us a very
swanky rental car. Yeah, and they gave they gave us
a rental car with like a couple of big boxes
of diapers in it. They were very nice. But at
this point, so we go so this all happens, like
(26:52):
we communicate them while we're still in the hospital, and
it's blows our minds that that they reached out to us. Uh,
it was like so cool. It was more obviously more
than we expected. Uh. And then we go home, we
get that car, I get that car sorted out, they come,
they give us the rental, they take that and that's
all amazing. And then we're home for two days when
(27:15):
we get another tweet. But at this point I had
been saying to Peter, like, I it's not that I
that's what I expect them to get a car, but like,
I just didn't think that this whole situation happened without
a reason, especially because I had been saying for months, like,
we're going to get a car. So I kind of
was like, you know, it's just weird to me that
they didn't give us a car, because it feels like
(27:37):
because happening for a reason. And of course, if you
listen to this podcast, you know that I wasn't listening
to that at all, because that's it was nonsense. And
so two days later, we're home and I'm like, well,
we still don't have a car. We can't afford one,
but I haven't had time to focus on it because
(27:58):
we have a baby. And Laza Honda in Brooklyn tweets
at Beth and says Beth Newell, asking you shall receive
We would like to offer you a free three year
lease on a brand new Honda CRV. So at this
point we're like, is this a joke? Are they just
trying to cash in on this and like get some
(28:19):
publicity or something. But uh, it's very very funny because
for months I had literally been telling Peter, we need
to get a Honda c RV with what money? With
the Universe's money. Uh So then uh, we get on
the phone with these guys. They're like, hey, one of
our employees had this great idea where we give you
a free car, and then he got us all on
(28:41):
board with it, and um, you know, we're just like
really happy to be able to do this for you guys.
We love the story. Blah blah blah. So uh pretty exciting.
We take like a two week old baby and or
toddler all the way down to Brooklyn. So we're in
Westchester and they're like, would you mind coming down and
maybe take a some pictures? And I'm like, I'm a
(29:02):
commercial actor. I am not above this at all. So
I take my whole family down to Brooklyn. As much
as I don't want to try to do my hair
and make up when I'm two weeks postpartum, I'll do
it for a free car. Um. So we yeah, we
get ourselves all dolled up. We go to Brooklyn, but
we get there. You're taking my time and we get
there and uh, you know, it's a free car. It
(29:25):
still takes a couple hours, which is pretty intense with
a brand new baby, but normally buying a car, which
I hear takes a very long time. I told us
when we were sitting there, like they were like, this
process usually takes like eight hours or something. Crazy. I
just can't imagine. It took us less than two. We
paid the taxes, uh and um, you know, like eight
(29:48):
hundred bucks, and then we signed to this this lease
and we have this car. They took a bunch of
adorable photos of Brand holding the keys to his new
car and being a cute little toddler. Uh, this is
the part where we should have brought someone else with
us to do this. But we then had to leave
a dealership and drive back to Westchester in two separate
(30:11):
cars with me with a very small baby in the back.
Do you know what? We made it and we got
home and for me in the So we have this
Honda c RV. We've had it for two years. We
have one more year on this free lease, and then
we can either give this car back or we can
buy it. And in that time we are now in
(30:33):
a situation where buying this car is not an insane thing.
At the time, like we were, this was a thing
that would have ruined us to like need to buy
a car, we couldn't afford it at all. And then
since then the universe gave us exactly what we needed.
(30:53):
And then when we need to buy this car, we're
going to be okay, We'll be able to do it.
And now I have no more argument. Logic is not
a thing. She she respects it even less in some ways.
I will say, like both times I was pregnant, towards
the end, I feel like you, I would like to
try to stress me out about money stuff, which is
(31:14):
like not a good thing, not a good thing to
do to someone who's nine months pregnant. And it's just
like raging with hormones um and carrying around like a
huge watermelon belly all the time. But I at some
point he was the very end of parmees. I was
in the grocery store and this man walked by and
he and I think I was like a little bit
stressed but he was like, babies bring blessings, and he
(31:35):
just walked by, and I was like, this feels like
a sign. Like there's just like weird things that have
happened with both these both births where I've just been like,
what that's crazy. Yeah, I had the same thing, like
the you know, I'm an actor in addition to all
the other weird things that I do, and and a
big part of what I do during the week is
(31:58):
I go to auditions, mostly commercial auditions, which are you know,
fine whatever. You book a commercial and it's really great
money for a day's work. And uh, I got a
commercialation a long time ago, and I went on tetitions
for years and barely never ever really booked anything because
I was a twenty two year old who looked thirty.
And the second Brin was born. Uh, right after that happened,
(32:23):
I booked a Super Bowl commercial and suddenly had healthcare
through through SAG and and like it's that I don't
believe in any of this stuff, but boy, it's it's
getting harder to not when the universe goes oh. Because
I was always so stressed about money because I'm like, Beth,
look at this graph. We're out of money in three months,
(32:46):
and your reaction it would be this like, I don't
want to think about it. You're just trying to stress
me out. I'm like, what are we gonna do? And
I understand, like obviously I'm making a pregnant woman stressed,
but I I was so freaked out and I've felt
like I was like alone in this and uh and
then it all just like we didn't change, nothing really changed,
(33:09):
and it worked out. I mean this is not true
for everybody. I mean, of course not, but for us,
um oh boy. I'll also say when we were driving
to hospital to have BRNN, I was very stressed, bad
(33:32):
about the fact that we had to go to the
hospital because I didn't want to go to the hospital.
And on the drive to the hospital, there was like
a rainbow above us, which was kind of weird because
it wasn't really a very like rainy day or anything.
And then also a crane flew by overhead, which is
like looks remarkably like a stork, and I was just like,
(33:53):
it feels like these are positive signs, like it's going
to be okay. And then when I was in labor
with May then I was seeing flashes of images in
my mind of like birds and airplanes, and I was like,
I feel like she's telling me she's just going to
fly out of me. And I was like, that's connection.
(34:17):
I well, because I had been telling my friend Erica,
who does who does Buddhist chance she chanced specifically four
things as part of her specific like sect of Buddhism,
and I was joking with her and my friends. I
was like, Erica, will you just like chant for this
baby to just like slide right out of me? Because
the first labor was so painful. So then like when
(34:38):
I was seeing those images, I was like, oh, I
think she's really just going to fly out, and I
and I had the thought like I wonder if she's
going to be born in the car. But then I
was just so crazy out of my mind and labor
that I just moved on. You know. My favorite part
thinking back of all this, that's there's so many favorite parts,
(34:59):
but one thing they really sticks out is again, we
went through this process and it was so fast that
of course it was exciting and it was emotional and
it was weird, but we didn't really have space and
obviously again we're in very different mental headspaces during this,
(35:20):
but there's adrenaline in both of us and it is
sort of like, what are we doing? What we have
to do? And for me, I'll just speak for myself.
For me, it was like and it was no, because
for me it was okay, We're okay, the core is
not around the neck. That's fine, let's pull over. I'll
call nine one one. We're here. Great, high they've taken
care of We're in the ambulance. We delivered the placenta. Cool,
We're in the waiting room. And I was like, all right, great,
(35:41):
and then I start it's when I call my family
and I start telling the story. It was specifically when
I called my brother Andrew and I was like, well,
I would like to introduce you to your niece. Maven
Grace McNerney was born in the parking lot of the
School of Rock this morning at seven thirty, in the
back of a car. And he goes what and he
(36:03):
flips out like and that, and I was so taken aback.
I was like, whoa, it's not that weird, and that
was about it. I was like, no, this is very weird.
The funny thing to me, I think, is like for
people who haven't been in labor, and even some people
who have the idea of giving birth in a car
is horrifying to them because they start thinking of everything
go wrong and that it's like scared to you. But
(36:24):
to me, having been in labor, my ideal is to
not be in labor anymore, no matter what is happening.
So the idea that you give birth in the car,
it's like, sure, it's bad if there's complications, but the
fact that the baby comes on the car is just
a blessing because the baby has come out. Don't plan
(36:45):
on it, you know, if something goes wrong, it's not
a good place to be. But if it goes perfectly
and you only had to leave your house for five minutes,
that was a big win for us. I just think
it's funny because people assume that when if they hear
me off and say, they assume it was like a
very stressful experience, and I'm like, no, it was great.
It was so great. I really I really recommend it.
(37:11):
I don't recommend it, but I do enjoy that it
has happened. Um, I really recommend midwives, I highly highly
recommend doulas. I don't recommend home birth. I didn't want
that you did want that, but it was your birth,
so I obviously was gonna talk you out of it,
(37:31):
but I was really happy we ended up where they
were saying at the hospital though after this labor they
were like, you'd be an excellent candidate for home birth
after no. Yeah, I mean you basically are. You did it.
You did it in a Honda fit. Google Honda Fit
people and see how small a card this is. I
(37:53):
will say, if you're planning on doing home birth, or
even if you're not, go to the chiropractor while you're pregnant.
Just at least get checked out in it up. You
don't necessarily have to get multiple treatments if they discover
nothing's wrong, but at least you checked. And that, my friends,
despite the fact we totally threw out the sixty seconds
(38:13):
at a time rule at a certain point is the
story of Maven and that has been We Knows Parenting.
You guys can find us online on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter
at we knows pod um. If you guys want to
(38:33):
contact us with questions or comments or any crazy birth stories,
we would love to hear them. You can email us
at we knows pot at gmail dot com, or you
can leave us a Google Voice message at three four
seven three eight four seven three. You can also find
that number in the descriptions in all of our social
(38:54):
media accounts or on our website, we knows parenting dot com,
and of course you can find Beth to myself on
Twitter on Twitter Twitter, it's a website. We're only twins
are allowed when on our instagrams. We have a lot
of funny videos of our children and we're gonna I'll
post the pictures of um Maven immediately after being born
(39:18):
in the Honda fit and us at at the Honda dealership.
Um so you can check those out. Check out the
Story Pirates podcast for all your kids family entertainment needs,
and we will see you next time by
We Knows Parenting News
Hosts And Creators
Beth Newell
Peter McNerney
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