7
JULIA
Giving birth was terrible. Terrible, really, wasn’t enough to describe it. A better term might be crushing, for despite what Julia claimed in interviews she had barely prepared for birth, had not gone to any of the breathing courses, and it wasn’t the sort of thing about which stories were swapped at Sun Valley (at least in her sessions), so she’d been unprepared for the pain that engulfed her. Twenty hours of excruciating labor because she had wanted to do it naturally, did not want chemicals sullying her precious baby, the useless doula waving essential oils, massaging her back with a gnat’s strength – upon which Julia had shoved the mantra-chanting Autumn to the side and screamed for the epidural. The anesthesiologist finally arriving after a seeming eternity, some humorless N
