LSD
Illustrations by Marta Zubieta, video reading performed by Lauren Singer
Ms. Zubieta's art was selected for the cover of the Best of the Net Anthology 2022
Hello, MamaNationer family—and visitors! Thank you
so much for spending a few moments at our little internet hearth:
It's time to stop my awful teasing
(sorry, just that eccentric streak of mine jutting through the pocket!)
and give you all the facts of
beautiful baby Liam's birth.
Now,
The nature of his birth may be *controversial* for some—
Chad (my hubby and "fifth child", we ladies like to say! for those unfamiliar) and I
ask only that you keep an open mind
As I open my mind to you!
- PART 1 -
We judge the conception of our sweet boy LIAM SYDNEY-DORIAN
As the 9th of March, 2018—
during that big snow storm / outage? We remember, the lights went out on us midway!
(Lyndon, veteran readers remember, was a newborn himself at the time)
It took us a few WEEKS before we started to piece the clues together—oh, boy!
"Chelsea is super hungry!"
"Her milk supply is dropping!"
I mean, gee!
I hadn't gotten my period since having Lyndon!
What, did I give originals of my brain cells to those three kiddos of mine
Instead of carbons?
Boy, did I miss the mark!
"Could it be that I'm pregnant again???" (Like I had to ask!)
"Surely not!"
Well, as you might have guessed, I was pregnant, again! Oh my!
Don't get the wrong idea, reader: pregnancy's a dream.
It's the greatest gift of womanhood!
Unless the Almighty blesses you with a big pair...
But He didn't see me fit, so this is it!
What I mean is, it's that labor process that's so darn rough.
See, typically, I labor a long time,
sticking out a big chunk of the thing at home,
(I mean time, not poking-out baby parts)
Because we like to think whatever the stamina hormones are
get into the fetus and vaccinate him,
So to speak,
Against sissy-ness. Maybe that's silly!
No, only when things get really intense, do we head to the hospital
(Then, or when we run out of towels—whichever's first!)
But I mean to say, reader, I wanted something
special
For baby #4.
Something new!
Now, we've been holding this blog post for a while,
dangling its release on Instagram like real devils (#sorryNOTsorry)
Because we wanted to get the story & details just right
And, if you remember, Chad and I—
We asked on Insta (@mamanation_official)
Can you guess what was different about Liam's birth?
In the caption of the post where he's wearing that certain cheeky onesie...
Well, well, WELL, can you say "impressed"? Chad and I were so impressed with the
Manifold of you
(that means "lots"—it was on Milly's toddler vocabulary building cards!)
who took note of the tie-dye pattern on Liam's onesie and correctly guessed "what was different"!
Yes, in the end,
we decided to bring little Liam into this world while his mother "tripped" on "acid"
Drank the "kool-aid"
Used "blotter paper"! Can you believe some of these euphemisms?
My, those acidheads do come up with them!
Even now, the joy of that day and the special circumstances of his birth are
commemorated in Liam's initials!
(50 internet points to the reader who can remember his full name and put it in the comments!
No peeking!!!)
Our son was born December 5th, while his mama—me!—
Tripped her TAIL off on
LYSERGIC ACID DIETHYLAMIDE
Better known as L. S. D.
It was the wildest day of my life, and I'm excited to share it with you!
- PART 2 -
You may be wondering,
"How? Why? Huh?"
Well, I'll tell you: my mother and Chad's mom (hey Cathy!) sputtered a similar noise pattern.
To be totally honest, they were scared witless!
Then again, they're a pair of silly old ladies—sorry!
I mean, eggshells in omelettes are enough to send them spinning!
But we'll tell you just what we told those two:
Some of the physical effects of LSD include:
INCREASED BLOOD PRESSURE
FAST HEART RATE
DILATED PUPILS
(Sound familiar? Boy, do I look at some of my fellow Fast Mart shoppers with fresh eyes!)
Really, though, it's all about the physiological effects
On December 8th, 22 hours before Liam gulped his first breath
I consumed the flesh of the fungi.
My first trip ever!
The WHY is a longer story—I don't think even I totally understand why I did it.
Is that weird? Guess that makes me weird!
It was just that,
after learning I was pregnant for the fourth time, I started thinking about my three little joy-bundles
And then about labor
And then what really made labor hard
And that, those ice chips did jack-all.
(Brain freeze X childbirth? Male doctors, am I right?)
I remembered a little about the common effects of LSD from an old roommate
And it wasn't long after that I started thinking about this idea
of giving birth with it in my back pocket!
The Lord is a fine guide and all, but,
Sometimes you can go to bed when you're sleepy,
Sometimes you need to pop a few pills!
What I mean is, a little artifice never hurt nobody!
Now, the primary change that occurs in an LSD high seems to be
(as this blog will make CRYSTAL clear)
in attitude and perception:
Instead of being overly concerned about the pain occurring in your body,
LSD should make you become involved in the process of helping the baby be born
A rhythm, shall we say, is established—
The 95% of pain which is psychological
dwindles in importance—
And this new rhythm doesn't require the mental,
~ intellectual ~
understanding of *you* as the mother
Cool, huh? Uh-huh!
Lovely readers: that's the technical reason we did it.
(and, I saved the deliberation process to my "family" story on Instagram, which just went live,
if you want a glimpse into the mayhem!
Wait for snippet 93 to see the decision)
But, also, I thought it would be,
like...
Alright:
Taking LSD sounds beautiful, and I thought,
"Childbirth can be beautiful, too,"
And I wanted to...
Try to see what would happen if I did it. You know?
I thought it would be beautiful—and luckily, it was:
I was just doing this thing and I was
giving birth and nothing else made any difference and
that's what I was doing, and I did a good job evidently,
because it went well and it was groovy.
- PART 3 -
First thing I remember about going into labor, it was nine o'clock in the morning
I had trouble sleeping the previous evening,
So I smoked a lot of grass from about 10pm-11pm—
Chad got a good deal on it when he picked up the LSD!
Turns out, I had been in labor all night long.
Evidently, I was very relaxed, so I just couldn't tell.
But my ass, as it were, WAS GRASS!
It was Chad who finally realized what was up when I told him
That I was feeling "off"
I always want coffee in the morning, but that morning, it didn't look good to me.
I said,
"Chad, my stomach is feeling weird."
So he took a look.
Later, he told me that he could SEE the contractions
that I couldn't FEEL as they came and went
And, they were really close together.
(that's when I ate my LSD flakes,
On top of some leftover fajitas from a muy bueno local Mexican place)
Chad took the fastest shower ever,
I didn't even attempt one—
Boy, did that high come fast!
Instead, I just lay in the fetal position on my bed.
As Chad was packing the overnight bag,
He told me to put on some shoes and that
He'd come help me get down the stairs.
So I made it to the bathroom, where I laid down on the floor—
(The whole thing was totally unsterile, I guess)
but all I could think about what that I was lost in the floor-length infinity mirror,
With those make-up lights and that paisley wallpaper staring at me
I knew what was real and fake, I guess,
But in my mind, all of a sudden,
I was cuddling with Taylor Swift and Emma Watson.
Man, was I worried they didn't like my taco seasoning-breath!
Then every molecule of DNA in my body
Became sentient across all of human evolution, and future evolution,
And into distant galaxies,
While I crawled from neuron to neuron in my brain
Trying to pinpoint the exact moment I lost conscious thought.
Reader, when an LSD junkie tells you all colors get stronger,
They MEAN all colors get stronger
The toilet bowl...
So white, like we had just cleaned it
Or like it had never known the kids' Everything But The Kitchen Sink Casserole
And, my perception of time was really off
I thought I had spent an hour looking at the toilet bowl
(Chad later told me it couldn't have been more than five minutes)
Afterwards, he was like, Man, I really was worried about you for a while!
GEE, HONEY! THANKS!
Honestly, time was a blur.
I can't express enough that time was completely nonexistent
I was in a loop forever
Contraction,
baby kick,
Touching colors. Gloopy gloop colors. Squish them with my paws, I thought
To make the whole scenario stranger, I then encounter a man
(it was Chad, I know now)
And I am crying hysterically because I believe in my LSD stupor that I am
being carried away into another universe
The trip took a peculiar turn as "the man"
Pinned me down to on the bed
(Ow, Chad!)
To stop me kicking around
and rang an ambulance
Now, for those readers who don't know, at some point in every trip,
Faces are not okay to look at.
They are freaky and weird and just not okay.
So I'm looking at this man's face and,
suddenly,
All his skin disappears and I'm looking at a red skull,
and it clearly sees me freaking out
And then we're both freaking out
The trip then became about accepting my mortality as a human being
in the presence of this skull demon
And not being scared anymore.
I just stood up with all my courage and said to skull:
"I'm NOT SCARED OF DYING,"
And the skull takes me by the wrist and we walk down the stairs and out of the house
"IF I HAVE DIED AND THIS IS DEATH,"
I confide to it,
"THEN I WILL CONTROL IT BY LAYING UNDER THAT TREE OVER THERE"
As you can guess, reader, I didn't gain the power to control death,
Because Chad wouldn't let me go under the tree.
Then something changes—we're in an ambulance now
And everyone's voice is scrambled and I can't understand a
word they're saying to me
I had to sign a bunch of papers, which was pretty much a blackout
(I think I just scribbled some lines on each one)
And it got even blurrier after that
And I remember the skull and the other people in the ambulance
—which, by the way, was huge and impressive—
strapping me to a stretcher bed to keep me from bolting into the wilderness
Skull keeps telling me that I am NOT going anywhere,
For my own safety,
And I tell him again
"I AM NOT SCARED ANYMORE,
I HAVE TO DIE UNDER THAT TREE—
UNDER THAT TREE-
UNDER THAT TREE..."
"I have to die under THAT tree and have the earth take me,
death is not so bad."
Even now, I don't know how the people in the ambulance held me down:
I could feel that my precision, positioning, dodging ability and awareness were so immensely enhanced.
The only thing I couldn't do right was pooping, which I suddenly felt like doing.
(I do not recommend pooping on hallucinogens of any kind, readers.)
(Just so much wrong and no way to rationalize it.)
I guess everyone was happy it was impossible, but it really riled me up to be stifled like that,
because as soon as the ambulance stopped, I realized I needed to get to another dimension.
To get there, I thought,
"I must run full speed at the sliding emergency bay entrance doors
And throw myself onto the ground."
But the paramedics kept hold of my arms
and my legs! When'd you get down there, pal???
After three of four failed attempts to dimension-transcend,
I decide the reason I wasn't going anywhere was that I wasn't accelerating fast enough.
(Really, I just wasn't moving.)
I spit in the paramedics' faces so they would loosen their hold on me,
Which they do,
And I charge into the entrance bay.
But I am soon surrounded by several cops.
I then make the decision to Jackie Chan their asses.
Sadly, I have no skills.
During the mêlée, though,
I get hold of one of those shoulder walkie-talkies and request help:
"Help me, Obi Wan! Help me!"
But Obi doesn't come and
I start to tear up at the revelation that not everything I see in the movies
can be believed.
I'm cuffed soon after, "for my own safety"
(Little do they know, I'm sheathed by a ring of celestial energy, making me indestructible)
But,
I believe I can slip out of them if I can switch wrists with the fetus inside me—
(the first time I thought about Liam since leaving the house!)
This doesn't work on any level.
Chad tells me I then began to
Inform the police officers repeatedly,
"I will suck your dick if you let me go"
(He doesn't like that part of the day because
I didn't offer him the same deal when I thought he was the skull demon.
Excited for THAT conversation tonight... AGAIN!)
Next thing I know, I've woken up in the hallway,
Strapped to a new rolling bed,
I can't see over my stomach so
I occupy myself looking at posters on the hospital walls
And I can't get one phrase out of my head, so I ask the nurse wheeling me a bunch of times:
"Does lysergic acid cross the placenta?"
"Does lysergic acid cross the placenta?"
"Does lysergic acid cross the placenta?"
The nurse says something like, yes, it will enter through the bloodstream to the baby
Then she says
(under her breath, but by this point the LSD has given me supersonic hearing)
that "it's selfish to induce this LSD effect on another being without their consent."
I disagree but I don't have my fists free to punch that opinion out of her, so I stay pretty still.
Soon, they get me to a big room with these bright headlights on the ceiling
And the doctor tells me the baby is under stress.
(Now, on the side of hospital beds,
they give you a button to push if you start feeling pain,
So I shoot the fetus a couple squirts
And proceed to tell the doctor that Liam has been helped.)
But the doc said no, we needed to get Liam out as quickly as possible
He said that they were going to use forceps to pull him out
Which were freezing cold and gave me this feeling that I wanted to be naked—
Didn't want anything to touch me,
So I squinched my hips to muscle out the clamps,
And the doc kept saying,
"Good, good, good pushing!"
I just wanted to be free but then I was still freezing and I was pushing all my core heat to the area
Where the clamps were and so now I'm even colder.
Must have screamed out I'M FREEZING because soon they were putting
Blankets on me,
Or pillows under me, don't remember.
I'm pretty sure I told the nurse I loved her
But then I felt so smothered I couldn't move
So I spat on her hands and cursed her children and grandchildren.
And I thought to myself,
"Gosh,
This is going to go on till midnight!"
But Chad came in with those goddamned ice chips and transmitted to me telepathically,
"Are you kidding, you're going to have him in no time!"
You know, speaking of Chad,
They told me I would want him to rub my back and things like that, but I didn't.
Mostly, I just wanted to see what was going on, so I sat up a little for a better look
The head started to come out and I sat up even straighter:
"I want to see this; I want you to see this!" I told everyone in the room.
I told the nurse to go find more people so we could all look.
- PART 4 -
I don't know what happened next exactly,
But from then on it was beautiful
And the birth itself was beautiful
It was the greatest
I can't remember any pain at all
It was just insane, it was so beautiful
We have some photos of us right after the birth
He was right there on the bed with me and I was just looking at him
The whole room was still so bright
But I went from seeing very beautiful lime green clouds in the ceiling
And strong colors everywhere,
To my son,
And a radio somewhere was on and I could hear it,
But I could also kind of see it
Like it was playing on my son's face
With the photos, though,
You can see how I'm smiling and
You can see that I'm alive
and alert
and aware
That's the way mothers feel after birth in the animal kingdom, I know
The doctor said that he thought the LSD made me more like an animal,
more like a human animal.
And I said to him, it sure did, it sure did, it sure did.
Last, I remember the drive home
with Liam there
and I could see the stars more clearly than ever
...
Please enjoy this reading of "LSD" by Lauren Singer, assistant judge of the Wergle Flomp Humor Poetry Contest:
