WHERE’S MY AWARD?
How to Get Baby Barf out of a Red Carpet and Other Tales
from a Working Mom in Hollywood
by Margot Black

Print ISBN: 978-0-99695-050-3

eBook ISBN: 978-0-99695-051-0

© 2015 Margot Black. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

To my husband Rob and our son Jett – You are my happy place. Thanks for your love and for making us a family. You both are, and always will be, the brightest stars in my universe.

Endorsements

“Margot’s hilarious take on what it’s like to be a busy mom and run a business in Hollywood will appeal to working moms everywhere. I loved Where’s My Award? Heck, I’m calling the Academy right now to find out where my award is—it must have gotten lost in the mail!”

Lisa Ann Walter – Mom-of-four, actress, comedienne, radio talk host

“Margot is a lovely person and a hilarious writer, and both things are on full display in Where’s My Award?”

Robin Swicord – screenwriter The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Memoirs of a Geisha, Matilda, Jane Austen Book Club, and Mom of Two

“Margot has crafted a funny homage to all of us working moms! We might deserve a trophy, but sometimes we have to settle for a massage and the glitter tiara our beloved child made for us in art class.”

Elisabeth Röhm – mom and actress (in that order)

“Everybody will love Margot and appreciate all working moms after reading Where’s My Award? I’m buying my wife one of those fake Oscars you find on Hollywood Boulevard. She’ll be too busy to notice the difference.”

Ray Romano – actor, comedian, and working dad

“When I tell friends that my secret to a fulfilling life is multitasking and balance, I give full credit to my mother. She was an amazing, dedicated, thoughtful woman, spontaneous without being irresponsible. She accomplished the impossible, and she did it as a working mother. Working moms everywhere deserve an award (especially the ones that work for me). Margot Black’s book is a funny and heartwarming tribute to working moms across the globe.”

Peter Greenberg – CBS TV travel editor and PBS show host

“There’s no more irrational human than a two year old.  Oh wait, yes there is: a celebrity.  Working mom Margot Black deals with both of these categories of irrational humans with wit, savvy, and most importantly, love.  Working mothers everywhere will cheer her stories of both red carpet drama and her love for Spiderman, not the one you see on the silver screen, but the one who goes trick-or treating. If there’s ever an award for telling the truth about motherhood, she’ll get my vote.”

Cathryn Michon – Writer/Director “Muffin Top: A Love Story”

“I could not stop reading Where’s My Award?  These stories are as entertaining as they come.  Margot Black wears many hats when tending to either her child or her clients. She exhibits patience and boundaries with both, keeps up by perpetually moving and thinking, and somehow found the time to share these moments with us—making us laugh along as she discovers what’s ultimately rewarding.”

Wendy Liebman – Comedian, Wife, Stepmom

“This book has something for everyone: relatable stories from the front lines of working motherhood, juicy Hollywood gossip and laugh out loud humor. I stayed up till after midnight to finish it.  I loved it!”

Stefanie Wilder-Taylor – Author of 5 books, including Gummi Bears Should Not Be Organic, Host of Parental Discretion, and mother of three

“Margot Black deserves a big, shiny, gold statue for writing this
hilarious book! “

Elycia Rubin - entertainment editor at Women’s Health
and author of No Biggy!

Author’s Note

This book was written through a series of conversations, journal entries, blog posts and foggy recollections during sleep deprived early motherhood. No harm is meant to anyone, and many stores, circumstances and places mentioned will have changed by the time of publication. All accounts are solely from the author’s viewpoint. One thing does remain the same; Where’s My Award? is delivered to you with love, laughter, and in celebration of working moms everywhere.

Introduction

No one goes to Hollywood to settle down and have a family. No one except for me.

In Hollywood, breeding is something that can’t be done without the nanny, the cleaner, the PA, the reality TV crew, and ubiquitous entourage in attendance. Public breeding is best left to the Hollywood upper classes; by that I mean the Bel-Air billionaires, and I’m certainly not one of them.

I may not have been able to afford the super posh hospital with secret celebrity paparazzi-proof entrances, but when I gave birth, my vagina had an audience. I gave birth in a teaching hospital spread-eagle with no mood lighting. I didn’t have the PA and the personal chef, but I did have my cell phone close by because I was working up to the last minute.

The publicity machine didn’t stop because my baby was ready for his first big close-up. I did my own hair and makeup, wore standard hospital issue gown, and my husband, Rob, was the official photographer.

Rob works in medical administration, so I was fortunate that I had great care at Kaiser Permanente. Every time I arrived for a checkup, the nursing staff told me I was glowing and beautiful and how great I looked for my age.

Everyone was giving me crazy attention. Wow, I should get knocked up more often, I thought, putting it down to my colorful personality and endless supply of pregnancy and doctor jokes. But the big AMA stamp on my bright red medical folder, which I thought meant American Medical Association, was actually the abbreviation for “Advanced Maternal Age.” Oh.

But that’s okay. I knew I’d gotten this family thing in under the wire. Marriage, my husband, and kid all came to me just before the house lights went up—on the last page of the last act just before the writer was about to write “The End.”

The good news is that we did it the old-fashioned way. We had sex. With each other. It worked! No pins, no needles, surrogates, support groups, no doctors ’til now. I was forty. A defining age. Other people were having midlife crises; I was seeing my dreams come true. My other Hollywood dream. Not the one with the red carpet, the flashing lightbulbs, and the top billing that makes every teenage insecurity disappear (only to be replaced by a million other ones). The one where I have a family. Not a sitcom family, but my own real-life family.

But I worked for it. I waited for it. And I got it. I’ve heard a lot of girlfriends make dumb excuses for why they’re single. My favorite is: “Men don’t like successful women.” Really? Guys don’t like women who can pay for their own shit and blow them? Hmmm, news to me.

More than just having the family, I’m able to help support it with my successful boutique PR and marketing business. I’m one of the lucky ones in this town. I was delayed to the game of motherhood because for years I was chasing another dream entirely.

I haven’t always been a trophy wife, mother of one, and successful Hollywood publicist. For ten years I was a touring stand-up comic and comedy writer, sometimes sharing billing with the daily dinner special. Nothing like seeing your name in lights: “Prime Rib Entree $12, Comedy with Margot Black $8.” Second billing to beef, it does make a girl feel special.

I’m one of the Hollywood middle classes you never hear or think about, and why should you? I’m part of the faceless, flip-flop-wearing middle class who make up 90% of the population of this town. You don’t know us, but without our dedicated masses, there’d be no show business to show.

We are the “little people” you’ll never read about in People magazine, but we’re doing some heavy Hollywood lifting. We are the eyelash extension experts, set decorators, carpenters, caterers, editors, therapists, Pilates instructors, teachers, drivers, sushi makers, dog walkers, grips, designers, personal assistants, boutique owners, red carpet cleaners, and publicists (that’s me).

We are the dedicated craftspeople servicing the fame and fortune you read about on the many celebrity gossip websites or in Us Weekly. We are the creatures behind the Oz curtain.

Some are still out there slogging away pursuing the dream of fame and fortune, but some of us have decided to take our hard-won experience and use it to build a new business—the business of family and kids and a normal job (well, as normal as it gets in Hollywood).

I gave the business of show my best shot, and I have no regrets.

I was born and bred in New York, and after college and several years of working for an international PR firm, I realized I could earn a living and give my dream of working in the comedy industry a shot. Shored up by my PR work through my late twenties, I would leave my desk at six p.m. and head downtown for a full evening of comedy.

My professional strategy to conquer the comedy world was “Just Say Yes.” It worked so well, I was able to quit my day job. Every performer’s dream. I’d done it.

I said yes to everything. I performed in Winnemucca, Nevada; Pendleton, Oregon; El Paso, Texas; Pocatello, Idaho; Yakima, Washington; and Ogden, Utah.

I said yes to Butte, Montana, three times in the same year. I said yes to Winnipeg in the middle of winter. I said yes to twenty-eight cities in thirty-two days and yes to working with drag queens, fire-eaters, mice trainers, hypnotists, musicians, magicians, clowns, and cowboys.

I said yes to planes, cars, buses, vans, trains, ferries, and boats. Yes to places like Moose Jaw, Regina, and Punxsutawney. Yes to Auxiliary Clubs, Elks Clubs, Rotary Clubs, bingo nights, bowling alleys, skating arenas, and the back of a Chinese restaurant.

I said yes to the Royal Canadian Legion Branch 269, the Foam Lake Convention and Visitors Bureau, the Society of American Gastroenterologists, and yes to the National Jet Ski Championship people.

I said yes to the Tiki Lounge, the Comedy Shack, and Giggles on Grand. Yes to the Prairie Oasis Motel and Trailer Park, yes to the Golden Arrow Motel, the Imperial 400 Slumberama, the Lakeland College Alumni Hall, the Courthouse Inn, Trails West Motor Inn, Circle 6 Motel, the King George Motel and Truck Stop, the Stagger Inn, and the Deputy’s Den in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan.

I worked every night, every angle, and encountered every ecosystem, weather front, and frontier. It takes dedication to miss Thanksgiving with your family to perform in Flin Flon, Manitoba (population 5,678), where the outside temperature is -16 and the locals check their guns at the door.

At some point, though, more years on the road seemed like a thankless and lonely endeavor. I decided to unpack my bags in Hollywood and throw my energies into writing for television because that’s what all the successful stand-ups around me were doing. If it all went well, I could potentially earn a boatload of money, which was never going to happen as a middle comedy act selling T-shirts from the back of the room.

Trees died, scripts stacked up on my shelves, agents were met, and meetings were had. I got a foot in the door when a network bought a pilot I wrote, but nothing ever saw the true light of day. By the end of a long, drawn-out, twice-failed TV pilot deal I was single, broke, and exhausted. But hey, at least I’d given myself a fair shot at carpal tunnel syndrome!

It was time for a gear change. Fortunately, I was one of the lucky ones in Hollywood. I had other skills to fall back on and didn’t need to leave town. While TV networks might stall on deals, bills never seem to stall; they always need to be paid. I quickly resurrected my dormant freelance PR career and at the same time took up competitive sailing to take my mind off the previous year’s calamity.

After many years of meetings in dark rooms and the snarly aggression of deal-making, I needed to see the gentle rolling of the waves, get lost in the ocean, and focus on being part of a team.

My sailing buddies were amazing fun, and I enjoyed the competition and fresh air. The man who owned the yacht had two adorable six-year-old twin daughters. They told me one day as we were bobbing around the Marina peninsula, “You’d make a great mom!”

Those six-year-olds were right, and now in my late thirties (when did that happen?), they had ignited a fervent longing in me that I hadn’t acknowledged and couldn’t ignore. It was time to forget the I Love Lucy TV dreams and shift focus.

Number one, I decided to stop dating people with head shots. In Hollywood everyone carries a driving license and a head shot. Unearthing the men who weren’t looking to become the next George Clooney became my priority. I switched gears from comedian and syndication queen-in-waiting to Husband Hunter.

I joined as many dating sites as I could. It became my full-time hobby. I kid you not, in two years I went on a documented 126 dates.

I dated bricklayers, firemen, teachers, talent managers, tile-makers, one rocket scientist, doctors, an Asian, an Indian, a Buddhist, three lawyers, two chiropractors, and a dermatologist. Plus a guy with a boat, a guy with a plane, a guy with a bus, a guy with a horse, and a guy with a Harley. A man who loved dogs, another who loved cats, and one who had a thing for lizards. Then there were the guys with the collections: wine, trains, guns, stamps, baseballs, and goats.

Every other day I was either sipping lattes, eating sushi, or taking walks around museums with another new guy.

It was relentless, but every wrong date taught me to recognize what was right. By the time I met Rob, I knew I’d found my guy.

A week after our first date, fate stepped in and made it so much easier. I’d saved up money and committed to take three months off work to go sailing with the team, but the boat mast broke and we were out for the season. So when Rob called to ask if I was free the following Tuesday, I was. And the following Thursday, and the Saturday, and the following Monday after that. Yes, yes, yes, and yes. I’d never been so available my whole life.

After sixteen different stand-up routines in four hundred different cities, seven spec scripts, one twice-failed TV pilot, five self-help courses, ten years of therapy, twenty self-help books, and 126 dates consisting of six museums, forty-five glasses of white wine, twenty-nine movies, fourteen hikes, and thirty-two cups of coffee, I’d finally hit the jackpot. Woo hoo!

When Rob proposed to me after just six weeks, I said yes (finally, my “Just Say Yes” strategy had a winning payoff!). We were married exactly a year to the day after we met, and a year later I was pregnant. I’d closed the best deal of my life.

Professionally, things were going great, too. I’d initially taken on some publicity work to ensure some kind of income. (“You need something to fall back on,” said everyone’s mother to my twenty-five-year-old self.) And even though it wasn’t showbiz, it enabled me to move forward with pride, and then unadulterated joy that I was really good at something that would allow me to make a living. Thank you, everyone’s mother!

By the time I got to motherhood, aged forty, I was running a successful boutique public relations agency.

But being a Hollywood publicist, wife, and new mom is a challenge, and never more so in a town that prides itself on slaps on the back, award shows, and shiny little statuettes.

I know now that my biggest award is and always will be my family. The day my son was born was still my biggest dream come true, ever. I remember my husband leaning over and kissing me on the head as I lay in the maternity ward, whispering, “Our little boy is finally here.”

The doctor handed me the baby, who immediately snuggled his face right into me and gave me his first kiss. I was ecstatic. No amount of audience appreciation could ever beat that.

So yeah, after all the years, I finally have my award. I got the biggest prize ever.

But with a new life come new challenges. Less than six weeks after my son’s birth, I was back at work. No longer just a wife and a publicist, I am now a working mom too, and for all the jobs I’d ever done, motherhood is by far the most important. I’m the sort to fearlessly dig in to a new job, but now my job is to keep a tiny human alive.

I got a new baby and they’re gonna leave me alone with him? Not that he came with directions or guidance or anything. Even my toaster oven came with a manual. A stupid bottle of shampoo comes with instructions, but a brand new human—nothing! Not to mention, I’m gonna do this while holding down a full-time job.

Shouldn’t there be an award for that? If you can win an award for “Best Dressed,” surely there must be an award for “Raising Best Human.” Right?

So for all you working moms out there like me, I’d like to declare this award ceremony now open. It seems no one is out there giving out the Working Mom Awards when they are so well deserved and underappreciated, so allow me to be the first.

It’s time to raise the curtain on what it takes to get this job done.

Let’s get the show started…

Chapter 1

Best Special Effect

Managing a media event eight weeks after having a baby seemed like a fine idea three months before my baby was born. I’d never had a baby, and the woman who subcontracted me for the job had never had a baby either.

She was kindly and generously trying to give me work after a period at home with my newborn, and even my stepmother, who would also be working with me on the project, said it seemed like a fine idea.

No, my stepmother had never had a baby either.

What could possibly go wrong?

Well, then I had a baby.

Suddenly leaving my womb-like home for the insanity of a Hollywood press event seemed like the worst idea ever.

Nothing could have prepared me for the experience of pregnancy, childbirth, or that bit after—you know, the new life where I had to adjust to the biggest change a person can experience, and manage to keep an infant alive.

First, birth. WTF?

A lot of people refer to childbirth as “a miracle.” It’s pretty impressive, but I don’t know if I’d consider it a miracle as much as a case of really bad architectural planning. It’s like cramming Hagrid into Frodo’s house and calling it a divine act of intervention.

And while I’m on this short tangent, on the subject of vaginas to be precise, let’s have a little chat about pain, shall we? Whoever considers natural childbirth is a flat-out masochist. Don’t even come near me looking for some Crunchy Granola Mom Merit Badge because you have a high tolerance for pain. I think you’re a freak. Why suffer more than necessary? Your kid is going to be on drugs at some point in their life; mother and child might as well get off to a good start.

But back to my massive life adjustment. I work for myself, so I didn’t have the liberty of an empty head at any stage of my pregnancy, pre- or postbirth. No one was paying me to enjoy maternity leave, and leading up to my son’s birth, I was blissfully unaware of what lay ahead. Business was attended to and clients were serviced.

Even as I was being wheeled into surgery for my unexpected cesarean procedure, I could hear my phone beeping like a little baby crow.

Three and a half hours later, a work associate called me as I was coming around after the surgery. With no one else in the room, I picked up my phone. Clearly the self-employed publicist was still in me, even if my baby wasn’t.

On morphine, I answered “Margot Black.”

The person on the other end of the line said, “What are you doing?”

“I just had a baby.”

“What are you doing picking up the phone?”

“I don’t know, I’m here on my own.”

“Are you on drugs?”

“I don’t know. I think so.”

He asked me where he could locate a document. I told him. Then a nurse and my husband walked into my room, and I put the phone away.

Right there in that moment was my new reality, and if I thought it was about to get any easier, I had another think coming.

The event I had naïvely committed my exhausted new mom body and mind to was a state of Arizona travel journalist meet and greet. A hundred writers would fill a room to hear a dozen reps talk about Arizona and what they could offer tourists.

The lady in New York who’d given me the job told me they’d take care of the follow-up; all I’d need to handle was the site selection, the menu, inviting the first round of journalists, being there the day of the event, and troubleshooting on-site.

Eight weeks after having a baby, that would be alright, right?

I’d purposely gone to the Beverly Wilshire—famous for being the hotel where Julia Roberts and Richard Gere fell in love in the movie Pretty Woman—because I was assured they could take care of every detail. They didn’t, but more of that later.

Fortunately, my baby did me a great favor landing in the 1% of babies that arrive on their due date, and given that I am a detailed-oriented Virgo, he gave his mama a great gift.

My husband had been able to get a serious chunk of paternity leave, thanks to a combination of his generous employer and his unused leave, which meant the three of us had been living in a glorious spit-up bubble since the birth.

But now that the Arizona event was almost upon me, the thought of leaving our cozy home was making me feel super anxious. Where had Margot gone?

Here’s a secret. Yes, you have given birth, but you are also about to experience the biggest rebirth of your life. Everything is different.

I had almost no desire to be out in public, and weirdly, I was also feeling a great sense of loss. I needed someone to look after me, and yet I was about to go and take care of a hundred people. My balance was way off.

The reality was that I really could have used some mothering in that time but had none: my mother is dead, my dad lives in another state, and my mother-in-law was not available in that way. It also saddened me to notice that some people weren’t carrying their load.

I was keenly aware of who was taking advantage of my pregnancy-fuddled brain and who was stepping up. I had one attentive colleague, John, who I could rely on to translate my sleep-deprived, new mom, half of Vicodin, milk-sodden notes; attend to them without being checked up on; and turn them into gold. Others, not so much. But now I had no patience to mother anybody else but my child. The people who needed “old Margot” had to leave “new Margot’s” life.

But here’s an ironic twist: When I was pregnant, everyone was willing to help, including strangers. Men opened doors, women smiled sweetly, and everyone had advice. I’d be at the Urth café, and before eleven a.m., before I’d even drunk my fresh fruit smoothie, I would have had three conversations about my vagina and two about my breasts (natural childbirth, breast-feeding, practicing nipple attachment). When it’s just you and your bump—and you really don’t need the help—everyone wants to touch you and be around you. Bumps don’t cry. Bumps don’t barf. Bumps are so perfectly beautiful.

But once you have an actual baby and there’s the icky stuff—the laundry, the constant feeds, the dishes to be washed—there’s a dearth of help. Thanks, guys!

In my home I was okay with that, but the thought of having to be somewhere on time and with all the baby machines working, I was becoming jittery.

And then there was my body.

Postbirth, I have major issues with evolution. If evolution is so great, every time a woman gives birth to a child, she should sprout another arm. Two are no longer enough for the job. Perhaps a woman would even pop another set of eyes in the back of her head as her kids grow up. Then I’d toast Darwin, assuming I had the strength to lift my glass.

Despite the lack of a third arm, my body changed. Stuff didn’t just sag; it slid.

I got in the car one day, and my husband said, “You look hot. Is that a new bra you’re wearing?”

“Nope. It’s my seat belt.”

With my baby came huge hooters—boobs so massive they wouldn’t even fit into Target bras. They grew faster than the population of Latin America. I had to go to one of those old lady bra shops where three German ladies with yard-long tape measures yelled at each other in front of my chest.

Inga told me that I was now a triple-D. Holy shit! I got me some porn-star titties. You know, the type you see in magazines like JUGGS. The unairbrushed kind. Mmmm, yeah, pretty. The only problem was these big new boobs came with a deflated basketball belly and the need to constantly wear librarian shoes.

That led me to another problem—I didn’t have any appropriate work clothes that fit. Fortunately, my dear girlfriend Mary Ellen, who works at Lotta Stensson’s boutique in West Hollywood, was kind enough to send me three jackets to borrow. They arrived with a bow that made me want to cry.

She asked me what size, and I said, “As large as you can go. My boobs are enormous.” She was incredulous so sent me the same jacket in small, medium, and large. I managed to fit into the large. Just. Barely.

It was a beautiful jacket; however, it looked awkward on me and wasn’t quite my style, but I was grateful for the loan.

I don’t know why it’s another cruel joke that your feet swell in pregnancy. None of my cute pointy toe shoes that have been my PR uniform for the last decade, fit me. I had to shove my giant beasty elephant stubs into shoes that were now a size too small.

But I can’t wear flip flops to a work event or my usual two-inch kitten heels that I can usually stand in all day, so now I’m in sensible old lady flats, with a jacket that’s not quite my style. Nothing feels right. And I’ve got an inch of roots because, apparently, I’m not a natural blonde any more.

Getting the baby fed, and getting myself fed, showered, dressed, and out the door while suffering from overwhelming night-feed tiredness is enough to knock me sideways. I’m wobbly. It’s hard to feel professional, and I’m not quite over my C-section pain.

I’m also poignantly aware that this is the last week I will be able to spend this precious time with my husband and baby in this unique space. It’s his last day of paternity leave.

I loved, loved, loved being at home at this time, this beautiful time with my husband and newborn, and now I’m cutting the cord and about to venture into the crazy, noisy jungle of real life.

My stepmother, who is a highly accomplished publicist in her own right, is helping me with this event, and as she talks to me in the car en route to the hotel, I can feel my breasts pulsating.

Driving down La Cienega, barely two hours since I pumped, I can feel my boobs swelling up like huge watermelons. I’ve got five hours to go, and I can hardly comprehend how this day is going to play out.

Yes, I have a state-of-the-art breast pump with me, but I’m scared. Friends have since said to me since that I immediately seemed comfortable with my baby. I was, but what I was super uncomfortable with were all the machines and paraphernalia that goes with newborns. The breast pump, the stroller, the car seat— all that stuff made me anxious.

My cousin, who’d had a baby and also went back to work, told me to be careful with my breast milk and boobs whilst out in public. She’d once worn a silk blouse with breast pads to a meeting but they started leaking.

So I’d shoved two breast pads down there. I seriously could not risk leaking into a $700 borrowed jacket.

As my stepmom talks, I nervously drive a route I’ve been along a thousand times. She asks me if I can remember this and remember that. To steal from Nora Ephron, I remember nothing. I feel exceptionally vulnerable.

This is a weird transition and my first time experiencing it. I don’t want to leave my snug home to take care of a hundred other people. When you hold your baby there’s an intense pull; you long for it and want more. Suddenly, to be pushed into a chaotic world is an insane juxtaposition.

I don’t feel it, but I now understand what postpartum depression is: you need to be taken care of. A baby came out of your body. And what BS is it that celebrities are judged in People magazine for their post-baby bikini bodies eight weeks later? It’s moronic. They must cry themselves to sleep every night.

My career has seen me attending to others’ needs divinely and shining light on other people for years, but now I could use a little help myself. So for every detail that I knew about every journalist coming to the event, for every to-do list, for every detail that my stepmom is reminding me about, I’m really just thinking about my own little baby bubble.

We get to the hotel, and after a few minutes inside, my heart sinks because nothing is happening properly. Even though I’ve done my run-throughs and pored over the contracts with the hotel management before my baby arrived, there’s no signage, the ballroom isn’t properly set, and the client is already crabby. She has a bunch of complaints, and it’s my job to make it right.

I can also tell that she’s not happy with where she is in life. She’s rail thin, single, and uptight. We’re coming at this from completely opposite ends of the spectrum.

Then another obstacle presents itself. The hotel is hosting an ostentatious million-dollar Persian wedding, which is quickly sucking the resources out of the hotel. As if that’s not enough, there’s a big celebrity event transpiring. Limos are stacking up, management are in a frenzy, and the paparazzi are outside in packs. The state of Arizona is low on the list.

My invited press are arriving for the speeches, and my client rushes up to me, all red-faced and fractious. She’s not happy with the skirting on the tables where they’re serving Arizona’s signature prickly pear margaritas. Also, the crudités platters are not circulating widely enough.

While this is a tiny event for the hotel, it’s huge for us. I need to get this fixed. I need to ninja complain and fast. Where are my signs? Where are my people? I’m happy to make my presence felt but the pressure inside my boobs is starting to worry me. I’m so uncomfortable and terrified I might leak.

There’s no way I can delay, I need to go pump.

I grab my working-lady, seriously-on-the-go, top-of-the-line breast pump backpack and head to the bathroom. The backpack is very chic—all zips and pockets and snappy branding—but in this moment, who cares? I’m not sure what I envisioned when I knew I’d be using it—dashing through airports breast pumping as I catch a flight to NYC or some similar kind of BS they sell to new moms? But chic I am not.

Side note: aside from my leaky breasts, I also seem to have lost the ladylike ability to hold in my farts and make them come out quietly. I simply cannot fart under the radar. I do not know what is happening, but they have a mind of their own. They’re Golden Girl farts. Either I can’t find the muscle or I’ve lost the muscle. There’s no warning. Being gassy in public is mortifying to me, but I cannot stop it. I’m gassy and almost leaking in public. Hello, motherhood!

My boobs are now throbbing so hard they could play bass for Guns N’ Roses.

I have a light bulb moment as I make my dash for the restrooms. I see two guys who work for the hotel and palm them $40 each to help me troubleshoot. They’re instantly at my disposal.

Then, right there in the lobby, I see the perky Persian doll–like princess bride appear. She’s perfect, and I’m a seeping mess. But it’s okay. I know what’s on the other side of her wedding day. I was also perky perfect and beautiful when I was married but now I’ve been through the life blender, and if she’s as lucky as me, she’ll also have leaking breasts one day.

Honestly, even in this challenging moment, I would never want to go back, but a handbook would be useful right now. I remember before I had Jett, in the final trimester, my stepsister said to me, “You should go have a manicure, a long lazy lunch, and read a book. You won’t have much time for yourself for a few years,” and I thought, “Well that’s silly.” But now I’m starting to get a glimpse of what she meant.

One of the enormous restrooms at the Beverly Wilshire is divided into a communal space and private cubicles. I lock myself into a cubicle and get the expensive, top-of-the-range breast pump out of my unnecessarily chichi backpack.

Shit. There isn’t an outlet for me to plug it into. I hadn’t thought of that. Can you die from boobs exploding?

I look at the useless breast pump. My boobs hurt. Leakage is imminent. I remove my borrowed $700 jacket.

I’m needed at the ballroom, but in this moment, I do not know what to do. I can’t afford a $550-a-night room. Would they lend me a room? I don’t know. I can’t think straight. I’m exhausted and overwhelmed. I’m working on less than four hours a night sleep for the last eight weeks. Now I understand how sleep deprivation can be an effective prisoner-of-war tactic.

I slide down the wall and onto the floor of the bathroom at the Beverly Wilshire. The marble tiles are freezing cold. Here I have my first sobbing moment of motherhood.

In a brief moment of clarity I realize that a lady at the breast pump store had given me a hand-held pump.

I leave the cubicle and use the counter of the communal area to rummage through my stupid designer backpack. I’m still sobbing as I try to figure it out. The lady at the Pump Station made me buy it. She told me to take it for emergencies. So for $27, this little hand-held gadget is now my saving grace.

A plus-size grandma-looking lady walks in and sees my tears and panic. “Are you okay, honey?” she asks with a Southern drawl.

I almost fall into this stranger’s arms. I’m so scared and tired. Instead, I tell her my story. She smiles knowingly and tells me that she’s had six kids. In a flash she’s assembled the $27 pump. Her presence has calmed me, so I head back into a cubicle and finally pump milk. My breasts stop throbbing and my brain starts working.

When I come out of the bathroom, one of the guys I’ve palmed is discreetly waiting for me with a shot of tequila.

“Drink this, Mamacita,” he says. He tells me that he’s got a wife with three kids.

“Does it help?” I ask.

“Tequila helps with everything,” he smiles. I seriously want to douse my tits in it, but I knock back a shot, knowing I’ll dump the next round of milk. I am so grateful for this village appearing out of nowhere.

Returning to the ballroom, one of the journalists, whom I’ve known for years, exclaims in shock when she sees me. “Oh my God, Margot, what are you doing here? You just had a baby!”

I tell her that it seemed like a good idea at the time. A mother of two, she hugs me.

Another light bulb moment: from now on, I will only take advice from other working moms.

Problems are solved. The skirting on the cocktail tables is fixed, the canapés circulate, the speakers speak and my client calms down. Someone from the hotel appears, apologizes, and whips all left into shape.

Around nine p.m., we have a team debrief and my stepmom tells me she’s seen a lovely piece of jewelry in one of the lobby boutiques. She wants to shop; I just want to get out of there.

My old self would have happily accompanied her, but reborn me is calculating how to feed my child and get some sleep because I know I will be up three hours later. I’ve probably had six hours sleep in three days, so if I can work an eleven p.m. feed, he might sleep until three a.m. I simply can’t go into the gift shop. I can’t.

My stepmom will get to sleep off this week, and I’m poignantly aware that there’s no more sleeping off for me. I’ve slept off press trips, boat trips, parties, stand-up, and touring, but now that’s no longer an option. Normally I would indulge her—she wants to buy a gift for me—but here’s a chasm. I’m moving among Martians; I’m the new me doing an old job. Nothing quite fits.

Looking back, writing this, I want to hug myself. It’s amazing what you put yourself through at such an important time in your life. Three days before my son’s birth I was showing a client from Chile around LA. It was a Wednesday. My water broke on Saturday. My belly was bigger than the Hollywood Bowl. I could barely fit into the driver’s seat (and the client had to help me out of the car), but I drove him to one of the hotel venues he wanted to view.

The room coordinator, a lithe, heavily mascara’d blonde in four-inch skyscraper heels, glared at me in horror.

“Is that what the end of pregnancy looks like?”

She was cranky because I couldn’t walk fast. Suck it, sister.

As we’re leaving the Beverly Wilshire, the manager finds me and apologizes for the problems we’ve had (and that cost me $80 to fix). My client was picky, but I get it: she wanted the job done well. So did I.

I need to leave, but suddenly a giant limo pulls up and the paparazzi go crazy.

Out of nowhere, Julia Roberts walks across the lobby with her entourage, towards the waiting limo. I’d read that she’d also just had a baby, but I see no evidence of leaky breasts, fat feet, or eye bags. She has smooth skin, shiny hair, and a waist.

She smiles at everyone she passes. Julia Roberts in the Pretty Woman hotel? It’s a perfect Hollywood moment. The atmosphere is electric. People stand with their mouths open. The power of the A-lister is like nothing else on earth.

Goddamn it, how does she look so good? Ah yes, money. She has every resource piles of cash can afford. A night nurse, a makeup artist, a stylist, and I’m damn sure she’s not pumping on a cold bathroom floor. Richard Gere would have run a mile from that hot mess.

She can also clear her schedule for a year or two to concentrate on her kids. That would have been nice. Also, she looks so fresh. I can’t get over how bright and clear her eyes are. After Jett was born, my husband handed me a tiny box. I’d heard of push presents, but I’m sure that Rob wouldn’t have a clue about the trend for post-birth baby gifts. I thought he’d bought me diamond earrings or a necklace, but wrapped up in that little box was expensive eye cream. I’d been complaining I looked tired, but even so I was disappointed.

Husbands, here’s a top tip: be careful of giving ladies gifts in small boxes. Although, to be fair, that wasn’t as bad as my girlfriend, whose husband told her to get dressed up for a special day out. She waxed, buffed, and polished, only for him to present her with a gun and a day at a shooting range because he was about to spend a long time away from home and wanted her to feel safe.

Driving home, I’m desperately tired and almost hallucinating but also dying to see my baby and hug my husband.

Cradling my baby an hour later, I realized that the hooker in Pretty Woman had found her Cinderella moment and that I’d also found mine.

You want to know why they never made a sequel to Pretty Woman? Because Leaky Woman doesn’t quite have the same appeal.

I don’t know if I’d call the day the biggest success of my professional career, but I survived. And better still, so did the $700 jacket.

But I realize in this moment that I have entered an entirely new working mom world. I have no guidebook. No roadmap. No clothes that fit. I am about to join the biggest, most powerful army of unpaid champion soldiers holding up the world today … working moms. I have a big fight to fight, a new world to brave, and a galaxy to conquer. But first, I need a nap.