Call me a dreamer, but I didn’t want my newborn son to be so scared by the sight of me when he was born that he would want to rush back in there. I was naïve as hell about the actual labor process and the fact that I would indeed lose control of body functions, so I moved forward with my plan to get dolled up for delivery. RELATED: What It Means If You Have Flu-Like Symptoms During Early Pregnancy The only challenge was that I was too fat, ashamed, and unkempt to bravely visit a stranger for a vagina wax. Hormones do strange things and at the rate, my hair was growing, I imagined the worst. If you’ve ever had your hair held back while you vomited, this is what I envisioned my partner doing with my pubic hair as I gave birth to my son. Something needed to be done, and urgently. I complained endlessly to my partner as I became more and more self-conscious about the state of my pubic hair (and how it was about to be exposed in all its glory). Eventually, he caught my drift and offered to wax me “down there” himself. I jumped at the chance to be hair-free, not realizing we were about to embark on quite an intimate and unbecoming journey together. To start, I stripped down and put a leg on the side of the bath. I was so fat that I had to literally hold my stomach up, while he rubbed the wax on and off. I didn’t feel the slightest pang of shame, by the way. I was focused on my beautification. I should be clear that my partner is a builder by trade and NOT a trained beautician. Sure, he uses his hands all day, but power tools and waxing strips are quite different instruments. Let’s just say he’s more of a manual-operator type than a micro-surgeon. After the application, pulling, and ripping (which hurt way more than it should have), he must have grown tired of the process. He said he finished the job and I was quite pleased with the level of love and dedication he showed. I couldn’t see my vagina over my big belly, so to check out his handy work I stood in front of a full-length mirror naked. Two thoughts immediately came to mind: the first being that I looked like a bearded dragon. He had struggled to get into the cracks and crevices and as a result, I had a beard of pubic hair running right around either side of my vagina. RELATED: This Woman Nearly Died After Shaving Her Pubic Hair Off The second thought was that the tufts of hair left, spattered all over my vagina, made me look like a dog with severe mange. My family often laughs nervously at inappropriate times when things are severely shocking, and I got the giggles. My vagina looked so heinous that I decided I would NOT endure round two of home waxing (and risk finding out what “designs” he’d come up with next). I made an appointment for a beautician for the following morning. This had to be fixed before I went public. The next morning, I went into labor. So, yes: The young idealistic lady who set out to look pretty for her son’s birth went into the hospital looking like a matted, half-shaved pussy cat. Literally. I still wonder what the staff thought as I nuded up on that hospital bed, but once those contractions set in, my botched wax job was THE last thing on my mind. The whole ’looking pretty’ thing went out the window. All that mattered that day was the safe arrival of my new baby boy and a partner who held my hand every step of the way (even if he had appalling beauty skills). I am so lucky to have someone in my life willing to go beyond their own comfort zones to make me happy, however ridiculous my notions of happiness may be. It’s also fairly safe to say that on the first glimpse of my son, no one in the room gave a second thought to my ridiculous-looking vagina, which I now affectionately refer to as the once-bearded dragon. RELATED: Whether Or Not I Shave ‘Down There’ Is No One’s Business But Mine Naomi Fryers is a freelance parenting writer who has written for a number of celebrated publications both in Australia and the United States.
