EXCERPT: 'Don't Say I Didn't Warn You'

Sept. 28, 2009— -- Comedian Anita Renfroe, known for her performance of the "Mom Song," shares her experiences regarding middle age and motherhood in her new book, "Don't Say I Didn't Warn You: Kids, Carbs, and the Coming Hormonal Apocalypse." In such chapters as "Brother, Can You Spare an Epidural?" Renfroe employs her natural wit and candor as she describes what many women are thinking but not talking about.

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Read an excerpt of the book below, and head to the "GMA" Library for more good reads.

Because I travel a lot, I get a lot of frequent flier miles.

This is not to brag, because—with the state of the airline industry being what it is these days, believe me, these miles mean absolutely next to nothing. Not even a better brand of peanuts. But I do get upgraded on flights that are not on Canada regional jets (which is Canadian for "Tiny Cramped Flying Tube with No First Class"), so I get to sit next to other people with lots of flier miles. It's like our own little club of "I'm Never Home Either" people. They are almost always people who represent companies and are über committed to their work and happy to talk about what they do. This works well when I get them to tell me as much as possible about their life before they find out what I do for a living, because once they find out, that pretty much means they are done talking about themselves for fear that something they tell me will end up as material on my next DVD or in a book.

They could not be more right.

There was this guy who sat next to me and told me that he worked in medical technology. This was a nice, general answer, which I found to be of no use to me at all. After I probed a little more, he said that he once worked for a company that made a piece of medical equipment that helped with the birthing process. I was all ears, and what I thought I heard him say was, "It's basically a GPS for the baby while it is in the birth canal."

I cannot begin to tell you how many different directions my brain went at that moment. My head was practically exploding with possible come-backs. Do babies get lost on their way out that often? How did babies make it out of the birth canal for thousands of years without this tech-nology? How small must that screen be, anyway? Is there that much traffic in there that the baby would have to take alternate routes and avoid tollways? If the satellite was unavailable, would the baby take a wrong turn and come out of an ear? If it's triplets or quadruplets, does that qualify as gridlock?

I guess the man could see the wheels spinning and the smoke coming out my ears because he in-terjected something like, "It's a diagnostic tool for the labor and delivery nurses to use so they don't have to perform so many digital checks to see how the cervix is widening during the birth process." I could see how that would be very useful for the L & D nurses who have to pop that glove on fifty times per shift to check the labor's progress.

Apparently, with this technology, some sort of receivers are placed on the mother's abdomen that act as the "satellites" and receive transmissions from the disposable sensors that are attached to two points on the cervix and to the top of the baby's head. So you can actually tell how much the cervix is widening and how far down the baby's head is positioned. If I were an L & D nurse, I would be writing my congressman for this piece of equipment. Because that digital check thingy has to qualify as one of the worst parts of that job.

For those of you who have never experienced this "check" as a patient, imagine that you are going for your yearly Pap smear and someone has decided to compound the usual procedural discom-fort by: (1) allowing you no food or drink for many hours, (2) increasing the circumference of your midsection by 300 percent, and (3) sticking a hot branding iron across your lower back. Now, imagine how you feel as a nurse starts popping a latex glove on her right hand and informing you that she will need to do a "little check to see how you're progressing." This is not only gross, but I would venture to say it is also dangerous for her—like approaching a wild animal in pain. Labor and delivery nurses should receive hazard pay for this part of their job description. I'm sure many have had a foot planted in their face. I know I fantasized about doing it.