by Lisa Leslie
Things continued to go smoothly into my third trimester. I was allowed to start working out again, so Michael and I would go to the gym, and I also got to work some with my trainer. The worst days were when the fibroid was bothering me or when the baby was kicking the tumor. The baby was seven and a half pounds by my ninth month, and that put pressure on my back. My feet started to swell, too, and I had all the symptoms of a full-fledged pregnant woman. Fortunately, I did not have them throughout my entire pregnancy, the way some women do.
All in all, I had a very blessed pregnancy. My attitude and energy were good, and I did not get too moody (in fact, my husband says that I was the best pregnant woman ever!). I had a few uncomfortable days, but overall, the experience felt like one big miracle. I think every woman who wants to get pregnant and can handle it should experience having a baby at least once.
People certainly treat you differently when you are expecting. Once my pregnancy became public information, folks would come up to me and say, “I didn’t know you were pregnant, Lisa. You look so beautiful pregnant, and you have that glow about you!” I got a lot of those kinds of comments, and they made me feel really good. People were very nice to me, but I had to be protective when they wanted to rub my stomach. Most of them wound up rubbing my fibroid tumor instead of my baby. The fibroid was so large that it made me look as though I was carrying twins. Sometimes when people would rub my stomach, it would irritate the very sensitive fibroid, so I had to break out my post moves and get my elbows out to keep them away.
I got lots of cards and gifts, some from people that I did not even know. We had a beautiful baby shower, too, and my teammates, family, and friends all showed up. We had an awesome time, and the baby got so many nice gifts and outfits that before she was even born, there were enough clothes and toys to last for years. We stocked up on sports equipment. We got a basketball and a tennis ball because Michael wants to teach the baby to play tennis like Venus and Serena, and I want a basketball player like me. In anticipation of a girl, we bought lots of dresses, too. Our daughter needs to know that it is important for her to be a little lady first, but she will definitely be a die-hard athlete, too.
As my due date in June drew closer, I really did not feel nervous. I knew that I was going to be doing something that millions and millions of women had done before me. A lot about having a baby is instinct, but I had read a lot of books and had done some online research, and I had watched a few videos. I think I was as prepared as I could have been.
I was looking forward to actually experiencing the delivery and then the breast-feeding. I think motherhood is a blessing. It is a tremendous opportunity to make a baby and feel her grow inside you. It is also a blessing to have a supportive husband, and Michael was extremely helpful. He rubbed my feet and my back, tied my shoes, helped me in the kitchen, and, some days he even had to help me put on my undies, because I could not reach them. It really makes the process a whole lot easier when you have a caring and understanding man by your side. Michael was there for me 100 percent. I really appreciated all the little things that he would do, and I was so thankful to have him with me as we went through this very exciting time.
Chapter 16
Special Delivery
While we prepared for the coming baby, the Sparks were again going through a major reshuffle. The new owners rehired Michael Cooper to come back and coach the team for the 2007 season. Coop had been with the NBA’s Denver Nuggets for a while after he left the Sparks, and he had spent two seasons coaching the Albuquerque Thunderbirds of the NBA Development League. Coop’s T-Birds won the NBDL championship in 2006, so he added that trophy to the five NBA championships that he had won as a player with the Lakers and the two pieces of WNBA championship hardware that he had won while coaching our team.
But when he came back for the 2007 season, he had major holes to fill. I was out on maternity leave. Tameka Johnson was out with a knee injury, and Chamique Holdsclaw, the four-time All-Star, had to play out of position and handle the point guard job. She was a good enough athlete to do it, but Chamique was never comfortable at the point, and she had some troubles with turnovers. The Sparks started the season 3–2, and then Holdsclaw abruptly announced her retirement. She was only twenty-nine years old and was an excellent player, but she said she was not happy playing anymore and wanted to spend time doing other things and more time with her family.
Losing one starter would cripple most teams. Losing three starters signaled almost certain doom. But there was not much I could do about it from my position besides cheer for the team from the sidelines at games…which I did. A few days after Chamique’s retirement, it happened. Michael and I were watching Game Four of the NBA finals with Tiffany, Gabrielle, and Mikaela, and I began to have contractions. They started about forty-five minutes apart, then twenty minutes, then fifteen. Ooh! I had another one. “That was only eight minutes,” Tiffany said.
Everybody started checking their watches. Everybody started feeling my stomach. It felt like a ball. I was not in pain, but I could feel tightness. The next thing I knew, Michael got up and started running around in circles.
I had heard stories about erratic first-time mothers going to the hospital for false alarms, and I was determined not to be one of those women. We knew ahead of time that the baby was going to be breach, but I did not want to overreact. I wanted to go only when I was sure I was in labor. And I was not sure. There was no pain at all, just tightness every few minutes.
“Okay, this is serious,” Michael said. My husband started cleaning up the office. He was cleaning the kitchen. He was cleaning up everything, like a chicken running around with its head cut off.
“Babe, what’s wrong?” I said, trying to calm him down.
Tiff interrupted. “Wait a minute. This is getting serious.”
Everybody was going nuts, while I was just sitting there. I told them, “You guys. It’s okay. I’m okay. It’s not time yet.”
Tiffany called Mom. “Mom, it is serious. Lisa is having contractions. We are going to the hospital.”
The bags were ready, and just in case it was necessary, Michael put the baby seat in our truck.
I had to chime in again. “We’re not going to the hospital. Calm down. It’s NOT time yet.”
Things calmed down for just a bit and Michael started getting tired. I think all the cleaning up and running around had worn him out.
“When it’s time to go, wake me up,” he said and then went to lie down.
I wanted to wash up before things went any further, so I took a shower, and I was fine while I was standing up. I put on some sweats and still felt okay. But when I sat on the bed, I had a contraction, and then another one and another. Now I knew it was time. With my contractions down to just six minutes apart, I woke Michael up and told him it was time to go. Mom, Tiffany, Michael and I headed to the hospital, and as soon as we got there, they hooked me up to a machine that would monitor my contractions.
The unit was showing contractions, but I was not feeling them. Everyone would watch the monitor and say, “See that?” and I would say, “I didn’t feel anything.” There were two things that the doctors were looking for. They were watching my contractions and monitoring the baby. At the time, she was sleeping and not showing enough activity. They gave me an IV to get some sugar to the baby, and when she gradually started getting more active, the doctors decided it was time for her to come out. I was having a C-section, so they had me in a different room than the delivery room.
Michael was the only nonmedical person who could go into the room with me, so they gave him a set of blue scrubs to put on. I guess they do not get too many fathers his size at the hospital, because the scrubs looked like capris on Michael. He squeezed into them, and we were ready to go.
I did not know what to expect. I was just sitting there, with this big belly. I was not in pain; I was just ready. The room was so cold. I got on the table and started to shake. I mean, it was all-out shivering, like I was in a freezer. I was giv
en a blanket, and Michael was waiting for me to be prepped so that he could join me. There was a female nurse ready to administer my epidural. She basically told me to hug myself and lean forward, and when I did, I felt the needle like a bee sting in my back. I have a really high tolerance for pain, so it was not too bad.
With that out of the way, they laid me down and started giving me an anesthetic through an IV. They pinched me and stuck me with little pins to see if I had any feeling. “Yes! I can still feel that,” I told them. So, they gave me a little more anesthetic.
The anesthesiologist tried it again. “Okay, Lisa. You can’t feel anything now, can you?”
“I can still feel that.” I guess I needed more painkiller because I was so much larger than the average person. But eventually, I started to feel light-headed and drowsy. I yelled, “Wait a minute. We can’t start without my husband. Where’s my husband?”
Then Michael said, “I’m right here, babe.” I did not know when he came in, but somehow he was right next to me.
Everybody in the room was wearing blue. They put a blue cover-up screen in front of me so that I could not see the operation, and they asked me to put my arms straight out at my sides. I was lying there and looking straight up when the procedure began. I was pretty numb, but I kept feeling movement. “I can feel that,” I told them. “I can feel you guys digging. What are you doing?”
The doctors all stopped. “You can feel us?”
“Yeah.”
My doctor had to clarify what I was supposed to expect. “Lisa, you are still going to have some feeling,” she said. “You are going to feel us touch you, but you should not be feeling any pain.”
“Okay, but it feels like you guys are digging in me,” I said.
Michael looked over at me and said, “Babe. They are not touching you now.”
“Well, I still feel digging,” I replied.
I was given a little more anesthetic, and then I felt like I could not breathe. The painkiller was numbing me from my toes to my waist, but because they had to give me so much, it was creeping up into my lungs. I told everyone, “I can’t breathe!”
The anesthesiologist said, “You may feel a little shortness of breath because your lungs are getting a bit numb.”
I definitely heard what he said, but it did not help me breathe any better. Tears were running from my eyes. I felt like I was dying.
Michael asked me, “Babe, what is wrong?”
“I am dying!” I cried.
Michael tried to comfort me. “No, you are not dying. You have to think positively. We don’t think negatively. You are going to be okay. God didn’t bring you this far to leave you.”
I heard Michael and understood what he meant, but I could not breathe! I was feeling every attempted breath, and I was truly losing control! That was the hardest part about it. I had no control. I could not really feel anything. My breaths just kept getting shorter and shorter. I was lying there, with my arms stretched out at my sides, and I started thinking about Jesus on the cross. The more the doctors worked on me, the less control I had. I could hear my own breath. That was all I could hear. I kept trying to breathe.
I looked over at Michael, and he had his camera out. My husband was taking pictures while I was trying to hang on for dear life. Then, all of a sudden, the doctors and nurses were all rushing around. They took the baby out of me, and Lauren Jolie Lockwood was born at 4:05 AM on June 15, 2007.
The ultrasound indicated with a fair degree of certainty that we were having a girl, but we wanted to have names ready for both sexes just in case. We had narrowed it down to Michael II for a boy and either Lauren or Logan for a girl. I was fond of Lauren because I had always liked the musician Lauryn Hill, and I had heard the name Logan on a soap opera and had thought it was a cool name. Michael was not sold on Logan, though.
For a girl’s middle name, we both liked Jolie. There is Angelina Jolie, of course, but Michael’s dad’s name was Joe, and my father’s name was Lee. So it was “Joe Lee.” It did not hurt that Angelina Jolie is a good humanitarian, and I like that she is independent and a little bit different. I do not care for everything she is into, but she walks to her own beat, and I respect that.
So we loved the name Lauren Jolie Lockwood. It was a very good name—one that everybody would know and could spell. Lauren Jolie Lockwood also had a ring to it, and it had the same first and last initials as my name. It even sounded a little presidential. Lauren Jolie Lockwood. President Lauren Jolie Lockwood. That worked for us!
When some people heard the name, they asked, “Why would Lisa name her child Lauren, when Lauren Jackson is her biggest rival? Why would she want her daughter’s first and middle initials to be L.J., like Lauren Jackson’s?” The answer is very simple. My daughter is my life. I was not thinking about Lauren Jackson when I picked a name for my baby. I did not think about Lauren Jackson enough to even consider it.
Speaking of names, a lot of people wondered if I would hyphenate my last name on my jersey after I got married. I did not change my name from Leslie to Lockwood in the basketball world because I thought, I am going to stick with Leslie because that is how people know me. It took me a long time to build that name and it sounds good, too. I have always had traditional values and I took my husband’s name at marriage. I did not want Lauren growing up and wondering why her last name was different than mine. She did not need the confusion, so I decided to take Michael’s last name and become Lisa Lockwood, without any hyphens.
When you see me in my Sparks jersey, however, or in my Olympic jersey at Beijing, it will say LESLIE on the back, because that is how the worldwide basketball community has recognized me for almost twenty years. When it comes to autographs, I sign “Lisa Leslie.” After all, I started practicing that signature when I was seven years old. I had no idea then why anybody might want my autograph, but they seem to want it now. Besides, “Lisa Leslie” is comfortable and easy; it makes sense to stick with the name I have had my whole career.
But, at the end of the day, it was important for Lauren Jolie Lockwood’s name to look like mine. When Lauren was born—and I did not know this until later—her umbilical cord was wrapped around her throat and legs. No wonder they were digging into me like that. And when I did not hear her crying when they took her out of me, I immediately spoke up about it. “I don’t hear her crying,” I said. “Why isn’t she crying?”
Michael told me later that everyone’s hands were in motion. Every person in the operating room was moving very fast. He had a better view of the action and was not loopy from anesthesia.
Michael’s Version of Lauren’s Birth:
I was watching the whole thing. While they were cutting Lisa, I was trying to keep her calm and let her know that everything was okay, but as I was looking over the other side of the screen, I was thinking, It sure doesn’t look all right to me! It is serious on this other side.
They reached in there and grabbed the baby, and when they pulled Lauren out, everybody just stopped. The doctors had been moving so fast, and then, for just a moment, everything stopped. When the baby came out, she was not breathing, and she was not moving. I heard the doctor say, “The cord is wrapped around her neck. It is wrapped around her leg and around her body.”
I could see them removing the cord from around her. The baby was not crying or anything, so they started shaking her around and suctioning her out. There were so many hands going at the same time. I was like, “Oh my God. Something is not right.” I could tell because everyone started working frantically.
When Lauren finally screamed and jabbed both hands over her head, everyone in the room went, “Yeah. All right!” You could tell that they were really stressed about the whole thing. I could not be stressed, because I was trying to keep Lisa calm. I told her that the baby looked beautiful and everything was good.
Lisa was a little spacey during the delivery and afterwards, too. I was all excited when I took the baby over to her for the first time. I tipped the baby so that Lisa could s
ee her, and my wife looked over groggily and said, “Whose baby is that?”
I told her, “It’s our baby!”
She said, “No. Whose baby is that?”
That is the honest truth.
Michael is right. That was the very first thing that I said. My husband told me, “Babe, that is our baby. She is so beautiful.” He showed Lauren to me. She was very, very pale. She had a head full of hair. I do not know what was going on in my mind. I was so out of it.
“Is that our baby?” I asked Michael. “Where did you get that baby?” Then I kept telling him, “Stay with our baby. Don’t leave her.”
Michael assured me, “I am not going to leave the baby.” He gave her a kiss and then gave me a kiss, and then Lauren was taken to the nursery while I was getting stitched up.
The first time I got to hold her was in the recovery room. She was wrapped up like a burrito. I kept looking to see that she had all her fingers and toes. She had a really nice head. Her face was not all scrunched up like those of other babies I had seen. She was really pretty to look at. I could hear the nurses talking to my mom in the hallway. They were saying, “Wow! She is a really beautiful baby.” Then Mom, Tiffany, Gabrielle, and Mikaela came in. It was the first time I got to see everybody. My family was with me, and it now included a brand-new baby girl. I kept looking at Lauren, and she kept looking at me. That was the start of our new life together.
Once we got Lauren home, it was time to put to good use all the reading and online research I had done. It was on-the-job training for me, but my maternal instincts kicked in, and I caught on pretty fast. Michael thought it was important for me to breast-feed the baby, and I was fine with that. I knew when Lauren was hungry. I could hear her cries from far away, but I did not know that when a woman is nursing, her milk refills naturally when the baby cries. Isn’t that amazing? Any woman who has had a baby has got to be baffled when she hears someone say that there is no God. My baby whines, and my breasts automatically fill up with milk. That is incredible! The first time it happened, I had no idea what was going on. It was like a balloon blowing up in my chest.