GH Star Kimberly McCullough Reveals How Her Baby Boy Changed Her Life
Back on June 7, Kimberly McCullough (Robin, GENERAL HOSPITAL) welcomed her baby boy Otis into the world. And in a recent blog post on her website, the actress shared some of her experience with childbirth, including the fear, pain, and beauty.
“Childbirth isn’t for the faint of heart,” McCullough declared. “After 34 hours of labor, I ended up having to have a C-section anyway. Birth plan, smirth plan. Shout out to the nurses who kept me calm and distracted me with stories of their lives. And God love my doctor who held my hand as they wheeled me into surgery and lovingly said, ‘Today is just like any other day.’”
She wasn’t crazy about the music playing in the operating room and asked for something else, eventually settling on an R&B station. “My man came in and sat by my side when ‘Ride Wit Ya’ blasted over the speakers,” she revealed. “I was shaking from the anesthesia when I shouted, ‘Hey! Must be the money!’
“Doc said, ‘Dad, stand up!’” McCullough continued. “And I was so jealous that he could see our little guy before I could. In retrospect, my guts were on a plate, so it’s probably better I was rapping at that moment. A few seconds later, a blue-gloved hand thrust my son into the air over the partition and I lost my breath. Like a Lifetime movie on pause, hot, warm blood flooded my body and I began to cry. He cried. I cried. And then he was on the table a few feet away from me. My man yelled back to me, ‘He’s perfect!’”
After a little while longer, the new mom finally got to hold her precious newborn in her arms. “Wow, he was a force to be reckoned with,” McCullough recalled. “All I could think was, ‘You’re so cute. I didn’t think you’d be so cute.’ He looked at me like, ‘I got you, Mom. We got this.’ A powerful little booger. Right then and there, we agreed his name would be Otis.”
McCullough also revealed that the name Otis means wealthy, and clearly this baby is rich with love and affection. She’s shared some photos on her Instagram, but has been careful to keep her child out of the spotlight for the most part. Take a look at some of her beautiful shots of Otis in the special video below!
McCullough confessed that the ride home from the hospital was as terrifying as other parents had warned her it would be, and breast feeding took some getting used to. “I may have had a few rolling panic attacks,” she admitted, “wondering how the hell I was going to keep this little human alive with my body. I’ve never felt so vulnerable in my life. On the one hand, I had this huge, new responsibility in my life. On the other, I wasn’t sure I could walk up the stairs to our bedroom.”
While she allows that it’s been difficult for her to accept her limitations and asking for help, she couldn’t imagine it being any other way. “I love my son so much,” she declared. “He breaks me apart and fills me up every day. Being a mother is a spiritual challenge as well as a physical one. I am not in control, yet I want to protect him and teach him with all that I am. I am humbled by his patience with me and in awe of his purity. I’ve had to learn to ask for help and to receive it with grace. It’s not pretty sometimes but I’m working on it.”
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