‘Twilight’: Stephenie Meyer Wanted the Birth Scene Every Bit as Gruesome as It Was in the Book
Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight series has seriously made a splash. A series of books turned into movies, starring Robert Pattinson and Kristin Stewart as Edward and Bella, the Twilight series had diehard fans the world over. Even so, though, that diehard fanaticism doesn’t keep some fans from asking questions about perceived plot holes. First and foremost, fans wanted to know how Edward, a vampire who was supposedly sterile, got Bella pregnant. The author had an answer, though, and made it available on her website. Stephenie Meyer has also shared that she wanted the birth scene in the Twilight movie to be just as graphic as it was written in her book.
The birth scene in ‘Twilight’ the movie is every bit as gruesome as it is in the book
Bella’s pregnancy was a difficult one in Breaking Dawn, due to the nature of the human/vampire hybrid she carried. The hybrid grew very quickly and made Bella extremely sick. She was unable to eat. The baby was so strong, that its kicks broke Bella’s ribs. Edward tried to convince Bella to abort, but she refused. After that, Edward realized that he could actually hear the baby’s thoughts, and that she loved her mother.
Eventually, the placenta hardened, because of the vampire nature of the baby. During the emergency C-section birth, performed by Edward and Jacob, Bella suffered numerous injuries: Her spine was broken, as were several ribs, and she lost massive amounts of blood. When her heart stopped beating, just after she named the child Renesmee, Edward injects her heart with his venom by biting her, which turns her.
If this all sounds rather graphic and painful in print, then you can imagine (or remember) how gruesome it was for viewers to watch the birth scene on the big screen — especially since Stephenie Meyer didn’t want showrunners to hold back. “I’d love to have the birth scene be every bit as awful — I know it freaked people out, but for those of us who have been through childbirth a couple times, it is a scary, terrifying experience,” she told MTV News in 2010. “This is just taking that to an exponential power, and I love going there.”
Pattinson weighed in on the experience, too, telling the audience at Comic Con in 2011, (via HitFix.com): “The birth scene is so different from everything else in the movie. For a fantasy series it goes quite far. It’s hardcore, it’s graphic. There’s no other way to do it. It was fun.”
Edward and Bell welcomed a daughter named Renesmee
Following that graphic birth scene, Edward and Bella welcomed a daughter named Renesmee, called Nessie for short, in the Twilight series. She would later go on to marry Jacob Black, who had vied with Edward for Bella’s affections at one time. Renesmee is a human/vampire hybrid, with abilities that reflect her heritage. Her birthday is Sept. 11, 2006.
Bella’s pregnancy caused confusion for the casual viewer and diehard fans alike, because, earlier in the story, it had been said that vampires are sterile. Meyer also wrote that vampires have no blood, and stone-like skin. So that begs the question: How exactly did Edward get Bella pregnant when he lacks the biological necessities to even get an erection?
How did Bella get pregnant?
Meyer posted the answer to the question on her website, after numerous tweets on the matter came to her attention. DailyMail outlined what she said about it.
Edward’s skin is like stone, yes, but it’s a different cell structure than a human’s, not that it is stone. The stone-skin is still made up of individual cells, just like a human’s skin is, so it’s still pliable, but offers protection. Meyer said that the skin serves the same general purpose of protection, but only works differently because the cell walls are hard instead of more pliable, like a human’s. The cells, with the right biological prompting, would react in the same ways as a human’s.
As for the blood issue, Meyer said that just because vampires don’t have blood doesn’t mean that they don’t have anything. Instead of blood, vampires have a venom-like liquid that works much like blood does in a human body.
In short, the vampire body works a lot like a human body, but with different materials. As for the sterile comment, Meyer said that only vampire women were sterile — but a vampire male would be able to have a child with a human woman. Because of the way the venom-like liquid reacts, a vampire male would still be able to become erect and impregnate a human. There’s no lack of blood flow; there’s just a replacement.
Edward was able to get Bella pregnant because his body actually works similar to a human body, and Bella was a human at the time.
