“What to Expect When You’re Expecting” — based on the best-selling pregnancy manual — is supposed to be about the highs and lows of having a child, but stars Jennifer Lopez and Cameron Diaz are more interested in the more horrific aspects. “I had a C-section, but my sister gave birth six months later,” Lopez remembers. “We got pregnant around the same time, and she asked me to be in the delivery room with her. Because I had twins and it was recommended for me to have a C-section, there was a part of me that had thought, ‘I didn’t get to do it the way that everybody else does.’ But when I saw my sister pushing that baby out I was like, ‘Maybe this was all right! Maybe this was a better out.’”

Diaz, who doesn’t have any children of her own, explains that she got a crash-course in the gruesome realities at age 25 when her sister gave birth — and it may have shaded her own views on pregnancy. “I was in [the delivery room] and they were doing a C-section,” Diaz remembers. “There was just, like, blood everywhere, my sister’s guts out on a platter — the inside, all of her intestines. It was crazy, dude.” As grisly as that may sound, though, Diaz insists the other option isn’t that appealing, either. “The vaginal delivery was crazy,” she says. “No man should ever see it! Never let a man see that. Never.”

Luckily, the film focuses on many other aspects of being pregnant. For Diaz, part of the fun of making “What to Expect When You’re Expecting” was the prosthetic enhancements she got to wear — even if they didn’t stand up to the elements.

“My pregnant breasts were really amazing,” Diaz says with a laugh. “I was like, ‘Wow! Those are awesome!’ But then, when they put them on — because it was just the top part — in the Atlanta heat, I aged about 40 years by the end of two hours. They were literally hanging down to my hips! They were just drooping down, like they were just melting off my body, and it was really not attractive.”

To adopt or not?

So with all the pregnancy horror stories — both onscreen and off — might Lopez make like her character and consider adoption as an option for her next child?
   
“It’s funny, because before the movie I never really thought about adoption at all. I just always wanted to have my own baby,” she says. “But after the film and during the making of the film, when I held those two little Ethiopian twins, I fell in love instantly. It really occurred to me: I can see how somebody can do this, how it is so easy to embrace a child who has nothing. It’s really a beautiful, selfless act of love, and it’s something that you go, ‘OK, I understand these feelings, I get this, I know how this happens.’”