About This Book

Why Exploiting My Baby Seems Like a Good Idea

 

 

 

Like it’s so special having a baby. Britney Spears did it twice, so there you go.

Yet we’ve all seen these spooky, obsessed smother mothers with their sippy cups full of self-absorption and their nonstop, mind-numbing prattle about the relative merits of different brands of organic baby food. These are the souls who update their Facebook status to reflect little Jackson’s latest bowel movement. This is not okay. This is chilling.

There are so many nerve-racking things about being pregnant for the first time. Just when you think you can handle nausea, ravenous hunger, precipitous weight gain, and of course the abject fear about your baby’s health, you come into contact with one of these mothers and you think, “Not that I’m so great, but I hope I don’t become her.”

Frankly, before I got pregnant, I was never actually all that comfortable being me, but it was all I knew. Would I now become an uptight asshole who would insist you douse yourself in Purell before touching my offspring, lest you pass on some grubby infection to my precious baby Jesus child? Would I find myself driving a minivan to Tot Shabbat—glassy-eyed and resentful—wearing a crumb-covered Ann Taylor knit and blasting Raffi?

Would all of my concerns in life revolve around what kind of crib mattress was optimum or how best to pack a diaper bag so I could spend the day pushing a stroller through an indoor mall like the other zombie moms, stopping only occasionally to bust out some watermelon cubes from a worn Tupperware container? Would I get gory stretch marks and an eighteen-year-long case of postpartum depression like my mother? Would I feel suffocated and fake a seizure just for some “alone time”?

While I hemorrhaged money on Baby Einstein mobiles and brain-enhancing music classes for the little one, would my own mind atrophy?

In essence: Would both my ass and my mind wear mom jeans?

I had no idea about any of this.

Maybe everything had already been said about the experience of pregnancy, but it was new to me and I found myself not only wanting to write about it but also consuming any information I could, from Nancy O’Dell’s book (beautiful lady, but her memoir about extra-glowing pregnancy skin and lack of any unpleasant symptoms can suck it) to Jenny McCarthy (you want to dismiss her but you can’t, because Jenny is charming and likeable and has touched Oprah with her own hands. Still, her style makes you want to say, “I get it. You’re edgy. Even though you’re hot, you talk about poops and farts. Goooooood for you”).

I sought out books and blogs that would level with me, and I don’t mean syrupy pseudo-disclosures like, “I haven’t washed my hair in weeks, but it’s all worth it because of the majesty of motherhood.” I wanted precise details about both the trip and the destination. What exactly was going to happen to my digestive system, cervix, weight, delicate internal anxiety management system, boobs, mind, sex life, sense of personal freedom, bladder, marriage, anus, appetite, mood, body image, overall ability to accept changing identity, deeply rooted and unrelenting mommy issues, chronic insomnia, beloved but moderate use of toxins, oil glands, abdomen, shoe size? Who was I going to be on the other side, and how painful would it be crossing over?

As long as there are pregnant girls up in the middle of the night wondering if it’s a cramp or gas or a disaster, as long as there are new-comers to this world as confused and terrified as I was, this pregnancy thing is always going to be fresh and relevant.

There is no precedent for us first-timers. I didn’t understand any of the sensations happening in my body, which all seemed like they must mean imminent miscarriage, a phrase I Googled no fewer than 137 times.

I didn’t have any idea what nipple salve or nasal aspirators do. I didn’t know what a doula was, except maybe something you might find on a platter of Mediterranean food. I didn’t know anything about babies, except that I was having one. Moreover, I didn’t know how to write about any of this without conjuring images of poor, kicked-around Kathie Lee Gifford, who seems like an all right gal but who took so much shit for trotting out little Cody and little what’s-her-face just to make America love her.

I guess it seemed like she was just exploiting her babies.

Maybe she was, and maybe it was obnoxious for Kathie Lee to use her children to present a sweet, homey version of herself no one was buying. Maybe she truly was a baby-exploiting phony who deserved all the vitriol she got. But when I thought about it, I wasn’t totally innocent of my own brand of creative exploitation.

As a writer, I guess I’ve “exploited” all of my subjects: my stepparents, my boyfriends, my beat-up cars, my jacked-up apartments, my land-lords, my Hebrew school teachers, my grandfather, my girlfriends, the dude at the dry cleaner’s, my therapist(s), my dermatologist, the hot guy I met at that silent Buddhist retreat in San Diego, everyone. From breakups to breakdowns, I’ve always just written about whatever was going on in my life, but because this was a fetus, it suddenly seemed tacky, Kathie Lee tacky.

Sometimes, when you’re scared about how something is going to be perceived, you have to look the bogeyman right in the face, which is why at two months pregnant I invested $10 and bought the domain name ExploitingMyBaby.com.

And after all, the kid was exploiting me. One day, I thought, “Kid, I just made you a spleen and some eyebrows. The least you can do is get mommy a book deal.”

Out in the world of mom-to-be books, I found a gaping hole, a no-man’s-land between treacly tales that would make unicorns yak and clinical descriptions of symptoms that are useful, but about as emotionally satisfying as a dental supplies catalogue. I also found a trove of bitter “motherhood sucks” volumes that depressed me when I needed to be feeling okay about the biggest “no backsies” decision of my life.

My goal was to trudge the road from conception to delivery, taking good notes as I went and hopefully sharing insights beyond “I pooped on the delivery table.” Although, I do have a poop story that I hope will be the number-one story you will ever hear about number two.

These notes and blog posts turned into kind of a memoir, which I hope starts a fruitful lifetime of exploitation. On a less glib front, if you are reading this, you are probably pregnant or planning to be, and I hope I can be a gestational companion. I desperately needed pregnant friends, and I hope to be one of yours, or at least give you something to do at night when you can’t sleep and are sick of reading what food item your fetus most resembles (Your baby is now the size of a poppy seed! A blueberry! A prune! A kiwi! An avocado! A grapefruit! An eggplant! A squash! A watermelon!).

The more I posted, the more women responded, the more I realized I wasn’t alone in my neuroses. I knew I was doing the right thing.

So, let the exploitation begin.