Holy Shit, I Think I Hard-Boiled My Baby!

(Taking Hot Baths)

When you first become pregnant there are so many things you just don’t know. Then, there are a billion things people tell you that are either completely wrong or old wives’ tales. Then, there’s the shit your doctor tells you, and then, there’s the shit you read about, and finally, there’s the brilliant wisdom your mother feels the need to share.

The day I found out I was pregnant I was so excited that I vowed to change my way of life. Don’t get me wrong—I wasn’t into anything illegal: I just had some bad eating habits and I was pretty tightly wound. So, I just wanted to eat healthy and really relax. As a start, I thought I would take a hot tub . . . perhaps a Jacuzzi.

I was staying in a hotel at the time, so I figured I would take them up on their advertised facilities. I climbed on into the Jacuzzi and sat there soothing myself in scalding 110-degree water. Oohh, it felt good. As I relaxed, I daydreamed about what my baby would look like. I wondered if he or she would be blond like my husband and me or maybe get my nose and his chin. I was starting to really relax and enjoy myself when Mrs. “I’m Gonna Scare the Shit out of You” decided to join me in the hot tub. She was about fifty years old and, as I came to find out, had three kids of her own. I myself had just found out I was pregnant and I needed to tell somebody, and since she had absolutely no idea who I was, I figured it would be a safe bet to tell her. Of course, I should never have opened my big fat mouth.

“YOU’RE PREGNANT?!! GET THE HELL OUT OF THIS HOT TUB. YOU’RE HURTING YOUR BABY!!!!” she shrieked.

With that, I flip-flopped out of the hot tub like I was in a Jackie Chan movie. I stood there in horror as the once soothing but now terrifyingly lethal water dripped off me. She went on to tell me that extreme heat could really harm the baby, that if your body temperature gets too warm it heats up the embryo.

Now cold and in a cold sweat, I couldn’t help but see my new little embryo sitting inside me as a hard-boiled egg. I honestly believed I had hard-boiled my baby. I started freaking out.

Mrs. I’m Gonna Scare the Shit out of You continued her lecture. She told me to avoid taking a bath, and when I showered, it should always be in cool water. Then she went on to tell me that I should avoid eating fish, not to have sex, not to dye my hair, to avoid caffeine, yadadada. I was doing my best to tune her out: She was starting to sound more and more like the teacher in a Charlie Brown cartoon, “Wawawawaawawa.”

All I could think about was that I MIGHT HAVE HARD-BOILED MY BABY! Leaving the still-ranting hottubber far behind to call my gyno two time zones away, I ran up to my hotel room and dialed like a mad woman. He assured me that I had NOT, in fact, hard-boiled my baby. However, he did say I should indeed avoid taking hot baths. He also told me that most of the time my body would let me know when it was too hot because when you’re pregnant your body will become overheated quickly. And that turned out to be true in a lot of cases. Your body definitely lets you know when something is just not right. If you’re in a crowded room that might be too stuffy, your little pregnant body will set off an alarm inside that will make you get the hell out of there.

Now, maybe he had told me all of this before. Maybe the pregnancy books I had read when we were “trying” made all this clear. But in all my happiness and hormonal wackiness, I didn’t take any of it in. I guess the lesson here is that you should listen to your body more than you listen to the crazy strangers whose advice will scare your pants off. That is, don’t listen to them, but do listen to me. Psycho Chick notwithstanding, I’m not crazy even if I am a stranger (about whose privates you already know too much).