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Authors: Teresa Strasser

Exploiting My Baby (12 page)

BOOK: Exploiting My Baby
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nine
How Freaky and Paranoid Is Your Google History?
 
 
 
T
his is almost like “found poetry,” if you found a really depressing and sparsely written poem. Here is a verbatim history of my baby-related Google searches for my third month of pregnancy. How do you describe obsessive, all-consuming anxiety? Like they say in Comp 101: Show, don’t tell.
Miscarriage signs
Baby book Spock
1
Toddler Guitar
Beer and pregnancy
Guinness beer good for you BBC
Guinness beer iron
2
Beer and pregnancy
O’Doul’s pregnancy safe?
Imminent miscarriage
Emergen-C pregnancy safe
Hot baths pregnancy neural tube defects
Is it safe to take a hot bath while pregnant?
Hot baths: safe during pregnancy?
Pregnancy—Birth: Cause of miscarriage
Does anyone still take hot baths?
Pregnancy and baby: Are hot baths safe?
The myths and facts about pregnancy
Stretch mark cream reviews
Imminent miscarriage
Stretch mark product reviews
3
Reviews of top five stretch mark remover creams
The Doctor’s Book of Home Remedies: stretch marks
Octo-Mom: “I was a stripper”
CVS: chorionic villus sampling
Discharge normal after CVS
CVS cramps villus
CVS prenatal diagnosis
Fitness for Two: March of Dimes
Braxton Hicks CVS after
Braxton Hicks contractions
First trimester screening
CVS not risky?
Imminent miscarriage
4
Miscarriage
What brings on miscarriage?
Preventing miscarriage
Life after miscarriage
Nonviable pregnancy but no miscarriage yet
Abnormal first trimester screening results
CVS testing and miscarriage
First trimester screening negative results
CVS miscarriage
CVS test
CVS test reliability
CVS, not the pharmacy
Nonalcoholic beer during pregnancy
O’Doul’s alcohol content
5
Ampicillin—nausea bladder
Ampicillin nausea
CVS Cedars-Sinai
Fucking CVS
Imminent miscarriage
Prenatal 3D ultrasound safety issues
Are new ultrasound technologies causing autism?
Sonogram autism
6
Baby sucking thumb on ultrasound
Pregnancy and baby: ultrasound
It’s a boy for Carson Daly and girlfriend
7
Ellen Pompeo pregnant
Pompeo baby weight
Lady from Grey’s Anatomy skinny
Ashlee Simpson baby weight
How old is Ashlee Simpson?
Young women baby weight
Urinary tract infections
Positive urine nitrate test
Enterococcus bladder infection catheter
Bladder infection: information from
Answers.com
Mantras for letting go
8
Celebrities with first name: Mick
Celebrities with first name: Shane
Imminent miscarriage
The Mommy Files: 7 superfoods you should be eating
Prenatal vitamins make me sick
Fetal movement: feeling your baby kick
Fitness/nutrition: your first trimester: iVillage
Best camcorder
Imminent miscarriage
What your baby looks like—10 weeks—babycenter
Do you want to know your baby’s gender?
Caffeine during pregnancy
Sleep aids during pregnancy
9
Exposure to oral contraceptives and risk for Down syndrome
Folate and human development
Down syndrome likelihood 38
Causes of Down syndrome
Risk factors for Down syndrome
Loving a child with Down syndrome
Best physician Los Angeles
9
9 weeks pregnant?
Showing pregnancy
First pregnancy and showing early
Gestational diabetes
Diabetes and birth weight
Organic frosting
Healthy sweeteners cupcakes Los Angeles
Me hungry
What is the meaning of life?
Oldest mother on record British
When can babies hear music
Reflux, food, causes
Constipation pregnancy iron
Most expensive stretch mark cream
Pregnancy exercise linked to high IQ
Latest week pregnancy miscarriage risk
Pregnancy gallery: 10 weeks
10
Treadmill pregnancy safe
Short torso and pregnancy
Lasers to treat stretch marks
Ideal temperature bath pregnancy
Hot bath and pregnancy
Wikianswers: hot bath and gin end pregnancy
Expecting? Pregnancy myths exposed
Gender prediction
The truth about gender prediction
Imminent miscarriage
People.com
: Strasser expecting first baby
11
ten
Logan’s Running
 
 
 
I
order a smoothie and the man doesn’t offer me a free boost.
“Can I get a Vitabek?” I ask.
“Umm. Those aren’t good for pregnant girls.”
And this is the first time someone, totally unprovoked, alludes to the baby. Just from looking at me.
Which makes today one of those days I know for sure that I’m pregnant.
This isn’t just something I want to be true. This isn’t just some ruse my doctor and husband are in on, cooking up fake sonograms just to make me happy and using some other baby’s prerecorded heartbeat sound to convince me.
The confused background processing that passes for thinking in the pregnant mind can present this as a real possibility: Every symptom, every item of clothing that no longer fits, every middle-of-the-night leg cramp, every esophagus-scorching bout of heartburn, these are all just figments, coincidences. Maybe a delusion, an elaborate sham, or a long trance.
There can’t really be a
baby
.
That would be too weird, if you just wanted to have a baby, had unprotected sex, and two months later peed on a stick and got a plus sign. That could not have happened. Not to me.
Yet this smoothie guy is a total stranger. He could not be in on the hoax. He took one look at me and decided it would be a bad idea to offer me a boost. Because I’m
pregnant
. I tell him I think the vitamin boost will probably be okay, and he says he didn’t want to say anything to me because last time he declined to give someone a boost, the lady turned out not to be pregnant and he felt terrible about insulting her. I check out the reflection of my belly’s profile in the glass door of the smoothie shop and announce, “Well, I really am pregnant, so don’t feel bad.”
And the most banal of errands, just running out to get a raspberry banana smoothie, turns out to be pretty juicy. (Carrie Bradshaw just vomited when she read that last line. Give me a break. They can’t all be gems.)
Emboldened by the fact that even the smoothie guy knows I’m pregnant, I clutch my giant vitamin-enhanced beverage and wander, finding myself at a park on Beverly Boulevard near Larchmont Village. I’ve never been here before, though I’ve driven by a thousand times, barely registering the balloons on the picnic tables, swing sets, jungle gyms. Maybe I just want to get close to where the mom people and children go. There are strollers, sippy cups, nannies and a playground lousy with toddlers.
Spreading out my sweater on the grass, I survey the scene for a second, and wonder if this is home, or the future, or an oasis of simple pleasures I don’t yet understand, or some kind of grape juice-stained, soul-crushing daily drudgery that I will never, ever embrace or even hack. I look for signs, read the mom faces. I give up, deciding I have five more months to figure it out. I return a few calls. I download a meditation app on my iPhone and zone out, which is easier now than ever. Pregnancy hormones are supposed to be making me overwrought and insane, but I started out that way, so perhaps they are having the opposite effect. Being in the second trimester feels like being stoned; I’m forgetful, unmotivated, want to eat strange food combinations and just feel high. First-trimester angst has largely given way to a mind-set not unlike an early Eagles song, peaceful and easy, allowing me to smash my previous meditation record of three and a half minutes.
When I come to, a woman is screaming at an old man in a straw hat and faded plaid shirt. “Don’t talk to these kids. Get out of here. You are disgusting and you should be ashamed of yourself.”
She is pointing at his face and there is a chorus of silent moms behind her, arms crossed, chinos in a bunch, angry, but no one calls 911. I don’t know what the story is with these moms and this old man. I want to help, but I feel detached, like I’m observing the whole thing behind glass in a mom exhibit somewhere.
The old man swivels on the bench, which is oriented toward the playground. He turns sideways, head on his shoulder, and stares right at me.
I am way too old for you, pal
. Maybe he’s trying to get a gander at my tiny, naked fetus. Creepy. Now I have to worry about registered sex offenders, or I guess it’s really the unregistered sex offenders that should concern me. Maybe this guy is just a geezer who enjoys the bench on a sunny afternoon, I don’t know. I don’t know whose side I’m on, but visiting the park is like taking a college tour when you can’t picture leaving home but know your departure is looming. Some of the park moms seem bored and some seem put-upon and others seem quietly content. Some have nannies with them and some swing their children with one hand and tie their hair back with the other. All of them seem much older and more mature than I am (though let’s face it, most are probably younger), but even the smoothie guy knows that I’m about to be one of them. I may be rubbernecking now, but it won’t be long before I’m living life in the mom lane, which will surely make me lose my mind. Or not. For now, I can just Take It Easy.
There were moms and babies all around before; I just never noticed them. Now, I carefully observe them everywhere I go, stare at a woman struggling to corral her little boy at the grocery store while attaching her infant’s car seat to the top of her cart. The diaper and baby food aisle has always been there, but I’ve never walked down it until now. The bulletin board at the bagel shop has always been covered with ads for Mommy and Me classes and babysitters, but now I take note. It’s not that baby stores are sprouting up at strip malls across the greater Los Angeles area; it’s just that I can finally see what’s always been there.
Being pregnant for the first time is like learning a new word; suddenly you hear it all the time, now that you finally know what it means.
Will I go to this very park with my boy? Stroll him to the smoothie shop so I can show him off to the smoothie man and reassure him the vitamin boost was okay? Will I know how to play with him, seeing as I’ve never pushed a child on a swing in my life, or handled a sippy cup, diaper or onesie? Will I be accepted into this clan of moms? Do babies need sunscreen or just a hat? What if caring for a child is so gratifying that I never want to work again? Or, what if, like my mother, I will take any job I can get to afford paying a nanny to do all of this for me? If there is a continuum of mommy excellence, with Medea on one end and June Cleaver on the other, where will I land? Hopefully, nowhere near Nancy O’Dell, who owes me a punch in the face, though I assume she is pretty close to June Cleaver in overall saintliness.
It’s cooling off, but I stay even after the old guy bails. A mom in a striped oxford and Keds ties the ends of a knit hat under the chin of her wriggly child and produces a box of raisins from somewhere in her giant backpack. Some kid trips and cries. Every kid seems to be named Logan. “Logan, say you’re sorry. Logan, you want your juice box? Logan, I said stop that. Logan, time to go. Logan, I said time to go. Logan, it’s okay, play nice. Logan, do you remember your friend Logan? You met him last week.
Logan!!!! Not on the slide!
Logan, tell your brother Logan to put on his sweater because we have to go. Logan, you need a nap. Logan, this is what happens when you eat candy. Logan, this is what happens when you don’t go pee before we leave the house. Logan, use your words. Logan, don’t be shy. Logan, don’t run. Logan, say good-bye to Logan, Logan and Logan.”
A quick search on the iPhone reveals that the name Logan is of Scottish and Gaelic origin and means “hollow.” A baby name Web site explains that the name gained momentum in recent years, a fact the site attributes to the character Brooke Logan on
The Bold and the Beautiful
. Really? A word meaning “hollow” becomes ubiquitous at a Los Angeles park because of a soap opera character who has a brother named Storm and a romantic history with a guy named Ridge (more Googling).
It’s almost dark now, and the moms have scattered and I realize that there is a lot of information I just don’t have yet and a lot of it you can’t get on your iPhone. I toss my spent smoothie in the trash. I stare at the abandoned playground, pull the sleeves of my sweater over my hands. I’m stuck here motionless for a second, with no one to tell me if I’ll ever want to come back, or if I’ll ever belong, or if my mom days at the park will be filled with wonder or Valium. There is no way to know if the future will be like a never-ending, poorly reviewed science fiction movie or if I will enjoy watching the Logans run.
eleven
The Ten Worst Moms in History
 
 
 
A
t five months pregnant, I think a lot about Ruth Bader Ginsburg. It’s not just that she’s the second woman ever to be appointed to the Supreme Court of the United States, but also because with her prim lace collars, understated pearl earrings and overall vibe of measured thoughtfulness and calm, she seems like a great mom. I wish she were my mom sometimes. I don’t know the woman, but I even kind of wish she could be my child’s mom. Who wouldn’t want to climb up on that robed lap and hear about how Mom volunteered for the ACLU or learned a new language to coauthor a book on judicial procedure in Sweden?
It’s not just Ruth. There are many women, famous and not, who seem much better suited for the job of motherhood.
There are times I feel sorry for my unborn child, because he will have me for a mother, and not someone more calm and together.
Kids need to be reassured that everything is okay, whereas my general opinion is that the sky is falling and everyone hates me. I don’t just sweat the small stuff, I flop sweat it.
I regularly miss ten freeway off-ramps just crafting a paragraph in my head or memorizing lines, after which I come to and panic because I’m horribly lost. I regularly leave the curling iron on until it singes the dresser and any nearby hand towels. So far, I’ve exhibited no patience for learning about birthing, birthing centers or baby development. When my doctor was running half an hour behind, I didn’t think, “Oh, well, I’ll just use this time to quietly reflect on this beautiful transition,” but instead, I approached the receptionist seventeen times to whisper, “ETA?” After that, I sat there angrily flipping the pages of
American Cheerleader
magazine and rolling my eyes. Kids don’t like eye rollers. They need someone who can go with the flow.
BOOK: Exploiting My Baby
6.67Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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