Boys grow up to carry their mother’s luggage (not the emotional baggage I was hoping Harper would tote, but actual Samsonite). They give gangly boy hugs to their mothers. They fall asleep with toy airplanes in their hands because they don’t want to put them down, want to dream about flying. They shyly ask their moms advice about girls. Or maybe my boy will like other boys, and original-cast albums of Broadway shows, and that will be fine, too, because maybe my girl would pull a Chastity Bono on me anyway, and not strictly adhere to the gender clichés, hating ribbons and bows and begging to watch the guy at the hardware store make a key.
This idea tickles me more than that rack of boas would: I may have accidentally started being a decent parent already, because I’ve already stopped counting on this boy to make it all better. I don’t know which way he’s going, but I’m squatted down with a low center of gravity, ready to go any direction, ready to follow his lead. I’m ready to love the hell out of this boy, not for what he can do for me but for how fun it might be to get to know him.
The more I think about that magazine article, the battier and crueler those women seem, and I’m flooded with relief. The feeling didn’t pass because I’m superior, or because I did anything magical to get rid of it, or because I’m destined for maternal greatness. It just passed.
I still don’t know much about boys.
I just know that this one, my boy, is crowding my diaphragm, lungs and stomach, while simultaneously making room in my heart. I hate that I even wrote that sentence, but the pregnancy hormones are robbing me of my ability to be cynical sometimes. I have to do crazy shit like talk about my fucking heart, but at least cursing makes me feel less vulnerable and stupid about it. Fucking heart.
People I Want to Punch: Great Sleeper People
Great sleepers can sleep anywhere, and they can’t shut up about it.
Here’s what you sound like, sleepy-heads: “I sleep in the car! I sleep standing up! I sleep on a pile of coats at a party! I sleep while operating a jackhammer! I fall asleep on the toilet sometimes! I sleep in the break room at the office! Does coffee keep me up? Heck no. I enjoy a strong espresso after dinner every night and I nod right off. Sometimes, I actually hit my head right on the tiny mug. I just love sleeping. I could sleep eleven hours a night. If I don’t get at least eight hours, I’m a mess. If you’re tired, why don’t you just take a nap?”
Sleepers can’t grasp insomnia. As well rested as they are, you’d think they would have ready access to empathy. Instead, advising us to take naps is like telling a depressive to just “cheer up.” They’re simply not tuned in to those of us with psyches that refuse to let us relax.
If your brain has an on-off switch, mine has a choir. The altos sing a to-do list, the tenors are belting out words to an e-mail I shouldn’t have written, the sopranos are reminding me to think about cutting out dairy, the bass provides a steady thrum of self-doubt, la la la, self-doubt, la la la, while the soloist sings, “Are we the only mammals who know that we die?” In the mind of the easy sleeper: old-school slow jams or a medley of Celtic harp music. While we have a crescendo choir of assholes we can’t turn down, you might even have total silence, or an internal Sharper Image white-noise machine set on ocean waves. Explaining chronic insomnia to great sleepers is like explaining Thomas Pynchon to a toddler. He isn’t going to grasp Gravity’s Rainbow. That’s why great sleepers, instead of learning an important lesson called Nodding Sympathetically While Saying, “I know this must be hard,” suggest herb tea, sleep masks and naps. Naps.
You don’t just sleep—you make a spectacle of your repose by snoring, drooling, looking extra cozy and sleeping in the most awkward positions imaginable. You doze without a blanket in a chilly room, your bare feet mocking my need for ideal sleep conditions. You sleep with your head mashed against a scratchy couch, pressing a tweed pattern into your cheeks. You snooze through fire alarms and earthquakes. You siesta peacefully after getting fired or dumped, and you have no trouble falling immediately into a deep slumber the night before taking a big exam, starting a new job, or getting a kidney transplant.
As far back as I can remember, sleeping was something I knew normal people did with ease and regularity.
Little girls with pink rooms and white wicker beds whose mommies tucked them into bed with warm milk and animal crackers, those little bitches put their pigtails on the gingham pillowcase and it was nighty-night. I had been to enough slumber parties and sleepovers to know that little worried freaks like me with freaky thoughts were probably the only ones awake in the middle of the night.
Even as a seven-year-old, I would get in bed and stare at the ceiling for hours, my mind racing. I remember worrying about whether I had cavities, concerned that at my dentist appointment in three months the hygienist would narc me out for eating sugar, which my hippie parents didn’t allow me to have. They would just know I had been eating SweeTarts and fun-size Charleston Chews from the look of my tooth enamel, and I would have some explaining to do about all of my lying. This is the kind of issue that seemed so pressing that I had to imagine the many ways it might play out, just as I had to imagine the multitude of angles from which the bogeyman could strike, causing me to gnash my surely rotting teeth.
While other children were enjoying sleep, one of the most basic of human needs, I would reenact conversations with the girls at ballet school that hadn’t gone well, or consider the odds that my grandpa would have a heart attack and drop dead before I could apologize for spilling nail polish remover on his tax returns.
As you can imagine, once caffeinated beverages and puberty entered the picture, it only got worse.
When I think about college, I think about watching Charlie Rose interview various obscure notables on my tiny black-and-white television propped up on a milk crate. When “The Star-Spangled Banner” came on, I would switch to news radio. Traffic, weather, news, traffic, weather, news, trying not to check the clock, checking the clock, endless calculations about how much sleep I would get if I just fell asleep now. Or now. Or now. Or within fifteen minutes from now. Or this hour.
Under ideal conditions, when the temperature is moderate, the bedding clean and fluffy, the room neat and the life situation calm, I still have to read or watch television before falling asleep. Pregnancy, with its attendant physical discomforts and emotionally charged future projections, is me teaching a master class on insomnia to Mr. Sandman.
Good sleeper people, you mean well, but you all seem to think if you can’t get a good night’s sleep, you should just nap. You never shut up about the merits of goddamn napping, as though somehow it’s easier to sleep in the middle of the day.
Here’s you: “You should just nap. I love naps. Just a twenty-minute snooze makes me feel so refreshed. I just put on my sleep mask and out I go.”
Just the thought of you in REM as I struggle to find a position that doesn’t squish my swollen boobs or jostle my constantly full bladder, just the idea of you logging a full night of rest makes me jealous and resentful. Good sleeper people, especially those of you who are also pregnant and should really be spending the wee hours flipping through pregnancy books to see what symptoms you can expect every week until your due date, you are as irritating as the red numbers on a digital clock flashing all night long.
On top of the usual strain of being awake when the world has stopped, I now have to worry that I am stressing out my tiny fetus with my insomnia and the worries that cause it. I have a new pastime as I readjust my pillow for the forty-seventh time: Instead of counting sheep, I count the ways I want to punch you good sleepers, and put you to sleep for a good long time.
First Trimester Box Score
Here is my current pregnancy stat sheet.
Just remember, not everything is in the numbers. This pregnancy has big upside potential. Lots of hustle. Maybe I’ll get scouted to deliver in the minors.
STRASSER’S ROOKIE SEASON ON THE BABY BREWERS
2 hemorrhoids
2 bladder infections
/> 39 years of age
3.6 emotional breakdowns
5 missed work meetings and therapy appointments due to pregnancy confusion, or “baby brain”
3 instances of locking myself out of the house in my pajamas
2 bra cup size increases
67 times I’ve Googled the word “miscarriage” in combination with various behavior or symptoms
4 sonograms
1 first-trimester screening
1 CVS test
2 genetic disorders found in my DNA
3 full bottles of Cherry Mylanta consumed
1 bottle Zantac prescribed (useless)
1 bottle Zofran prescribed (useless)
5 baby names in the running, none really grabbing me
1 shaming yoga teacher who announced, “This should be your last regular class. Prenatal yoga is on Tuesdays.” Namaste to you, too, m-fer.
1 extreme full-body acne outbreak
12 containers Fage yogurt consumed between hours of twelve and three a.m.
9 cups frozen grapes consumed between hours of twelve and three a.m.
16 hours of This American Life downloaded for listening pleasure in the bathtub during the dark, scary nighttime hours
4 tubs powdered organic bubble bath used
27 spins of the Talking Heads song “Stay Up Late.” Little pee-pee, little toes.
17 proclamations about my future boy, including, “He is going to love reading. And hate binge drinking.”
2 moments I stopped cold walking on the sidewalk. Paused. Had to stand still to really consider: What have I gotten myself into?
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How Freaky and Paranoid Is Your Google History?
This 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 Spock1
Toddler Guitar
Beer and pregnancy
Guinness beer good for you BBC
Guinness beer iron2
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 reviews3
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 miscarriage4
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 content5
Ampicillin—nausea bladder
Ampicillin nausea
CVS Cedars-Sinai
Fucking CVS
Imminent miscarriage
Prenatal 3D ultrasound safety issues
Are new ultrasound technologies causing autism?
Sonogram autism6
Baby sucking thumb on ultrasound
Pregnancy and baby: ultrasound
It’s a boy for Carson Daly and girlfriend7
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 go8
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 pregnancy9
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 Angeles9
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 weeks10
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 baby11
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.
Exploiting My Baby Page 9