Confessions of a Scary Mommy: An Honest and Irreverent Look at Motherhood: The Good, the Bad, and the Scary (4 page)

I shall not preach the benefits of breast-feeding or circumcision or homeschooling or organic food or co-sleeping or crying it out to a fellow mother who has not asked my opinion. It’s none of my damn business.

I shall try my hardest to never say never, for I just may end up with a loud mouthed, bikini-clad, water gun–shooting toddler of my very own.

I shall remember that no mother is perfect and that my children will thrive because of, and sometimes even in spite of, me.

M
y firstborn child was—how do I say this eloquently?—a very pleasant surprise! No, that’s not true. She was a complete and utter shock. A hysteria-inducing, this-cannot-be-happening-to-me, why-did-I-not-triple-up-on-the-birth-control
shock that rocked my selfish, skinny life to the very core. Just so we’re clear.

Back in 2003, I was working in store design for my favorite company. My simple life consisted of shopping, eating out with my husband, drinking with friends, and shopping some more. Did I mention shopping? Because it was the biggest part of my life. My job, which involved decorating a beautiful store with things I could buy myself at a steep discount, was the perfect fit for a self-absorbed girl like me.

My job required me to arrive early so I could unpack and arrange the merchandise that had arrived the previous day on the sales floor. One particular morning in May at about five o’clock, I sat on an overpriced shag carpet with my coworkers, tearing into the big cardboard boxes that had arrived from far overseas. Shiny amethyst earrings! Embellished scarves! Miniature teacups! Everything was so totally cute and absolutely worth spending my entire paycheck on. What else was money for, anyway? Certainly not for saving or investing in anything. Who needed that?!

After a while, I got to a box containing nothing but cookbooks. Beautiful cookbooks that normally made my mouth water and dream of dining on sea bass and grilled vegetables and whatever other beautiful dishes were spread across the colorful pages. But, as I pulled the first one out and glanced at the cover, a funny thing happened. Actually, it wasn’t so funny at all. The mere sight of a plate of roasted scallops sent me running into the bathroom for dear life. Scallops, normally one of my favorite foods, were suddenly unbelievably repulsive. So repulsive that I could barely control myself, and before I knew it, the entire contents of my stomach covered the stockroom bathroom. That
was odd, I thought. Maybe I had some bad Honey Nut Cheerios for breakfast? Yes, that must have been it.
Of course
.

The rest of the day went similarly. Suddenly, I couldn’t look at food without needing to upchuck. A coworker heated up her lunch in the communal microwave and the grotesque smell infuriated me. Wasn’t the stench of homemade ravioli revolting to anyone else? The tomato sauce? The cheese? The faint scent of garlic and onion? So rude of her to heat up her food like that and torture the rest of us! It was gag-worthy, wasn’t it? Except, it wasn’t. Not to anyone else but me.

“You’re totally pregnant,” my assistant observed confidently when I returned from my seventh trip to the ladies’ room. “Pregnant? Me? No way. I’m just . . . off today,” I responded in a huff. Certainly, that was it . . . I
couldn’t
be pregnant. We lived in a third-floor walk-up downtown, I’d had three vodka tonics last weekend, I was rocking the supershort denim skirts, I didn’t even
like
kids, for crying out loud. It was simply
not
a possibility. Maybe there was a stomach bug going around—maybe I’d even drop a few pounds in the process! Now,
that
I could deal with. But pregnant? Nope. Not me.

On the way home, I stopped at the drugstore to pick up some Pepto-Bismol and a trashy magazine. I happened to pass the family-planning aisle, where the pregnancy tests stared back at me from their orderly little shelves.
Of course
it would be negative, and I would relish in saying “I told you so” tomorrow at work, but what the hell? The ten bucks seemed worth the investment if for no other reason than to prove my coworkers wrong. I’d certainly spent money on more frivolous things in my lifetime. Into my cart the little test flew.

At my apartment, I ripped open the package and followed
the directions diligently. Prepared to wait awhile in the bathroom, I thumbed through my hot-off-the-press
People
magazine to catch up on the latest Jen and Brad gossip: Were they expecting? Was he cheating? Was
she
cheating? When was the last time he shaved that beard? Her hair was a little too blond, but not altogether bad. Would mine look good like that? It might look good on me . . .

These were my priorities until I saw two blue lines appear on the test. Suddenly, I had much bigger things to worry about. Brad who?

I frantically dialed my husband at work. “Jeff,” I stammered. “Um. I just took a pregnancy test . . . and it was positive.” Dead silence followed on the other end. Hellooo? “I’m coming home,” he whispered, and hung up the phone. In record time, armed with overflowing drugstore bags, he arrived at the door. Five minutes later, we had a buffet of pregnancy tests decorating the bathroom sink. They varied in color, size, and brand, but all had one thing in common and there was no doubt about it. Life as we knew it was over.

I suppose it shouldn’t have been all that much of a shock as I
had
gone off the pill a few months ago. But that wasn’t to get
pregnant
! Hell, no. It was just to get my skin cleared up and give my body a break before going on a
different
pill. My gynecologist’s reminder to make sure to practice backup birth control floated around my head in an imaginary cartoon bubble.

Once the immediate shock and denial wore off, I tried to look on the bright side: We
were
a happily married couple. It was totally acceptable for happily married couples to reproduce. I had, after all, handpicked this man to spend the rest of my life with. If I were going to have a child with anyone,
he
was the one
I wanted to do it with. Maybe it really was meant to be, in some bizarre, cosmic way that I couldn’t yet grasp. Perhaps this pregnancy thing wasn’t all that bad.

And then I threw up.

The “morning” sickness was just the beginning. It amazed me that a creature, barely the size of a peanut, could be wreaking such havoc on my body. I was exhausted, like I had never known exhaustion before. But, as fatigued as I was, I couldn’t actually sleep. Such an unfair predicament. My skin was breaking out like I was an oily teenager again. My back ached. My hair curled funny. My nails split. I was a mess. This bullshit was beautiful? Please tell me exactly what is beautiful about any of it, because I seemed to have missed that part.

As if I didn’t feel shitty enough, my body and business suddenly seemed to be part of the public domain. I wasn’t even a mother yet, and I was being judged for decisions I had yet to make. It was the motherhood rat race, and I was an unintentional contender. Strangers would stop me in restaurant bathrooms and ask whether I planned on breast-feeding. How on earth was that information relevant to them in the least? Old ladies questioned my choice of lunch meat, when they hadn’t been pregnant in the last fifty years. Friends gave me unsolicited advice on cloth diapers and breast pumps, when I barely knew what either was. Don’t even get me started on sleep training and circumcision. Once you’re carrying a child, suddenly the world has an opinion on each and every choice you make, despite the fact that they have less than nothing to do with your decisions or the outcome. How this is socially acceptable is beyond me, especially with all of the hormones pregnant women are high on. Hasn’t some nine-months-pregnant woman on the edge scared
away the nosy busy bees yet? If I ever get pregnant again, I vow to be that person. For
you
.

And then there was my husband. My sweet, wonderful, and loving soul mate of a man, who, I successfully convinced myself, might actually be able to give me the only child on earth I’d ever be able to tolerate. Our very best qualities would merge and result in a baby who would change my view on all young people across the land. There must have been something primal about my attraction to him. It was all meant to be, I thought.

But, suddenly, this man I’d picked transformed into the most irritating creature I’d ever laid eyes on. What the hell had I done? The humor I’d previously found laugh-out-loud funny was now nothing but annoying. His snoring kept me up at night. The smell of his skin made me sick. He had the audacity to tell me that pregnant women looked sexy in heels—did he have to waddle around with bunions and balance issues? He simply could do no right. He and everyone else in the universe.