Confessions of a Scary Mommy: An Honest and Irreverent Look at Motherhood: The Good, the Bad, and the Scary (7 page)

Bullshit.

First of all, there is no running around after a newborn. Maybe you’ll dash over to them if you hear a loud thud, but certainly not often enough to break a sweat. No matter how large your house, I highly doubt that normal life with a newborn constitutes an aerobic workout. Even in Hollywood.

And how does one forget how to eat? Like, ever? The only time I ever came remotely close to not eating three square meals plus snacks daily was when I was working in an office for ten hours a day, in a cubicle all alone. But babies eat regularly. Toddlers are
constantly asking for snacks and meals and treats. Never mind that their plates constantly need to be “cleaned.” As a mother you are
surrounded
by food—how on earth is it forgettable?! Unfortunately, losing weight is the simple math of taking in fewer calories than you burn. So, either you’re munching on baby carrots all day, working out constantly, or you’ve become a milk machine and simply aren’t eating. Period.

Unless you are that freak of nature whose weight just evaporates, at some point after giving birth, you will catch a glimpse of yourself and barely recognize the reflection. I remember staring in the mirror for almost an hour, feeling a mix of repulsion, fascination, and awe. And then I took a look at the side view and bawled. My stomach was understandable—it had housed a baby, after all, of course it would look like a half-deflated tire. But my ass? There was no excuse for that.

Getting serious after that nine-month-long binge was tragic. I was grumpy and short-tempered and in a constant bitter mood. Mostly, I just missed the seven-hundred-calorie breakfast sandwich I’d become so accustomed to. I’m pretty sure the Corner Bakery missed me, too. But I slaved away at the gym and pretended garbanzo beans and roasted cauliflower were delicious, and I eventually wore those skinny jeans again.

Until the following spring, when I craved that bacon-and-egg sandwich on a fresh croissant. I practically cried tears of joy while eating it and suddenly realized I was at a crossroads. Practically speaking, now was as good a time as any to start trying for another baby, and I was
really
hungry. Plus, my college roommate was getting married that fall and it was either continue starving to fit into the tight dress alongside her miniature high school friends, or be the one waddling down the aisle in a
specially altered bridesmaid dress. As I licked grease off of my fingers, the decision was made. Two weeks later I was pregnant and the local pizza shop was once again on my phone’s speed dial.

Even though I knew from past experience just how hard that weight eventually would be to take off, I ate my way through nine delicious months all over again. Sixty-five pounds, right on the button. I can’t say I have any regrets, though. My Ben was worth every last calorie, just like his brother was less than two years later.

Even if I’m still carrying those croissants around on my ass.

W
hen you are one half of a couple for any decent amount of time, the inevitable questions commence. The distant relatives you run into at reunions, the old English teacher you see at the grocery store, your sorority sisters—they all want to know one single thing: when are you two tying the knot? It’s none of their business and it doesn’t impact them in the least, but they just
have
to know. And then, once you
are
married, the question moves on to procreating. Have you thought about it? How many children do you want? You never know how long it will take, you know, so you really ought to get started. Go . . .
now!
Quite an aphrodisiac, those conversations.

And then you get pregnant. Congratulations! You waffle about exactly how and when to share the exciting news with friends, family, and strangers alike. Matching T-shirts? Holiday newsletter? Pregnancy test Halloween costumes? An actual bun in the oven? Whatever the announcement,
finally,
the peanut gallery will be satisfied. You can just sit back and bake that baby of yours and they’ll shut the hell up. Thank goodness. Except they’ll inevitably have one burning question they’re just dying to know: what are you naming the baby?

Before I had children, I always found it annoying when people would mysteriously answer that question with “We know the baby’s name, but we’re not sharing. You’ll have to wait.” It seemed like such a pompous attitude—the grown-up version of singing “nah-nah-nah-nah-nah-nah.” You know the answer to what you are being asked but are refusing to share? When would that
not
be considered rude?

But then I got pregnant and
totally
understood. Once you are with child, unsolicited baby-name feedback can surface a hidden rage deep inside of you. When pregnancy hormones
abound, hearing a mere stranger tell you that your baby name is a poor choice serves as a completely valid reason to lose it on them. Cross your fingers for a female judge, because only she would appreciate that this is clearly justifiable homicide. Please, people: if you ask what parents-to-be plan on naming their child, be prepared to respond with “Wonderful choice!” no matter how awful the name. Or be prepared to be butchered. Really, you asked for it.

The day I found out I was having a girl, I made the most important purchase of my entire pregnancy:
The Baby Name Bible
. Aside from a few particular pages in Judy Blume’s
Forever
the summer of my eighth-grade year,
The Baby Name Bible
saw more action than any other piece of literature in my entire life, probably more than all the others combined. Jeff and I took it out on dinner dates and thumbed through it while watching TV. I took it to work to devour over my lunch break and it accompanied us on vacations, weekends away, and trips to the bathroom. Countless hours were spent studying it and obsessing over it.

Like most females I know, years and years before I was ready to start a family, I’d picked out the names I would give my future children. Of course, I was young and naive and thought that all that went into a baby name was my own personal taste. Silly me. Once the time actually came, there was so much more that played a role in the decision: the Jewish tradition of naming after a deceased family member, the way names sounded with my married last name, what initials the names formed, what relatives had chosen . . . never mind Jeff’s opinion (not that his mattered all
that
much).

For me, a girl’s name needed to be beautiful, but not common. Unique and original, but not unheard of. We highlighted
the names that we liked in the
Bible
and they were endless. Juliet, Ella, Isla, Mia, Amelia—feminine names were just so . . .
feminine
and we agreed on so many. We could easily name triplets! Octuplets, even. Narrowing them down was agonizing, but once we saw the name Lily, our decision was made. It went perfectly with the middle name we had chosen to honor my grandmother and it was sweet, pretty, and timeless. Unless she grew up to be some sort of butch motorcycle racer, it was highly unlikely that she’d resent us for the choice. What could you hate about Lily? When she was born, the name seemed perfectly fitting and there wasn’t a moment of regret. It was the way a baby naming was meant to be.

The experience of naming the boys was an entirely different one. I read
The Baby Name Bible
constantly but found a problem (albeit maybe not the most rational problem) with each and every name in the book. One afternoon, seven months pregnant, I cried to a neighbor about the lack of unflawed boys’ names. We’re never going to settle on one, I moaned. “How about Benjamin?” she suggested. Benjamin. It wasn’t an
awful
name, I thought. The initials didn’t combine to create anything laughable or offensive and there were a couple of decent nicknames to choose from. It was totally respectable and classic and I couldn’t find a single thing wrong with it. So, two months later, Benjamin it was. A
fine
name.

Everything was peachy until he started preschool a few years later. My heart fell to the floor the first day of class when I skimmed the student list. There, along with my Ben, was not one, not two, but three other children by the same name in his class alone. So much for originality. From that day forward, my
boy became Ben S. and I became just another mother who chose the twenty-fifth-most common name for my son. Dammit.

I had learned my lesson. Whatever I did, for my next child I was staying away from the top twenty-five list, which, to my horror, now included my daughter’s name. We’d picked out a handful of names for Evan before he was born: Julian, Nathaniel, Caleb, Adrian. But when he was born, he just didn’t look like any of those names. I threw the
Bible
at Jeff. “Start looking,” I barked, and he obliged.

“Jack?”

“No. Remember Jack and Jill? Are we a freaking nursery rhyme?”

“William?”

“Jesus, Jeff. Jill and Will? C’mon.”

“Zachary? Noah? Aiden?”

“No. No. No.”

“How about Evan?” Jeff sighed, exasperated.

“Evan?”

It wasn’t
terrible
. I didn’t
hate
it.

“All right. Evan. I can live with that. I guess.”

And so, Evan it was, and Evan it is.

Lily, Ben, and Evan. I think they are nice, solid names, don’t you?

Wait.

Forget I asked.