Free Exploiting My Baby by Teresa Strasser Page B

It’s not recommended during pregnancy. That’s right, now you can’t even put your bench-warming sleep aids in the game.
    Funny thing, though. The more hushed conversations or e-mail exchanges I have with moms, the more I start to formulate a theory about pregnancy and toxins: Everyone lies . Maybe not with their first babies, because we first-timers are all trepidatious and terrified, but once they get to that second, third, fourth pregnancy, they lie . They use moderation and common sense, and they keep their minimal toxic exposures under their hats, with their dyed hair.
    I’m still a rookie, though, and I don’t have the balls. The avoidance of chemicals for me is mostly about the avoidance of future guilt. If this kid has even a skosh of floppy baby syndrome, how will I know it wasn’t the result of three minutes in the Mystic Tan booth? I’m better safe than sorry; it’s just that safe doesn’t win by much.
    People I Want to Punch: Bummer Ladies
     
     
     
    I f one more mom tells me, “Go to the movies now, because after you have the baby you’ll never get to go to the movies again,” or “Go on a trip now, because once you have the baby you’ll never leave town again,” or “Have a date night now, because you will never see your husband again,” I am going to punch her right in her tired, defeated face.
    Hey, how about you shut your rude, projecting, bitter soup coolers and let me be?
    Just let me deal with the fact that I feel like I’ve been strapped to the spinning teacup ride at goddamn Dizzy-land for the last fifteen weeks.
    Allow my nauseated, terrified, pregnancy-hobbled brain to stick to its usual troubling fare, and by that I mean nonstop oscillating between thoughts of various fatal genetic defects and how best to phrase it to people if I end up having a “nonviable pregnancy.”
    Stop to consider that as a first-time mom-to-be, I’m kind of overstocked with worries right now. It’s like you’re peddling mortgage-backed securities to AIG. No gracias , I got enough of those and they’re all toxic, anyway.
    To see me all bulging about the middle is to know I’m already in too deep, so keep it to yourself if you think my life will be a dingy wasteland once my bundle of joylessness arrives.
    Let’s talk about a girl named Kim.
    Having heard I was pregnant, she messaged me on Facebook with the following advice: “Take a look at your body right now, because it will never look this way again. Your stomach will be so pockmarked and stretched out, there will be nothing you can do about it, so enjoy it now.”
    I barely know this woman, and while I am impressed at her ability to paint such a richly hued portrait of how crappy I’m going to look, I can’t understand what drives her other than pure evil.
    Susceptibility to stretch marks is genetic, and they may also be exacerbated by excessive or rapid weight gain. However, what if there is another, more mysterious cause? What if the collagen gods punish people like Kim for being passive-aggressive twats?
    You can’t laser that away, Kimmy. See you on Punch You in the Facebook.
    If I do morph into a bleary-eyed, pockmarked, sad sack with spit-up and organic oatmeal in my hair who is too neurotically attached to her precious child to allow anyone to babysit, I hope to have enough compassion to lie my saggy ass off when I see a pregnant girl and simply say, “You are going to love being a mom.”

six
    CVS: Order Now and Enjoy Six Months (Worry) Free!
     
     
     
    I don’t want to say I get the hard sell on having a CVS test, but when I go to my mandatory pretest genetic counseling session, it feels a little like being on a used car lot on the last day of the month taking a recession test drive with a salesman one vehicle short of his quota.
    The facts: The CVS (chorionic villus sampling) is often offered to women who will be over thirty-five on their due date, who have a family history of certain birth defects or who tested positive for