Read an Excerpt

The baby shower

The baby shower is a painful rite of passage, cleverly disguised with adorable pink or blue ribbons that later become an embarrassing hat. Well-educated, properly raised, successful women resort to eating baby food, guessing how fat Mommy is, and melting Oh Henry! bars in diapers to simulate poo. The other Mommies in the room share heartwarming labor anecdotes (“I ripped all the way to my asshole!”) while the single girls silently curse the fact that there’s never any booze at these things and make mental notes never to forget to take their birth control again. For some reason, Daddy isn’t subjected to the baby shower, unless you consider a couple of guys from work taking him to Hooters “for the wings” a celebration of your upcoming birth. Mommy really got the raw end (but no raw sushi!) of this deal. Though she is grateful for the generous gifts, she wishes she could have been as tipsy as she was at her bridal shower to help her feign enthusiasm when unwrapping Udderly Smooth: for cracked, bleeding nipples.



The Due Date

(nonalcoholic)

INGREDIENTS

½ cup pitted dates

½ cup strawberries

1 cup orange juice

1 banana

1½ ounces maple syrup

INSTRUCTIONS

Combine all the ingredients with cracked ice in a blender and blend until smooth. Enjoy during Braxton Hicks.



Prenatal class

Mommy was obviously high on folic acid when she decided to spend her final pre-baby days in a hospital basement, role-playing labor scenarios. The class begins with icebreakers. Mommy’s not sure what’s more uncomfortable: your foot pressing against her bladder or watching Daddy compete for the title of wittiest heckler. The fun and games end when a graphic vaginal birth unfolds before Daddy’s eyes, courtesy of a Beta-max tape circa 1977. Mommy suspects Daddy regrets the egg salad sandwich he purchased from the hospital cafeteria, which is confirmed when she sees him swallow a mouthful of vomit. Ooooh, here comes more awkward tomfoolery! The middle-aged instructor drops to the floor to dramatize her own labor experience and contorts her floral-printed palazzo pants into a pretzel-like formation over her head while chanting a Buddhist mantra. Mommy should be taking copious notes about what to do when her first contraction hits, but she’s on a pleasure cruise down a river called De Nial. Fact: She spends a large portion of the class having name fights with Daddy via text. In hindsight, prenatal class was a colossal waste of money as literally nothing about your birth went according to plan. See next entry.



Baby Belly‑ni

(nonalcoholic)

INGREDIENTS

5 ounces chilled sparkling nonalcoholic cider

2 ounces peach nectar

Splash of lemon juice

INSTRUCTIONS

Chill a Champagne flute. Pour in all the ingredients, stir, and enjoy your final days of freedom. You have no idea.



Labor

After two decades of training cramps, it’s time to put Mommy’s pain tolerance to the ultimate test. The Marathon of Pain begins when Mommy’s water breaks, flooding her Heidi Klum Under Belly leggings and leading her to scream, “Is this actually happening?” as if the excruciating pain consuming her whole body wasn’t clue enough. Meanwhile, the masterful contraction-timing techniques that Daddy picked up from YouTube elude him in the heat of the moment. He does manage to locate the four least important items from Mommy’s extensive hospital packing list before cramming her gargantuan belly into the car. Within five minutes of triage, Mommy’s eighteen-step birth plan (which included barring med students from her vagina and playing Enya on repeat) goes down the drain, as does the goat cheese and mushroom wrap she ate for lunch. Following the advice of her doula, she’s opted for a natural childbirth,1 so Mommy screams her way through eight hours of Zero Dark Thirty torture, much to the horror of the entire B wing. At one point, she begs for the epidural, but Daddy gently reminds her of their natural, pharma-free strategy. Mommy tries to murder Daddy with her bare hands. The rest is a complete blackout from her memory, which is apparently nature’s way of ensuring that women procreate again. The truth is that if Mommies could accurately remember and retell the ripping, the spilling of bodily fluids, and the tearing from tip to tail, the whole human race would cease to exist.



The “Wish you were a” Virgin Mary

(nonalcoholic)

INGREDIENTS

4 ounces tomato juice

1 ounce lime juice

¼ teaspoon horseradish

Tabasco sauce to taste

Worcestershire sauce to taste

Pinch of salt

Pinch of freshly ground pepper

Wedge of lime

INSTRUCTIONS

Fill a glass with the tomato and lime juices. Add the horseradish, Tabasco, Worcestershire, salt, and pepper and stir. Garnish with a lime wedge. Serve over ice chips.



Trying not to break you

And so you are born. Mommy had pictured a Circle of Life moment, scored by Elton John, in which you would gracefully whoosh into the world. In truth, the whole thing was a shit show. Yet somehow you are perfect and unscathed. Now it’s Mommy and Daddy’s job not to break you. You weigh less than Mommy’s Marc Jacobs tote, and once the doctors and nurses leave the room, Mommy and Daddy give each other a blank stare that conveys that neither of them has any idea what to do next. The nurses pop in to manhandle you, and while it causes Mommy and Daddy unadulterated panic, you seem alarmingly unfazed by it all. Leaving the hospital is terrifying. Mommy is crippled by the fear that she’s going to drop you, fail to support your head, or say something permanently scarring to Daddy like “Send it back!” It’s also a challenge because it takes one hour to buckle you into the car seat and another hour to cautiously travel the 2.8 miles home.

Now they’re home. Alone. FUUUUUUUUUUCK. They worry that although they wash their hands compulsively, the Ebola virus is too strong for Bath & Body Works. They worry every gurgle is a sign you’re choking and within the first forty-eight hours call 911 twice. They worry the black stuff oozing out of you is actually your inner organs. They watch you sleep; they watch you breathe; they cradle you gently and pray to God they’re doing it right. Or at least not doing it totally wrong.



Starbucks VIA Instant Coffee

(nonalcoholic)

NOTE

Buy a whole case. You’re going to need it.



Naming you

Naming you was one of the more stressful things about being pregnant. After all, your name is your brand. Mommy had lists and lists written in notebooks, on Post-its, and in 4,987 emails to Daddy. What name would her friends say judgmental things about behind her back? What would look good on the ballot for president and in no way sound like it belongs to a stripper? What would work best with Daddy’s last name? Ugh, that’s another thing. Mommy thinks it’s archaic that babies almost automatically get their fathers’ last names. She considered hyphenating your last name, but unless you’re British royalty, it sounds pretentious. Actually, even then it sounds pretentious. Plus, when Mommy mentioned it to Daddy, he mumbled something about pregnancy hormones and went and got her cheese fries at 4 AM, and she promptly dropped the whole thing. Ultimately, when it came to naming you, Daddy chimed in with helpful suggestions like “I slept with a girl named that once,” but it was Mommy who scoured the Nameberry website, every name book at Barnes & Noble, and the family tree and finally landed on the perfect moniker. Which Grandma and Grandpa hate.



The Birth Announcement

(nonalcoholic)

INGREDIENTS

1½ ounces raspberry syrup

4 ounces chilled sparkling nonalcoholic cider

INSTRUCTIONS

Chill a wine glass. Stir the syrup with cracked ice in a mixing glass and pour into the wine glass. Fill with the apple cider and stir gently. Forget muddling over your narrowed-down list of 412 names and go muddle some raspberries to make this mocktail even more delicious.



Nursing

Even though Mommy and 90 percent of her cohort grew up exclusively on formula and still manage to navigate life just fine, Mommy bowed to the pressure and decided to try her hand (well, actually, breast) at feeding you. The studies (with ten disclaimers) about improved brain development piqued her curiosity, but truth be told, it was the prospect of burning five hundred calories a day while parking herself in front of Ellen that sealed the deal. Not to mention the price tag of free. With serene stock photography images of nursing mothers and children from the hospital literature dancing in her head, Mommy was shocked to discover that the early days of breast-feeding can be even more painful than labor. Daddy has his own shockisode when he watches Mommy’s breasts swell to triple Es the night her milk comes in. Although his arousal quickly subsides when your incorrect latch leaves Mommy’s nipples looking like raw hamburger meat. Five trips to the lactation consultant and an $800 bill later, Mommy finally reaches a point where breast-feeding you doesn’t feel like a thousand pins and needles being shoved into her nipples simultaneously. Looking down on you while you suckle yourself to sleep, she suddenly feels all Movie-of-the-Week emotional. Though she’ll never admit it to Daddy (because she’s still cashing in her bout with mastitis for back rubs and sleep-ins), Mommy thinks breast-feeding you is kind of awesome.

A pint of Guinness

NOTE

Though not supported by any empirical evidence whatsoever, one glass is purported to help your milk come in. Irish: 1, Science: 0.



The nursery

Mommy used to furnish her home with the perfect blend of high design and mid-century modern style. But your impending arrival drove her to throw all good taste out the (now flanked by teddy bear curtains) window. This psychotic break in good taste is called nesting, which is appropriate given the number of cutesy bird plush toys now strewn all over this once minimalist den. At first, Mommy had visions of geometric black-and-white sheets, one whimsical Blabla doll handmade in Peru, and a gorgeous Scandinavian rocking chair she saw on Pinterest. Then something terrible happened. She was overcome with the urge to paint the walls a seizure-inducing shade of chartreuse, frame hideously adorable ABC posters, and buy a safari-themed musical mobile that sounds eerily like the theme from A Nightmare on Elm Street. The final nail in the coffin for her dreams of a nursery worthy of Architectural Digest came when she took one look at the price tag of an Oeuf crib. Off to IKEA she went, followed by a shopping spree at Babies “R” Us. According to the twenty-two-year-old receptionist at her ob-gyn office, it’s critical that your nursery has a theme. The theme of your room: Mommy Surrenders.



Tequila Mockingbird

INGREDIENTS

1 ounce tequila

3 ounces lemon-lime soda

Splash of cranberry juice

INSTRUCTIONS

Fill a glass with ice. Pour in all the ingredients and stir. Make sure you nurse it.





She couldn’t drink for nine months

Mommy did the math and figured out you were conceived after she polished off a bottle of red with Daddy on an empty stomach. The throbbing headache made her slightly regret that at work the next day, but little did she know that this magical and blurry evening was her last hurrah for nine months. The minute she found out she was having you, she stopped drinking--and also gave up unpasteurized cheese, Diet Coke, coffee, sushi, and fun. Apparently in France women enjoy all of these things in moderation when they’re pregnant, but Mommy couldn’t handle the judgmental North American stares. Plus, all the conflicting literature on what’s harmless and what’s not during pregnancy made Mommy play it on the safe side, to put it mildly. This meant constantly complaining to security about the smokers outside her office tower, washing her hands every five minutes, popping prenatal vitamins like an addict, and eating an excessive amount of steamed kale. Mommy was now the Least Fun Person at Every Party, and she noticed her Evite invitations took a steep decline during this time. That was actually fine with her. The combination of nausea from morning sickness (inaccurately named because she had it all the time), extreme fatigue, and general disgust with maternity wardrobe options made her perfectly happy to RSVP her regrets. Of course, she wasn’t always the picture of health; she probably spent a good chunk of your college fund on trips to DQ. Maybe that’s why her ob-gyn, upon seeing the results on the scale, told her to “slow down.” Unfortunately, this had the reverse effect, as Mommy later ate her feelings in the form of a Mint Oreo Blizzard.



Cabernet Franc

INSTRUCTIONS

Now that you can have the occasional drink, enjoy 1 gorgeous glass paired with gooey, unpasteurized Brie. Vive la France!



Visitors

Mommy just had her insides ripped apart and her entire world turned upside down, and has slept a combined total of seventeen minutes in the past week. The last thing she feels like doing, besides getting pregnant ever again, is turning her home into a revolving door for friends, neighbors, and distant cousins who think they’re doing Mommy a favor by being among the very first human beings to meet you. Fresh off germy public transit or on their last round of antibiotics, they immediately want to pry you from Mommy’s arms with their unwashed hands and inadequate neck-supporting techniques. Then Mommy is forced to play photographer, which involves multiple retakes and twenty minutes of postproduction work on an iPhone. Meanwhile, Daddy embraces the opportunity to entertain. “Beers for everyone!” Mommy wants nothing more than to crawl into bed and emerge when you can read, but instead she finds herself listening to Suzy No Kids’s overly detailed account of a minimalist art exhibit while silently brainstorming strategies for cutting this visit short. Every visitor assumes maternity leave is one long vacation and thus expects lunch. As do you. Mommy is forced to further complicate the process of latching you to her painfully engorged breast by introducing a Hooter Hider into the mix while simultaneously grilling panini.



The Warm Welcome

INGREDIENTS

5 ounces apple cider

¾ ounce bourbon

¾ ounce apple liqueur

1 cinnamon stick

INSTRUCTIONS

Warm the apple cider on the stovetop and pour into a mug. Add the bourbon and apple liqueur, and stir. Garnish with a cinnamon stick. Do not serve to any visitors or they’ll never leave.



Mommy and Me movies

After weeks under house arrest, Mommy emerges into the bright lights of humanity and Hollywood to attend a Mommy and Me movie. Mommy is so desperate to go out she’ll see anything, even a movie starring Anne Hathaway. A broken elevator and grueling half hour spent navigating your monster stroller through the parking lot’s M. C. Escher stair system later, Mommy splurges on a bucket of buttery popcorn that immediately offsets any postpartum weight loss. The movie is already ten minutes in, but Mommy can’t hear what’s going on anyway over the Dolby digital surround-sound screeching of colicky babies, including you. Mommy spends the next 102-minute running time running up and down the aisles attempting to soothe you. Unfortunately, the moment you fall asleep coincides with the exact moment of an unexpected plot twist involving a massive explosion. This not only jolts you awake but also makes you shit your pants, forcing Mommy to line up for the communal change table lined with 312 strains of bacteria. Great news! With the lights left partially on, she can see you’ve actually shit on her. Mommy doesn’t know who is most deserving of her sympathy: herself, the teenagers who didn’t know it was Mommy and Me day and are hating life, or the one uncomfortable Dad in the crowd who is flanked by row upon row of exposed, engorged nipples. Roll credits.

1 To all expectant Moms: Don’t be a hero. Take the drugs. Take the goddamned drugs.