When I find an expert online to translate, I read this advice:
“Parents often ask which of the many car seats is the best car seat on the market. The truth is, the best car seat is the one that fits your vehicle, your budget, your baby and that you will use properly each time your baby rides in the car.”
Thanks! That’s so helpful it requires an ironic exclamation point.
You ever go to therapy, and instead of just having your thoughts and feelings mirrored back to you (
you seem angry at your mother, sounds like work is really frustrating right now
), you really want the shrink to tell you what to do (
break up with him, resign, move out, move in, go back to school, go back to your wife, get a day job
)? Sometimes you need clear direction, you need your GPS to tell you which way to turn, not to ask you which route you think is best for you right now at this juncture of your life. Thanks, baby car seat expert, for telling me I have to look within myself to find the car seat that’s right for me, but I wouldn’t be going to you for answers if I had any clue so just
give it up
. There must be an overall
best one
. Give me a link, I’ll give you my credit card number, and let’s do this thing. Just tell me what to do. Please don’t make me become a car seat expert when you can save me the trouble by having made yourself one already.
This isn’t a life-or-death decision, I try to tell myself as I click around. Oh, wait, I guess it is.
While I can’t find anyone to just tell me what to buy, it’s no problem finding dire safety warnings about everything from the dangers of buying a recalled model to the likelihood of installing any brand improperly. The implicit communication: If you don’t figure it all out, it’s on you if the baby flies through the moon roof.
It’s on you
.
Worse than the overload, the onslaught of products and the fear-mongering and the confusing plastic parts are the reviews from moms on consumer sites. Wow. These are some opinionated ladies, and they know it all, know every detail about why this travel stroller is too bulky for a trip to Costco and why that one has subpar anchor straps.
Um, I just wanted to have a baby with five seconds to spare before my fertility window slammed shut on my fingers. I didn’t want to know about anchor straps.
It’s difficult to work up any tolerance for these product-reviewing mothers, who post four-hundred-word treatises on the relative merits of Britax versus Graco. They intimidate me with their superior knowledge of which brands are the most useful, and they rattle me to my very core with their single-minded
momminess
. I don’t like how repelled I am by these well-meaning mavens, who just need to share with the world, or at least those on
Amazon.com
, how the cup holder on the Nautilus 3-in-1 car seat system stroller frame is just too darn narrow for baby’s fave sippy cup.
And maybe it’s not just about my inability to purchase the ideal base, seat, stroller combination that has me freaked. Maybe it truly is the neighborhood. The enemy doesn’t wear a military uniform but a pastel yellow Slurp & Burp nursing cover-up. I’m in my second trimester. I live here now.
For the same reason I resisted baby gear, I was hoping I could avoid buying maternity clothes. I always thought they were a rip-off, but it’s futile to resist.
Not buying maternity clothes is like refusing a Xanax on an airplane. Don’t be a hero.
A couple of weeks ago, a woman I barely know, but who must now in retrospect be considered a saint, gave me a bunch of hand-me-down maternity clothes. Some fit now, some seem like they’ll never fit, but I know they will, and they sit in a stack, waiting.
I never would have purchased this stuff myself, because of my desire to not let the maternity clothing industry squirm its grubby hand into my chubby pocket, but now that I’ve experienced the magic of roomy camisoles with built-in bras and Empire-waist cotton dresses, I can’t look back. The thing about maternity clothes is that they aren’t just bigger, like plus-size clothes; they are cut differently, roomier in the right places, and in many cases feature a band of extra-wide, yummy elastic where the waistband of your skirt or jeans would normally be. Anyone who has been pregnant knows this, but it was news to me. Even if you aren’t that big, maternity clothes are like Ugg boots for your gut: so comfortable you don’t mind looking like you just stepped out of a food court in Lodi clutching a shopping bag from Wet Seal. That’s right: You won’t look cool—unless you splurge on pricey name-brand maternity denim—but cool is rarely comfortable, and A-line terry-cloth bathing suit cover-ups from Target certainly are. Yes, the maternity stores can jack up prices because they have a captive and nervous audience, but Target, Gap and Old Navy sell some basics that are so cheap you don’t feel like a sucker.
And if you hand your maternity clothes over to another pregnant girl when the breeding is all over, you can relish the knowledge that in some small way you are still sticking it to The Man. That’s how I justify it, and I plan to pay it forward by passing my black maternity dress pants and every other maternity garment on to the next pregnant chick who is sure she won’t need them.
Buying maternity clothes is nowhere near as complicated as buying a car seat; you wear the same size as you did in regular clothes, and if you have a reflective surface, you know whether or not it looks right. You’ve probably been trying on clothes your entire life, so you know what colors look good on you, you understand the basic idea that pants have two legs and sleeves cover your arms and buttons keep oxford shirts together. This territory isn’t so foreign.
Car seat shopping, however, is still breaking my balls.
After hours of searching the Internet and more hours of crying over the fruitlessness of my search, I make the decision that I can never, ever go car seat shopping again. I hand this task off to my husband, and I’m heartened to find that it also makes his head explode. A few days later, we accost a couple on the street with a baby and demand that they give us the make and model of their car seat, which they do, but I think I saw the lady feel around in her purse for her pepper spray. Anyway, that’s her problem. We got what we needed, ordered that car seat and had the local fire station install car seat bases in both of our cars.
Comprehending and obtaining this one simple baby product took many days and even more tears. This is an inauspicious beginning for me. How the hell am I supposed to deal with the intricacies of battery-powered, music-playing baby swings? I’m going to have to get a grip on what exactly I need to buy and learn.
Speaking of buying and learning, on top of all the baby and maternity products that are marketed to us pregnant ladies, there are also a bevy of classes, workshops and seminars for sale. Sure, Colonial-era women, or women on the prairie, or women working in a field somewhere, they never needed to take breast-feeding class, swaddling class, infant care seminars, infant CPR or childbirth preparation, but everyone I know seems to be signing up, and that makes me wonder if I should, too.
Our doctor says the infant CPR class is the only one we really need, and I keep thinking how terrible I’ll feel if my baby expires because I didn’t want to spend a Saturday afternoon in some horribly lit hospital conference room fake-liking other future parents and giving chest compressions to plastic babies.
Maybe I should just find a class and suck it up. Which reminds me, I’m going to have to understand baby bottles, bottle cleaners, bottle warmers and bottle drying racks, which really sucks. Glass bottles are heavy and can break, but plastic bottles contain bisphenol A (BPA), which can, especially when heated, leach into the formula or breast milk and might—or then again might not—be a carcinogen, except for the plastic bottles that are BPA-free; that is, if they’re made of nonpolycarbonate plastic like polyethylene or polypropylene.
Figuring out baby products reminds me of doing a crossword puzzle; it makes me feel both stupid and bored.
At least I have a car seat. Anchor straps, nursing bra straps, changing table straps ... it seems like you’re either tethered down or you’re free-falling. Only nothing is free. Except the hand-me-downs, of course.
People I Want to Punch: Maternity Models
I
’m a back sleeper. At least I used to be, until I learned you aren’t supposed to sleep on your back after your fourth month of pregnancy, because your huge abdomen chokes off the blood supply to both your heart and the fetus. You’re supposed to sleep on your left side, but that feels unnatural to me, and no matter how I situate myself, there is always the sense that I’m suffocating.
This is why I succumb to the pregnancy pillows available online. I buy two, the Snoozer and the Snoogle. (What, the Slumberjack was already trademarked? Couldn’t patent Preggy Pillowzzz?) When they arrive, the packages feature photos of pregnant women luxuriously sleeping on these long, noodle-shaped pillows and modeling all the delightful ways one can use them.
It’s not that I have anything against these maternity models; it’s just that I kind of want to punch them.
For one thing, they seem to be sleeping so peacefully, while I spend my evenings gasping for air and obsessed that my baby isn’t getting enough oxygen. While I know they are just models directed to pose in restful tableaus, I hold them responsible for creating what appears to me to be a pregnancy fiction.
For another thing, I’m not even sure if these ladies are even really pregnant. Are they models who just happened to get pregnant and are now trying to get whatever gigs they can until they return to a size zero? Or are they standard models wearing fake stomachs to sell us shit when they aren’t even gestating? Who are these women? Hating models is so predictable, and generally, I have nothing but love for beautiful women, but some of these ladies must be fakers. Sure, they have bellies, but their limbs seem suspiciously slender.
And their feet. Let’s talk about their tiny, dainty, perfectly manicured feet.
Here’s the news: I was a size 9 before the pregnancy and I’m already wearing a 9.5 and inching ever closer to a 10. When this thing is over, I’m pretty sure I’m headed to some kind of special shoe store for ladies with giant feet or transvestites. Maternity models, however, don’t have swollen ankles or enlarged feet or even chipped pedicures.
(And by the way, all I want in life is a serious foot rub, but thanks to some mumbo jumbo about acupressure points on the feet and heels triggering early labor, I can’t get one unless I show up at the Thai massage place around the corner and try to pass myself off as fat, which seems wrong. This war against foot rubs has worked its way into every corner of the universe. No matter how far off the grid you are, somehow, this information finds you, and now I find myself without anyone who will rub my feet other than my husband, who has already gotten tendonitis in his thumbs.)
The pillow models and their saintly poses and cute bare feet bother me, and so do the models in ads for maternity clothes looking both care- and bloat-free. “Hey, look at me crossing the street in New York City, wearing my smart working-gal separates on my way to a give a PowerPoint presentation looking just like I used to look, only with this cute belly.” Or, “Here I am enjoying a summer day with the wind in my hair in this field of lavender wearing a stylish white maternity sundress and not at all worried that there isn’t a bathroom for miles.” Or, “Hey, buy this polka-dot maternity bathing suit and suddenly, like me, you will no longer be mopping sweat from between your boobs and overheating like a Chevy Vega in Khartoum.” I know all models are hired to create illusions, and usually I’m okay with that, but not right now.
My skin has finally cleared up, but that doesn’t mean I can’t water my grudge garden when it comes to porcelain-skinned “pregnant” women hawking pregnancy wares from skin cream to nursing bras with their perfectly rosy complexions.
I get so jealous that I even want to punch cartoon drawings of pregnant women, like the one on the cover of a book someone gave me about finding mom bargains in Los Angeles. This cover girl may be a cartoon, but with her hip outfit, high ponytail, flowing scarf, giant sunglasses and overflowing cobalt bag, she is trotting around ready to take the world of maternity and motherhood by storm, and looking effortlessly chic doing it. She does not exist, which will pose a problem when it comes to punching her, but the least I can do is cultivate a low-grade resentment that I will never be as fashionable and breezy as she is.
Being pissed off because models are not only genetically gifted but also Photoshopped isn’t something I endorse. I get that pretty people with airbrushed flaws make us want to buy stuff, and that’s what makes the world go round. However, while I understand that not all pregnant women have estrogen surge-induced acne and binge-induced upper arm fat, most of us are struggling with physical changes and it would be nice if maternity models didn’t always look so flawless and joyful.
The changes aren’t permanent, at least I hope they aren’t, so I’m trying to keep my chins up about it, but maternity models, I’d still like to punch you in yours.
fifteen
Pregnancy Sex Doesn’t Suck, but Maybe You Should
A
girl bragging about her great sex life is beyond annoying.
I’m making an icky face just thinking about it, recalling a friend I once had who always sat on her boyfriend’s lap in public, even at small gatherings, and insisted on showing me little movies of his “amazing” penis she took on her cell phone.
That’s nice. Don’t ever show me that again.
What I wanted to say was that couples who rub their seemingly superior sexual devotion and compatibility in your face are almost always the ones who are about to break up in spectacular fashion. Case in point: That girl with the cell phone video of her boyfriend’s wang, she found out he was cheating on her and he tried to win her back by confiding about his troubled childhood, including a long-standing sexual relationship with his sister. I’m not saying all sex braggers are incest-surviving sexual exhibitionists working out issues, but there’s usually a story.