Exploiting My Baby (2 page)

I guess it seemed like she was just
exploiting
her babies.

Maybe she was, and maybe it was obnoxious for Kathie Lee to use her children to present a sweet, homey version of herself no one was buying. Maybe she truly was a baby-exploiting phony who deserved all the vitriol she got. But when I thought about it, I wasn’t totally innocent of my own brand of creative exploitation.

As a writer, I guess I’ve “exploited” all of my subjects: my stepparents, my boyfriends, my beat-up cars, my jacked-up apartments, my land-lords, my Hebrew school teachers, my grandfather, my girlfriends, the dude at the dry cleaner’s, my therapist(s), my dermatologist, the hot guy I met at that silent Buddhist retreat in San Diego, everyone. From breakups to breakdowns, I’ve always just written about whatever was going on in my life, but because this was a fetus, it suddenly seemed tacky, Kathie Lee tacky.

Sometimes, when you’re scared about how something is going to be perceived, you have to look the bogeyman right in the face, which is why at two months pregnant I invested $10 and bought the domain name
ExploitingMyBaby.com
.

And after all, the kid
was
exploiting me. One day, I thought, “Kid, I just made you a spleen and some eyebrows. The least you can do is get mommy a book deal.”

Out in the world of mom-to-be books, I found a gaping hole, a no-man’s-land between treacly tales that would make unicorns yak and clinical descriptions of symptoms that are useful, but about as emotionally satisfying as a dental supplies catalogue. I also found a trove of bitter “motherhood sucks” volumes that depressed me when I needed to be feeling okay about the biggest “no
backsies
” decision of my life.

My goal was to trudge the road from conception to delivery, taking good notes as I went and hopefully sharing insights beyond “I pooped on the delivery table.” Although, I do have a poop story that I hope will be the number-one story you will ever hear about number two.

These notes and blog posts turned into kind of a memoir, which I hope starts a fruitful lifetime of exploitation. On a less glib front, if you are reading this, you are probably pregnant or planning to be, and I hope I can be a gestational companion. I desperately needed pregnant friends, and I hope to be one of yours, or at least give you something to do at night when you can’t sleep and are sick of reading what food item your fetus most resembles (Your baby is now the size of a poppy seed! A blueberry! A prune! A kiwi! An avocado! A grapefruit! An eggplant! A squash! A watermelon!).

The more I posted, the more women responded, the more I realized I wasn’t alone in my neuroses. I knew I was doing the right thing.

So, let the exploitation begin.

Introduction

How No Baby Meant No Job on
The View

 

 

 

O
n New Year’s Eve, my husband, Daniel, and I stayed home, ordered Thai food and watched a documentary on Dr. Paul Joseph Goebbels, the minister of propaganda in Nazi Germany. I guess you could say we partied like it was 1939. By my calculations, that’s when our baby was conceived.

I immediately started worrying about everything from birth defects to vaginal tearing. I agonized about my lack of ability to make decisions about birth plans, stroller brands or preschools. I had nightmarish visions of morphing into my own cold, reluctant and baby-disdaining mother. About the only thing I didn’t worry much about was the prospect of being a working mother in show business. For that, I thank Barbara Walters.

In fact, a few years ago,
not
having a kid may have actually cost me my dream job, filling the chair left by Lisa Ling on
The View
.

I sat in for a couple of episodes, had some wholesome, well-lit laughs with Barbara Walters, trotted out onstage arm in arm with new BFF Meredith Vieira and felt an almost narcotic sense of belonging. Despite a career characterized mainly by paralyzing self-doubt and bad, impetuous decisions to quit jobs, I began to think: I could do this. I was about to link elbows with destiny, as I had with Meredith, who, when you get close to her, smells like a combination of baby powder, lilacs and poise.

As my cab sped toward JFK to fly home to Los Angeles after taping my second episode of the popular morning chat show, producers called my agent to say I was one of their top choices. Before I’d even checked my bags curbside, we’d agreed on contractual terms.

I spent that flight envisioning my move from Los Angeles to a furnished apartment on the Upper West Side. I fantasized about the breezy rapport and private jokes I would have with the full-time driver they promised, the unpretentious but clearly expensive collection of Burberry trench coats I would acquire, and of course, the nonstop cold splash of “I told you so” my new post would throw in the faces of anyone who had doubted me. It would be hard to keep up my persona of self-deprecation with near toxic levels of smug coursing through my veins, but I would manage.

By the time I landed at LAX, I was out of the running.

The producers said not only did they want a conservative, but also, they really needed someone who was likely to get pregnant by the coming season. In the parlance of street fighters, or middle managers trying to rally their sales force after a bad quarter: It was go time. Or more specifically, it was
gonad
time.

Too bad mine were not likely to be in use anytime soon.

Just like that, I was plunged back into an obscurity so profound it made Debbie Matenopoulos look like Gwyneth Paltrow. I cried like the babies Elisabeth Hasselbeck would eventually have, endearing her not only to her bosses at
The View
but to the stay-at-home moms of America.

Sure, I can’t complain. I got jobs in deep cable, on local news and in radio, and frankly any work that doesn’t involve taking over my dad’s automotive repair business is a blessing. But I couldn’t help thinking that if I could just procreate, I would have ascended to the next level, and my gonads and I would have enjoyed the chauffeur-driven ride all the way to the middle.

It’s just that, on
The View
and elsewhere, being a mommy seems to be good for business.

Babies are transformative. Yeah, they make you more loving and patient, blah blah blah, but I’m not talking about that kind of change. I’m talking about the magical baby dust that converts, say, Brooke Burke from an icy and unapproachable swimsuit model to the champion and cohost of the popularity contest
Dancing with the Stars
. Sprinkle some magic mommy dust on Angelina Jolie and she goes from knife-wielding, blood-vial-wearing, scary force of sexual energy to earth mother/goddess breast-feeding on the cover of
W
magazine.

So effective is this magic dust that it has the power to make you reconsider loathing Nancy Grace.

A Google search for the term “baby bump” yields nearly two million hits, with most of the top ten devoted to celebrity pregnancy. Think about the following babies and ask yourself how many times you’ve seen their lovable mugs: Ryder, Shiloh, Apple, Seraphina, Suri, Zuma, Brooklyn, and Sparrow. I used to think this was a brand-new phenomenon, that because women have increasing power and earning potential it’s somehow comforting to know that we are still partially just baby-making machines. The threat we pose is mitigated by the hours we’ll spend pregnant, nursing, changing diapers or otherwise tending to kiddies.

Then I read that, back in 1953, the country basically screeched to a halt to watch the birth of Little Ricky on
I Love Lucy
. A record 71.7 percent of all television-owning households tuned in, partly because the subject was still new for television, but also because the characters Lucy and Ricky were played by Lucy and Desi, who in real life were married and the parents of Desi Jr. Media coverage of the event was so massive it overshadowed the inauguration of President Eisenhower the next morning.

Cut to Demi Moore pregnant and nude on the cover of
Vanity Fair
in 1991, then to the cable sensation
The Secret Life of the American Teenager
. I guess the secret is: We even love pregnant teens! And that means you, too, Jamie Lynn Spears and Bristol Palin.

With the proliferation of media outlets (
People
magazine even has a Celebrity Baby Blog; read it to learn why pregnant Nancy O’Dell craves baked beans), we can fill the need we’ve always had to see the adorable little faces that result from celebrity DNA, or to observe someone known for her svelte body, like Heidi Klum or Kelly Ripa, enlarge. Entertainment news is now a nonstop “Bump Watch.”

As a culture, we have a voyeuristic fascination with famous mothers, but we’re simply gaga for multiples. More babies equals more babymania.

How much did we want to see the Jolie-Pitt twins, Vivienne and Knox?
People
magazine reportedly paid a record $14 million for the first photos.

Watched TLC lately?

I remember when it used to be all home decorating shows (back when I was scratching for my seat on
The View
, I used to host TLC’s
While You Were Out
). Now it’s mostly shows about babies and families with many, many babies, including the Duggars, who have nineteen kids with “J” names, including Jedidiah and Jinger.

Don’t worry about the crazy monikers. They won’t get bullied in the schoolyard because (1) Jesus loves them and (2) They are homeschooled.

Why this obsession of ours? Aside from the miracle of childbirth being inherently interesting (a living, breathing entity squirms right out of a human vagina—it never gets old!), and the thrill of seeing some tiny starlet get fat and then thin again (how Jessica Alba or Gisele Bündchen or any other celebrity lost their baby weight sells magazines every time), and the soothing sense that even our most kick-ass power women (Madonna, Katie Couric, Christina Aguilera, Sarah Jessica Parker, Michelle Obama, Hillary Clinton) had a baby yen, there is also just this: Moms are so ...
maternal.

Welcome to facile conjecture-ville, I hope you’ll have a pleasant stay.

Mothers know things. They have superhuman strength. They are selfless, protective, gentle and sacrificing. Not
my
mother exactly—who should have named my brother and me Burden and Buzz Kill for how much she dug being a single parent—but in general, who wouldn’t want to be imbued with these qualities in the eyes of the public?

Did I want to be the girl with one dead ficus and two perhaps overly adored cats? Did I want to be the woman who forgets birthdays, remembers petty grudges and drives around in an unwashed car littered with empty water bottles and crumpled scripts for jobs she didn’t get?

Or could I use not only a whole new fan base, but also a wealth of new topics to mine for material?

Hell, yes.

So, I certainly didn’t have a baby to help my career. But it shouldn’t hurt.

one

When It Comes to Conception, Porn Is Good and
The Secret
Is Bad

DOORMAN,
KNOCKED UP

 

 

 

S
o, I’m thirty-eight. I’m arguably “old as fuck,” and my husband and I decide it’s time to pull the goalie. In the same second we decide to have a baby (after much debate, the nature of which I’ll get to later), I also quietly resign myself to being infertile. I am not only “AMA” (Advanced Maternal Age; saw it written on my medical chart once and felt like Grandma Moses) but I’ve also had an STD, thanks to the stand-up comedian I dated for a year when I first moved to Los Angeles.

Yes, I am going to talk about the clap. Because listen, I don’t want you to panic if you’ve had an STD or two and have seen the other side of thirty-five. Having kids later in life is the new thing, so don’t sweat it.

Before the physical part of this equation, let’s get into the mental part. If you have a horrible attitude, and have made the presumption, like I did, that conception is never going to happen for you, please don’t be conned into thinking your crappy attitude about fertility can ruin your chances of conceiving. That seems to be the conventional wisdom tumbling out of the mouths of crypto-spiritual clowns. They try to shame you into thinking your thoughts either make you sick or heal you. In a way, it would be nice if it were that simple, but my uterus has proven that theory wrong. Way wrong.

All I did—and I did it like it was a full-time job—was worry and obsess about being infertile.

Thankfully, the uterus is impervious to “bad vibes” and the universe had bigger fish to fry than punishing me for being such a bummer with my parade of negative thoughts.
The Secret
isn’t total bullshit, but in my experience, it’s close.

Allow me a brief detour into both my twenties and my scarred fallopian tubes.

You first have to understand that I second-guess everything, including writing about second-guessing everything right now.

Most times I hang up the phone, I generally regret at least one thing I’ve said or neglected to say. When I worked in morning radio, I would spend the entire twenty-minute drive home from the studio each afternoon mulling over something idiotic I had said, like I was jamming a dull scissor into the same spot on my forearm repeatedly. After three years doing the news and being Adam Carolla’s sidekick on the FM dial, this little ritual down Wilshire Boulevard improved exactly none, and even now when I record a podcast, or appear as a guest on
Dr. Phil
or some other show, I find at least one moment to kick myself in the ass about. I tell you this just so you understand how deeply I question myself, how quick I am to blame myself, and how unlikely I am to let myself off the hook for even a mild or nonexistent transgression. I spend way too much of my life lightly basting in a marinade of shame.

All that being said, I refuse to be ashamed of catching chlamydia.