To my once pregnant and now mom friends, thanks for letting me be part of your crew.
Adam Carolla, I could never say this to your face because both of us have impaired social skills, but I love you for giving me a chance. You hate everything, and you don’t hate me, and that gave me the balls I needed. Without you, this book would not exist.
Thanks to Karen Wang-Lavelle, Lexi Strumor, Rob Eshman, Michele Ku, Frank Conniff, Danny Seckel, Gary Lucy, Marc S. Klein, Christy Lemire, Joel Stein, Ben Mankiewicz, Pamela Redmond Satran, Stephen Schwartz and Terrence McDonnell for their belief in me and support at various turning points in my career.
Last, my husband and both of my parents are heroes for helping watch the baby while I wrote. Mom, you take some serious shit in these pages, and while you may not have always been a great parent, you are a great sport. Dad, for being the sunniest person on the planet, you are my idol. To my husband and son, my only wish is to continue to deserve you. Even now, typing the word “son,” I get teary.
1
Never bought it, maybe not enough scaremongering for me. “Trust yourself, you know
more than you think you do”? Um, you don’t know me, dude.
2
Apparently, this stout does seem to contain some iron and was therefore once thought of
as a health tonic excellent for pregnant or nursing women. Then again, you could get more
iron from an egg, and not risk fetal alcohol syndrome, but who quibbles with tradition?
According to my Google research on this topic, Guinness has no more iron than any other
beer. My craving remains unexplained.
3
A note on stretch mark obsession: People tell me not to worry because stretch marks are
genetic. Too bad I’m worried because my mom has terrible stretch marks.
4
Proof that we don’t live in an Orwellian society reminiscent of
Nineteen Eighty-Four
: If
there really was some kind of Internet oversight happening, you know, looking for insur-
gents who Google things like “where to buy fertilizer,” Big Brother would have come after
me for the number of times I Google “miscarriage.”
5
Finally broke down and drank half a nonalcoholic beer. None of the great taste, all of the
guilt. Rest of six-pack still in fridge.
6
Thank you, Jenny McCarthy. No, I’m not being sarcastic. I think it’s great that you raised
awareness. However, I wish it wasn’t raised quite so high right now. I’m starting to envy
our parents, who thought autism was a nineteenth-century painting style. This is all we
pregnant girls are hearing about and there isn’t much we can do about it until we have to
figure out the vaccine thing, so it really is just one of those things you Google for a month
and then just say fuck it. You are no wiser for all your Googling, but have wasted some of
your precious time on this earth.
7
Suddenly other people having babies becomes interesting even if they are not inherently
interesting.
8
You can see from my single Googling of this that I quickly let go of trying to let go.
9
Dead end. Count sheep.
9
Looking up doctors on review sites like Yelp is useful mainly if you enjoy nasty, bitter
people venting about rude receptionists.
10
Pregnancy galleries are generally badly lit belly shots that look like amateur porn, but
serve to help you compare your size to other nameless pregnant ladies on the Web.
11
Okay, so I Googled myself!