Exploiting My Baby (8 page)

KLONOPIN
—Relaxes muscles, reduces anxiety, helps you sleep, features a nice long half-life so you wake up fresh as a daisy and worry-free. Take it the night before a job interview or audition and the entire next day is kissed with a light potion of placidity. Klony seemed so harmless until I read that when taken during pregnancy it may cause “floppy infant syndrome.” I don’t know what that is, and I don’t want to know.

NICOTINE
—C’mon. Smoking sucks. I get it. But how else are you supposed to know when dinner is over?

Of all of my darling toxins, I’m shocked to miss smoking the most. Nicotine was never and is not now a physical addiction for me (I’m what’s known as a “chipper,” someone who smokes a few cigarettes regularly but never becomes a pack-a-day smoker). I know nicotine is bad. I quit smoking my two to three after-dinner puffy treats as soon as I realized I was pregnant. Though we went way back together, I was never John Wayne with the smokes, and I always thought letting go of one or two cigarettes would be easy. I wasn’t a real smoker, never even smoked during daylight hours.

Right now, I don’t want to smoke just a couple.

I want to sit in bed and chain-smoke while high on half a Vicodin and watch a couple of documentaries like I used to do on a Friday night when the mood struck. Smoking calms nerves, and I’ve never been more nervous than I am about this baby: how he’s doing in there, how he is going to get out, when I’m going to ascertain the meaning of the word “layette” or make myself care about the best brand of disposable nipple pads.

It’s hard to talk about smoking without pissing people off. Folks get way more irate about smoking than if I happened to orchestrate dog fights, because their uncle died a horrible death of lung cancer or their brother burned down an apartment building because he was smoking in bed or they’re allergic to smoke and have had an ashtray full of sitting next to rude butt suckers blithely contaminating their fresh air. I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry. You people are right. There is no defending smoking; there is just the truth for me. There were nights writing on deadline when smokes were my editor and my roommate, solo road trips during which cigs were my passenger, helping me stay alert through the desert, stay brave at stranded rest stops. Smokes have been my date to parties, my therapist after breakups, my diet aid and my inspirational carrot, dangling ahead of me as a reward for anything from finishing an article to getting through a family reunion.

Each time I quiet the flirtatious come-on of a Camel Light, it’s comforting to know my early maternal instincts outweigh the brute force of habit and several bassinets full of anxiety.

Seems like this would be a great opportunity to just quit for good. Instead I wish I could first have a baby and then immediately have a cigarette in the recovery room.

XANAX
—Oh, yummy Xanax, first given to me by a makeup artist before I had to spend three hours on a freezing cold red carpet interviewing more important people on their way into a party celebrating the one thousandth episode of a late-night show, they make things easier.

I usually quarter these pills, never take the whole thing, though I often try to mix with one cocktail for maximum buzz (when the label reads “this medication may increase the effects of alcohol,” I take that as a helpful hint).

Xanax is not my go-to pill. Admired by anxious pill poppers for its ability to act quickly, it has a short half-life in your body. This is useful if you are having an unscheduled meltdown, but the tranquility is short-lived. There are usually a few of these rolling around in my shoebox full of “dolls,” but I rarely use them, maybe three times a year. Panic attacks aren’t my thing as much as cultivating a constant, low level of dread. Still, I miss the option. If my heart starts pounding and my stomach starts churning and I suddenly can’t stop my mind from racing, I’m walking a terror tightrope with no chemical net.

Sure, there are side effects. Oh, no! I might be afflicted with drowsiness, lightheadedness, euphoria and disinhibition! Wait. I desperately want those things.

ARTIFICIAL SWEETENERS
—Yellow packets, blue packets, pink, I don’t know what’s in you or which of you is better, but you all taste so chemical-y now. You taste like a birth defect. Half a Splenda in my beverage is my sweetener threshold before the fear and guilt set in, and that’s a far cry from the three packs I used to enjoy in my cereal just for the fuck of it.

BOOZE
—Nursing is about to mean something totally different, I know, but it used to be what I did to two fingers of room-temp single malt Scotch. What rounds out the edges now? Anyone who suggests a hot bath or meditating or chamomile tea is going to get punched in the face.

I know. I should process all my fears by reaching out, or by “sitting with the feelings.” If the feelings are sitting on a bar stool, I’ll sit with them and have a nice full-bodied pinot. Otherwise, I don’t like sitting with my feelings. It’s like sitting with an obese teenager on a cross-country flight, uncomfortable and sad.

My doctor didn’t sweat me having one or two last cigarettes before my sixth week. Though he didn’t love it, he could see the need for gradual weaning. That being said, he is categorically against drinking alcohol in pregnancy. His hard-line attitude about Drinking While Gestating is sobering. Literally.

The man said I could smoke, something society sees as tantamount to bunny drowning, but allows not one drop of liquor. My pregnant friends, they are all wink-wink about a nightly half glass of wine, and most doctors say a very moderate amount of booze in the third trimester is fine, but my doctor’s warning haunts me.

At a restaurant in Napa, the sommelier gives us one of these: “My mom drank when she was pregnant with me and I’m fine.” You hear that a lot, and anyone who says that to you is probably a good person and should be befriended or tipped well. It’s true, in the course of modern human history, lots of moms drank and most of those babies are fine, like Betty Draper’s kids are fine, like mine will probably be fine if I decide to take my medical advice from a sommelier.

Giving up alcohol is relatively easy for me, so I basically do it. Like getting dumped by a guy you never really liked, you get lots of sympathy, but inside, you aren’t exactly crushed.

Experts are all over the place with this one, so take what I’m saying with a grain of salt, which is the only thing left you
can
take.

ADVIL
—I never used this much, but now that I can’t, I realize it was nice to have around. Headache, pain, inflammation? Live with it, because you probably shouldn’t pop anything containing ibuprofen. They say watermelon helps reduce inflammation, and I’m shoving some down my gullet daily to address the puffiness that has overtaken me, but really, ingesting some cubes of fruit to do what a pill should be doing? That hippie nonsense is right up there with warm milk to help you sleep and petting a puppy to reduce blood pressure. Bogus.

CAFFEINE
—I have a decaf now and again, but some scary article I read when I was trying to get pregnant linked excessive coffee drinking with an increased rate of miscarriage. As losing this baby is the stickiest, most pernicious worry I’ve ever had, it seems like every caffeinated beverage is just a miscarriage-a-ccino.

Green tea, diet soft drinks, chocolate,
no más
. I know I’m not downing a thalidomide milk shake with a DES chaser, but my guiding principle is starting to be when in doubt, leave it out.

With coffee, it’s not so much the buzz I miss as the experience, the ritual, the palming of the overpriced latte, the constant refills of diner coffee at breakfast, the sight of my environmentally friendly plastic mug in my car’s cup holder. I’ve never trusted people who don’t drink coffee because “yuck, it tastes bitter” or “eeew, it makes me wired.” Wired and bitter are defining qualities that I now have to give up to make room for some kind of earth mother, mellow, natural vibe that just may never come, well, naturally.

RETIN-A
—Careful, constant and expensive grooming helps me address the genetic hand I was dealt, not a total bust but a pair of threes at best. With a few bucks and some toxic treatments, I can look all right. Now, I’m pregnant and won’t even have that saving grace of chubby women everywhere, a pretty face.

Who knows if it works, but they say Retin-A staves off breakouts and wrinkles and I have both right now as my prescription tube sits in the drawer, expiring. Oh, goody, now I can buy organic lotions with powerful ingredients like sunflower seed oil, witch hazel and willow bark extract. Great. My dermatologist reminds me that I can start using it again after the baby is born ... oh, wait, no, after I’m done breast-feeding, so in, like, a million years. Likewise, Botox is out and so is any other skin treatment that is remotely effective. Salicylic acid, which is in most of the random lotions I keep around to slap on breakouts, is also out. I’m not supposed to be concerned about anything as silly as the condition of my skin now that I’m creating new life, but I’m not creating a new personality free of self-consciousness, and I’m also not creating a world free of reflective surfaces. Now I have two chins, and both are breaking out.

HAIR COLOR
—Some say it’s okay to use, others say just get highlights and don’t let the noxious formula touch your scalp, but let’s face it, who wants to sit in the salon all pregnant while women judge you for caring more about your roots than your baby? Hairdresser to me: “What do you think these giant smocks are for? Hiding the belly. Pleeeeaaase. I work on pregnant women every day.” And hairdressers with this attitude, should, of course, be kept close to your heart. However, if I’m choosing toxins like it’s Sophie’s Choice, this one doesn’t make it.

SELF-TANNER
—Again, lots of pregnant girls use it and it’s probably fine. If you search long enough, you’ll find some Dr. Buzzkill to dissuade you from most delicious chemicals, as does ob-gyn Suzanne Gilberg-Lenz, who writes, “I tell my patients to avoid chemical tanning at the very least in the first trimester, when the majority of fetal organ formation occurs.” Ha, lady! I’ll wait for the second trimester.

Not so fast. She adds that brain development continues throughout pregnancy and that skin is the largest organ in the body, thus making it more dangerous to expose it to the active ingredient in tanners, DHA (dihydroxyacetone). Fine.
Fine.
If there is a better way to gloss over the aesthetic challenges of being both pregnant and just generally over thirty, I haven’t found it. DHA, IOU. And I miss you.

EveryGoddamnThing—involves chemicals. Your moisturizer is suspect, your soap seems to have a long list of ingredients with too many consonants. Your eye cream smells too good and doesn’t go bad for too long to be trusted. Your nail polish seems like a close cousin to lead paint. The fumes at the gas station are out to get you, as is the air when you roll down your window on the freeway, and even your laundry detergent seems like venom. The entire world suddenly seems artificially colored and flavored and threatening to tamper with your fragile, defenseless fetus.

I am going to drop a heavy name. Tori Spelling. That’s right. I interview her and her second husband for my show on deep cable. She’s recently birthed her second baby and is beautifully exploiting it with both a reality show and a book. Because I’m pregnant, we have a girl chat off-camera during which I confide my desire for just one Ambien to help me sleep.

Mind you, Tori and I have a lot in common. Both of us have trouble with our unforgiving, chilly mothers. Of course, hers forced her to get a nose job and mine forced me to get a
job
job, but we’re basically the same person. Okay, her dad produced
The Love Boat
and my dad, California’s only Jewish auto mechanic, has produced nothing but years of rebuilt alternators and debt more toxic than an asbestos onesie, but now that I’m with child, there is a bridge between me and anyone else who has ever been here. We cover our microphones and Tori whispers that her doctor said hair color was fine, same with the occasional Ambien, and I know deep inside myself that I have made my last Tori Spelling joke. Bless her.

Half an Ambien gets me through one sleepless night, but I go back to abstaining. Briefly, I consider the herbal sleep remedy, melatonin, but guess what? A quick Google search confirms my fear: 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.