If one more mom tells me, “Go to the movies now, because after you have the baby, you’ll never get to go to the movies again,” or “Go on a trip now, because once you have the baby, you’ll never leave town again,” or “Have a date night now, because you will never see your husband again,” I am going to punch her right in her tired, defeated face.

Hey, how about you shut your rude, projecting, bitter soup coolers and let me be?

Just let me just deal with the fact that I feel like I’ve been strapped to the spinning tea cup ride at goddamn Dizzyland for the last 11 weeks.

Allow my nauseated, terrified, pregnancy-hobbled brain to stick to its usual troubling fare, and by that I mean non-stop oscillating between thoughts of various fatal genetic defects and how best to phrase it to people if I end up having a “non-viable pregnancy.”

Stop to consider that as a first-time mom-to-be, I’m kind of overstocked with worries right now. It’s like you’re peddling mortgage-backed securities to AIG. No gracias, I got enough of those and they’re all toxic, anyway.

To see me all bulging about the middle is to know I’m in a serious “no backsies” type situation, so keep it to yourself if you think my life will be a dingy wasteland once my bundle of joylessness arrives.

Let’s talk about a girl named Kim.

Having heard I was pregnant, she messaged me on Facebook with the following advice, “Take a look at your body right now, because it will never look this way again. Your stomach will be so pock marked and stretched out, there will be nothing you can do about it, so enjoy it now.”

I barely know this woman, and while I am impressed at her ability to paint such a richly hued portrait of how crappy I’m going to look, I can’t understand what drives her other than pure evil.

Stretch marks are genetic, and they may also be caused by excessive or rapid weight gain. However, what if there is another, more mysterious cause? What if the collagen gods punish people like Kim for being passive-aggressive twats?

You can’t laser that away, Kimmy. See you on Punch you in the Facebook.If I do morph into a bleary-eyed, pock-marked, sad sack with spit-up and organic oatmeal in my hair who is too neurotically attached to her precious child to allow anyone to baby sit, I hope to have enough compassion to lie my saggy ass off when I see a pregnant girl and simply say, “You are going to love being a mom.”

I don’t want to say I got the hard sell on having a CVS test, but when I went to my mandatory pre-test genetic counseling session, it felt a little like being on a used car lot on the last day of the month taking a recession test drive with a salesman one vehicle short of his quota.

In essence, he was asking, “What’s it going to take to get you into these stirrups?” And he wasn’t going to let us walk without closing.

I’m sure the information was medically sound, responsible, factual, bla, bla, bla, but this is pretty much how I heard it.

Mrs. Strasser, this CVS is top of the line. It’s the Cadillac of invasive prenatal diagnostic tests, and we give you a lifetime no chromosomal defects guarantee!

On the other hand, if you like “uncertainty,” perhaps this test isn’t for you. I guess you don’t mind the idea of visiting your child in an institution because it’s severely impaired and you just didn’t feel like getting the CVS. I guess you are one of those people who don’t mind Fragile X Syndrome or Spinal Muscular Atrophy. Look, the CVS test is not for everyone, just customers who appreciate our 99 percent accuracy rate in diagnosing chromosomal abnormalities.

We offer easy financing through your insurance company.

But really, how can you put a price on peace of mind? Our model of CVS practitioner, Dr. Everyone Goes to Him, is the best on the market. Best safety record around. Again, like I said, some folks don’t care about safety, and if that’s you, I guess the CVS isn’t an investment worth making right now.

Let me show you some of the other CVS features.

We can test for several hundred genetic disorders. Tay-Sachs Disease? Cystic fibrosis? We got you covered. Did you say you were Ashkenazi? Yikes, that’s bad. What? Nothing.

The first trimester screening test you already had, that nice little sonogram and blood screen combo, that’s cute and all, but if you want a real test, that’s a waste of your time. Sure, that checks for a few mutations, but this is the bad boy. We check all 23 chromosomes. Order now, and we’ll even throw in free gender identification.

You can think about it, but at 12 weeks, you don’t have much time. Dr. Everyone Goes to Him books up and your window for this test shuts at 13 weeks. No pressure. You can have an amniocentesis at 15 weeks if you like. Up to you. I sure wouldn’t want to run into any defects that late in the game.

Sold.

Why Exploiting My Baby Seems Like a Good Idea

Like it’s so special having a baby. Britney Spears did it twice, so there you go.

Yet, we’ve all seen these spooky, lost smother mothers with their sippy cups full of self-absorption and their non-stop, mind-numbing prattle about the relative merits of organic baby food. These are the souls who update their Facebook status to reflect little Jackson’s latest bowel movement. This is not okay. This is haunting.

There are so many nerve-wracking things about being pregnant for the first time. Just when you think you can handle nausea, ravenous hunger, precipitous weight gain, and the abject fear about your baby’s health, you come in contact with one of these mothers and you think, not that I’m so great, but I hope I don’t become her.

Frankly, it has never been very comfortable being me, but it’s all I know.

I would like to think I’m in no danger of becoming an uptight asshole who won’t let you touch my child without Purell-ing your hands, lest you pass infection to my precious baby Jesus, but the truth is: I have no idea.

I have no idea about any of this.

Maybe everything has already been said about the experience of pregnancy, but it’s new to me and I have found myself consuming any information I can, from Nancy O’Dell’s book (beautiful lady, but her memoir about extra-glowing pregnancy skin and lack of any unpleasant symptoms when carrying Baby Ashby can suck it) to Jenny McCarthy (you want to dismiss “Belly Laughs,” but you can’t, because it really does make you feel normal and though her style makes you want to say, “I get it, you’re edgy,” she really is entertaining and likeable). As long as there are pregnant girls up in the middle of the night wondering if it’s a cramp or gas or a disaster, as long as there are newcomers to this world as confused and terrified as I am, this crap is always going to seem relevant and new to us. I am grateful for all the books and blogs that tell the truth, and I don’t mean syrupy wannabe disclosures like, “I haven’t washed my hair in weeks, but it’s all worth it because of the magic of motherhood.” I mean, the real stuff.

There is no precedent for us first-timers. I don’t understand any of the sensations happening in my body, which all seem like they must mean imminent miscarriage, a phrase I have Googled no fewer than 17 times.

I don’t have any idea what nipple salve or nasal aspirators do. I don’t know anything about babies, except I am having one. Moreover, I don’t know how to write about any of this without conjuring images of poor, kicked around Kathie Lee Gifford, who seems like an alright gal but who took so much shit for trotting out little Cody and little what’s-her-face just to make America love her.

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

Now that I think about it, as a writer, I guess I’ve “exploited” all of my subjects: my step-parents, my boyfriends, my beat up cars, my jacked up apartments, my landlords, my Hebrew school teachers, my grandfather, my girlfriends, the dude at the dry cleaner’s, my therapist(s), the guy I met on Myspace, my dermatologist, everyone.

Sometimes, when you’re scared about how something is going to be perceived, you have to look the bogeyman right in the face.

So when I randomly searched for the domain name Exploiting My Baby.com and it was free, I grabbed it.

And after all, the kid is exploiting me.

'A Baby Story' in h Magazine

Right now, I’m the sidekick on a morning radio program and co-host of a weekly television show on deep, deep cable. Based on my career trajectory thus far, my next job will be a series of non-union Mobisodes.

In the parlance of street fighters, or middle managers trying to rally their sales force after a bad quarter: It’s go time. Or more specifically, it’s gonad time. I’ll explain in a minute.
A few years ago, I almost landed 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 on stage arm-in-arm with new BFF Meredith Vieira and felt an almost narcotic sense of belonging. Despite a career characterized mainly by bad, impetuous decisions to quit jobs and paralyzing self-doubt, 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 after taping my second episode of The View, producers called my agent to say I was one of their top choices. Before I even checked my bags curbside, we 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 non-pretentious but clearly expensive collection of Burberry trench coats I would acquire, and of course, the non-stop 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 in the coming season. I was single at the time. 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 Elizabeth 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. Any jobs I get that don’t involve taking over my dad’s automotive repair business are blessings. But I can’t help thinking that if I want to ascend to the next level, I’ll need to procreate.

As it happens, I just got married six months ago and my husband and I have started trying to have a baby. Because said baby may be reading this in ten years, I want to make it absolutely plain that we want a baby for all the normal, healthy, unselfish, non-career related reasons. Still, while I’m terrified about whether or not I’ll be a good mother, or have a healthy baby, or know how to love it fully, or be able to conceive at all, I’m totally confident about one thing: being pregnant is good for business.

Babies are transformative. They make you more loving and patient. However, 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 beloved champion of popularity contest, Dancing With The Stars.

Sprinkle some magic mommy dust on Angelina Jolie, and she goes from knife-wielding, blood vial wearing, possibly home wrecking, scary force of sexual energy, to earth mother goddess breast-feeding on the cover of W magazine.

So effective is this magic dust, it has the power to make you like 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, Violet, Suri, Kingston, Brooklyn, and Sean Preston.

I used to think this was a brand new phenomenon, that because women have increasing power and earning potential, that 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.

However, back in 1953, the country basically screeched to a halt to watch “Lucy Goes to the Hospital,” which garnered a record 71.7 rating, meaning 71.7% of all television households were tuned in to I Love Lucy. 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, to cable sensation The Secret Life of the American Teenager. Guess what 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, to observe someone known for her svelte body, like Heidi Klum or Kelly Ripa, enlarge. Entertainment news is a now non-stop “Bump Watch.”

As a culture, we have a voyeuristic obsession with famous mothers, but we’re simply gaga for multiples. How much did we want to see the Jolie-Pitt twins, Vivienne and Knox? According to Forbes Magazine, People Magazine paid a record $14 million for first photos.

Watched TLC lately?

I remember when it used to be home decorating shows (back when I scratching for my seat on The View, I used to host TLC’s While You Were Out). Now it’s Kids by the Dozen, Jon and Kate Plus 8 and 17 Kids and Counting, which shares the life of the Duggars, who now have 18 kids with “J” names, including Jedidiah and Jinger. Don’t worry about the crazy monikers, they won’t get bullied on the schoolyard because: one, Jesus loves them and two, they are home schooled.

Aside from the miracle of childbirth being inherently interesting, and the thrill of seeing some tiny starlet get fat and thin again, and the soothing sense that even our most kick ass power women yearn for babies, there is just this: Moms are so Š maternal. Welcome to facile conjecture-ville, I hope you’ll have a pleasant stay.

Mothers know things, they have superhuman strength, and 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, what famous woman wouldn’t want to be imbued with these qualities in the eyes of the public?

So, future child, I want you to know I’m not having you just because it will help my career. But, it probably won’t hurt.

Is Google Evil?

This is almost like “found poetry,” if you found a really depressing and sparsely written poem. Here is a verbatim history of my baby-related Google searches for the month of March, my third month of pregnancy. How to describe obsessive, all-consuming anxiety? Like they say in Comp 101: Show don’t tell.