My brother and sister-in-law are expecting their first child in September. I must say, it’s very nice to wait for someone else’s baby to arrive; not to even speak of the fact that I’m enjoying the idea of my brother finding out for himself how weird our genes are. My own children are lovely, but a bit wicked. I have no doubt his will be the same.

The hardest part about this “sideline pregnancy” is the urge to give advice. I’ve been through it all, I have been a mom for almost seven years; I know everything. Of course, in reality I know and understand absolutely nothing, but that doesn’t squelch the tendency to tell the expectant parents what to do, what to feel, what to look forward to.

In order to avoid driving them crazy and becoming the least favorite family member within three weeks after conception, I’ve promised myself I will not call them every single day. Also, I will not share too many annoying stories about my own children; after all, they might still be hoping for one that’s totally sweet and pliable. A child that listens, and says ‘please’ and ‘thank’ you all the time. A child that doesn’t put hand soap in his hair five minutes after his bath, because he wants to wash his hair again. A child that doesn’t draw on every wall, or peels off all the wallpaper. A child that is asleep by seven every night, and doesn’t wake up until you’ve had your first cup of coffee in the morning. A child that is potty trained at two years of age. A child that wipes and flushes and washes his hands every single time. In short, a child that behaves.

They must be sort of like Wolverines: in spite of the fact that I’ve never met one, I know they exist. I wish my brother could have one of these good children, from the bottom of my heart, truly, I do.

Unfortunately, I just don’t think it’s in the cards. That’s okay; even if your children are unbelievably naughty, you can still love them very much. There are also many ways to justify the bad behavior, as in “I know she seems naughty, but she’s just really creative! How else did she think of (fill in the blank)” or “No, my child doesn’t play with other kids well, but from what I’ve read, neither did Mozart.”

Don’t laugh; this is the way of thinking that has saved many a parent from despair. It’s the unwritten rule of parenting: revise, revise, revise. I have no doubt my brother and sister-in-law will become masters at it, because their child will be every bit as naughty, creative, and intriguing as mine. The only question is, will it be as cute?

PS yes, that’s a picture of my son. 

There are two types of false labor.

There are the times when you think, this is it, and you call your support, you race to the hospital, they check you in, and it all turns out to be nothing but a storm in a shot glass.  If this has happened to you, don’t feel bad: you’re in good company.  Because no woman since the beginning of creation has been able to give a clear description of what actual labor feels like, we’re all just guessing. Plus, by the time you’re close to that nine-month mark, your nerves are so frayed that you can feel a sneeze coming on and think your water broke.

Who even knows what a contraction feels like before they’ve had any experience? There are a lot of ways to describe getting hit by a freight train, being ripped in half, or feeling like a wrung-out towel. Yes, we get it, it hurts. But when you’re pregnant, there’s a lot that hurts, and who knows whether that pain you’re feeling in your gut is the onset of labor, or the result of that taco you ate last night?  So you play it safe, go to the hospital, where they will shake their heads and send you home.  There you sit on your couch, with the remote in your hand. You’d like to watch a movie, but you don’t have the energy to get up, so you flip channels. There’s nothing on at 4 am, so you end up watching Full House reruns, wondering whatever happened to the Olson twins.

And you solemnly swear to yourself that next time you go to the hospital, it will be for real.  Unfortunately, you find yourself in the exact same position three days later (it’s those damn Braxton-Hicks contractions, how are you supposed to tell the difference?) and the medical personnel treats you nice, and says things like It’s okay, we see this all the time. Don’t worry about it! Of course, their eyes tell an entirely different story; they think you’re stupid and hysterical and decide for the gazillionth time that they just have to change careers, right now, so they won’t have to deal with you ever again.

The hardest part about labor is waiting. You’ve already waited for so long, and it’s not just your imagination, those last days really do take forever. Having said that, it’s easy to see why pregnant women fall for the false labor signs so easily; a trip to the hospital covers at least a few hours, and what else are you supposed to do to entertain yourself? You’ve already yelled at your husband 5,726 times, none of your friends still want to talk to you because you have nothing new to say, and even your own mother has her cell phone permanently set to voicemail.

The second type of false labor happens when you want to get rid of visitors, or you are forced to go somewhere and you really want to leave. You pretend, and if you’re ballsy enough, this can be done as soon as you are seven months along. Put your hands on your lower back; put your hands on your stomach; go to the bathroom and splash just enough water on your face to make it look like you’re sweating. Refuse all food.  Sigh deeply, pretend to have a cramp. Most people don’t know what to expect, and those of us who know what labor is like won’t dare argue with a woman who says: “It’s Time.” Honestly, this will get you out of anything with lightning speed; just writing about it makes me almost sorry I’m not pregnant anymore. It’s such a handy excuse to have.

People that are visiting will want to help; you need to tell them your husband is on the way and right now you’d like to lie down and be alone. If you are somewhere else, make sure you have a trusted friend available, who can pretend to drive you to your hospital.  Otherwise you won’t know who is going to volunteer, and then you are stuck. Once in the car, you can go shopping or see a movie. If you run into any of these people later, you just tell them you were having BH contractions; they’ll understand. Or not; who cares?

The only advice I can give you about all this labor business is this: when labor really starts, you’ll know. You really, really will. 

I think.

Maybe.

You went for that check-up and found out the gender of your baby; congratulations, you can finally decide on a name and finalize the décor in the nursery.  In case you are having a boy, there are certain things to consider.

This is a good time to take a closer look at your homeowners insurance; also, if you own any glass tables, get rid of them now. You can’t have those around boys, whether they’re two, or seventeen years old.

One big advantage: no need to worry anymore about decorating the baby room; paint the walls blue and call it good. More is not required, since pretty things will be destroyed as soon as baby can walk. You might want to put some pillows on the floor; boys will climb on anything, and can scale walls with their bare hands. They’ll need something soft to fall on.

Find all things that are remotely stick shaped (brooms, snow shovels, curtain rods, you name it) and lock them in the garage. If you own a baseball bat, take it to goodwill. Little boys will sense it if there’s a bat hiding somewhere and break down the door to get to it. Then they will use it to go after either the fish tank, or your head.

Wet wipes need to be everywhere, not just next to the changing table. Keep them at your desk, in the kitchen, the basement, and the living room; keep them in your car, your dining room, anywhere baby will go. You’ll use them five times as much if your baby is male; at the age of five, it sort of evens out.

Take boxing lessons; it’s a handy way to learn self defense, which mostly consists of being fast on your feet. You need to know how to duck, or you will get punched and have your hair pulled constantly.

Boys like a place to hide; maybe it’s that caveman-thing. They want something that roughly resembles a fort; sometimes a sheet thrown over the dining room table is enough. Once inside their ‘fort’, they don’t do anything exciting or secretive, although they’d like us to believe they do. Mostly they just sit there. Hiding. Thinking about god-knows-what.

Boys instinctively know how to kick a soccer ball smack in the middle of the flowerbed that you just planted yesterday. They never miss.

Boys will not potty-train unless you threaten to throw away their favorite toy; don’t wait too long with that. A twelve-year-old who still needs a diaper is unattractive and won’t have any friends. You want him to make friends; it guarantees he will be out of your hair at least part of the time.

Boys will laugh hysterically when they burp or pass gas; it’s genetic. They miss that oh-so important extra X-chromosome; you guessed it, the chromosome that holds the key to manners, shopping, and the ability to pick up your dirty socks and place them in a hamper.

You went for that check-up and found out the gender of your baby; congratulations, you can finally decide on a name and finalize the décor in the nursery.  In case you are having a girl, there are certain things to consider.

Girls grow up to be six-year-olds, at which point they will have an opinion about everything. Then they will become teenagers and even more difficult.  So what, you say; all teenagers are difficult. No. While boys merely turn into surly, incommunicative, invisible beings that you see maybe twice a week, girls won’t let you forget so easily.  There are arguments to be had; arguments about clothing allowances, about boyfriends, girlfriends, about how much television to watch and what music to listen to. Arguments about which car to drive, where to drive it to, and what time to come home. And homework, what is homework? Who needs it? Like, right, you know, like.  Whatever damage teenage girls will do to the English language in another 16 years or so doesn’t matter; they will argue.

Girls like pink. I know; it sounds sexist, bla bla bla, but the truth is, the power of pink is unstoppable. It’s build into their damn genes; add to that society’s prejudice, which will make every relative buy pink crap as soon as that ultrasound picture hits the streets, and you don’t stand a chance. If you tell people not to bring any of it into your house, they’ll just buy more. Car seats now come in pink, and so do strollers, baby baths, diaper bags. The sky’s the limit. By the time your daughter reaches her third birthday, you’ll be so entirely sick of it you’ll start thinking about giving her an Addams Family make-over.

Little girls like to grow their hair long, own lots of ‘hair thingies’ (official term) and have their hair done; except when that involves brushing out the tangles, which is always. When you’ve waited three days and can’t stand it anymore, you can spray her hair with the detangler and attempt to brush it; you’ll need two adults for this. One to hold her down, the other to brush. She will scream and add it to her list of things to blame you for later.

Girls hold grudges. They may not be able to remember things like “thou shalt not hit thy brother”, and have trouble recalling exactly what it was they were supposed to do for homework, but they remember real or perceived insults forever. If you try to vacuum and decide that those 23 pairs of Barbie shoes should be thrown away because she’ll never notice; think again: she will find out about it and tell her therapist all about it when she’s 28 years old and no longer talking to you.

Little girls like to play ‘pregnant’. I find this mind-boggling. I purposely didn’t buy my daughter any of those strange dolls that really pee and poop, and we certainly stayed away from ‘pregnant Barbie’.  Still, they find out about this pregnancy thing and they run with it. They shove any doll or stuffed animal under their dress, causing them to walk around with a very strangely shaped hump on their belly, exclaiming Look, I’m pregnant! Isn’t this fun? It doesn’t matter that we repeatedly tell her that pregnancy before the age of 30 is simply not an option. You have to go to college, we say, and then grad school. And you have to travel, and get a good job, and travel some more. How are you going to combine all that?

Maybe if we repeat it often enough, we can instill some sense into her. She has to stop thinking pregnancy is fun before the age where she can actually become pregnant.  The thought that that time is only about 8 years away is terrifying; it’s the stuff of nightmares, any parent of a girl can tell you that.

Girls like to dress up. This is something that doesn’t change as they get older; it merely evolves.  They start with Disney dresses, mommy’s stuff (watch out) and princess crowns. They move on to God-knows-what.  Honestly, I sometimes think one of the first full sentences that come out of any girls’ mouth is “I don’t want to wear that” or the equally tiresome: “Why can’t I wear that?”  Ever since she was three, my daughter has been in the habit of changing 5, 6 times a day. It’s gone down a little now that she’s in school, but since she wears a school uniform, she still feels the need to change twice after coming home in the afternoon. She also has no clue when it comes to temperature-appropriate clothing. She’d leave the house in a tank top and shorts to go play in the snow, if only we would let her.  But I don’t know if that is typical for all girls; it might be just that my own child is a little strange in that regard.

Girls like to cry when they don’t get their way. It’s practice for when they are old enough to date, or –god forbid- marry; it helps with the manipulation thing if you can produce tears at will.  So they practice. And practice. And practice some more. They cry when they can’t find something, when you instruct them to finish their food, or when they have to wear a hat. They cry when they have to take a bath, when they have to come out of the bath, and when you tell them it is bedtime. They cry when they get in the car, when they come out of the car; when you take them shopping, or when they go to visit grandma.

You get the point; just remember, they’re not really sad, it’s all just rehearsal.

Pregnant women need to do massive amounts of shopping. Some of this is due to frustration, the so-called ‘therapeutic shopping’, but a serious part of it is for stuff you actually need. It is important that you shop every day; if you’re in your third month and haven’t really gotten started, you need to get your act together. Stop puking and get your comfy shoes; there’s onesies to purchase, you slowpoke.

You will need baby bottles, and a breast pump, and ever-bigger clothes; you need shoes in a size larger than you normally wear, in case your feet start swelling.

You need fifty water bottles to leave lying all over the house, a body pillow and three extra regular pillows or you won’t sleep. You need the bigger underwear, and you need to purchase every obscure over-the-counter medicine for nausea even though you know that none of hem will work, and you have to have those gel in-soles to ease your back pain. Extra lotion needs to be bought to fight stretch marks and you need the expensive make-up just in case you develop allergies to the cheap crap that you’ve been getting away with.

You’ll need to do groceries every day because you’ll have weird cravings; you’ll throw half the food away as soon as you get home, but that’s okay. Nobody needs to know.

You need Tums, and folic acid. A crib, crib pad, sheets, blankies, a million little suits,  (about six to ten without a bottom for the first week when the cord stump’s still there) and little socks, little hats, powder, diapers, an atrocious amount of trash bags, wipes, rubbing alcohol, special baby-laundry-detergent, tons of cleaning products in case your baby is a puker, air freshener, and of course, toys and teddy bears for your child to ignore. You’ll need burp cloths, a diaper bag, baby soap, a little bathtub, a thermometer, and the smallest nail clippers you’ve ever seen. Then there is the stroller, the car seat, and the commode with changing pad, washcloths and tub toys. And don’t forget your First Aid kit. Also, it might be wise to buy slipcovers for all your furniture, and you need to invest in all those extra locks on your kitchen cabinets now; you won’t have time to take care of that once baby has arrived. You need to buy paint and wallpaper for the nursery, shop for scrap booking material, and make sure you have the newest digital camera on the market. If you currently live in a two-bedroom apartment, you’ll need to buy a bigger house just to fit all the stuff baby needs. Also, the house needs to be large so you can pretend to not be the first one to hear baby cry when another diaper change is necessary. (Newborns have been known to poop three to four times a day.)

You will need to pick out a hospital, and I recommend you visit every available one within a fifty mile radius; don’t just blindly pick the one your best friend used. Once you have your baby you will get visitors while still in the hospital, so you need cute designer pajamas, warm socks, and a robe. Special really ugly bras plus nursing pads. Birth announcements. Bottle liners and extra nipples.  Ibuprofen for your husband. A baby monitor, one of those handy covers for the car seat, and a good book in case labor is longer than expected.

Spending this much time and energy on buying things for baby seems fun at first, but you get thoroughly fed up by month 7 or so. This is why it’s important to intersperse it with plenty of shopping for yourself: get to the spa, get a manicure, a wax, and have your hair done at least twice a month. Buy a large bottle of Chanel, decide not to like it, and buy a different kind. Don’t wear the same outfit more than twice, period.

Your husband needs to see this type of behavior, because he might think that, since a baby is coming, there is no money left for frivolous spending.  It is absolutely essential that you stop him from ever reaching that conclusion.

You need things. Stuff. Nothing perks up a pregnant woman like a good old fashioned shopping spree that doesn’t include a stop in the damn baby aisle.

Fun with Pregnancy: The Doctor’s Office

One side effect of each and every pregnancy is that you have to make several appointments with the obgyn. If you think these visits with your doctor are going to be fun, think again.

They can only be scheduled on days that are most inconvenient, and you spend more time sitting around the waiting room than being examined.  The ratio is approximately one hour of waiting to five minutes of examination.  Unfortunately, these visits aren’t optional; you have to go. What makes the waiting so bad is not that it’s boring (bring a book) or that you should be in a meeting (be honest, you don’t care about the meeting). The bad thing is there are other pregnant women in that waiting room, because they are:

• More knowledgeable
• More on schedule
• Healthier
• Further along

Some of them tell horror stories about ‘cousin so-and-so’ who had a baby with two heads and a clubfoot. Others ask annoying questions, even though they should know better. “Is this your first?” they’ll say, and if you nod, yes, you’re a first timer; they will give you that condescending smile.

“It’s my third, I’m an old hat at this,” they’ll say, letting you know that they are wildly superior and know all the answers to the things that keep you awake at night.

It’s irritating.  They won’t actually give you any answers; just dirty looks, especially if you bring your espresso from the car. That’s because they know that, while you haven’t given birth yet, you can still do things like shop, read, work, and go to the movies, because you have no other children at home.

It’s imperative to avoid talking to these women; here’s what you can do. Find some Russian magazines or books and pretend to read them. If anyone addresses you anyway, give them a confused look. Make sure nobody there actually speaks Russian, which is easy; most people in waiting rooms talk very loud.

You can also bring your laptop and look busy and annoyed. I saw one woman talking on her cell phone constantly while juggling her pee cup in her other hand; I just know she asked her friends and relatives beforehand to call her at two-minute intervals.

Another thing you can do is wear expensive designer clothes; it’ll cost you, but it’s worth it.  The other women will instantly hate you and refuse to speak with you. They’ll gossip about you afterwards, but that’s okay: you’ll be long gone by then, and they can stuff their mumu’s where the sun don’t shine.

If, after all this effort, any of the other women still insist on talking to you, you can reply:

“Oh, no, I’m not pregnant, I’m just here for my Gonorrhea check up.”

They’ll leave you alone after that.

This only works if you’re not showing yet. If you are, you can look insulted and say: “What, pregnant, me? I’m just fat, but thanks for pointing that out.” Then you run to the bathroom (you had to go anyway, it’s been ten minutes) and don’t come out until it’s time for your appointment.

One of the most irritating things about being pregnant is the fact that every damn stranger in creation has an opinion about you and your belly.  Never mind that this is very much your child, that you are going to be making all the decisions, and that you are going to be responsible for it. While baby is still in your belly, it’s apparently everybody’s business.

This is known as the “nosy neighbor syndrome”, and at one point or another it affects all mothers-to-be. If you don’t believe me, just try walking out of a Starbucks with a nice Latte in your hand; watch what happens.  Wear high heels to work, or suggest Sushi for the next business lunch. Buy a bottle of wine, run a few steps to your car, or drop something at the supermarket and bend over.

Some moron will butt in and tell you “That’s not good for the baby”.

Maybe it isn’t, and maybe it is.  To these kinds of people, your opinion sadly doesn’t count; you were dumb enough to get pregnant, so now you are going to have to listen.

Don’t bother arguing with them, they just want to hear themselves talk and aren’t interested in whether you have a brain. The best thing to do is just smile and nod, while sipping on your latte, of course.

The worst kind of commentary comes from those women that have never been pregnant themselves. Especially if they are older, they have had a lifetime to think about how they would have done things if they had been pregnant. When you’re only imagining being pregnant, things are much easier. Watch out, the group that is almost as bad consists of women who don’ t really remember being pregnant because it was so long ago.

They’ve forgotten what it’s like, and have no sympathy for you and your diabolical craving for a piece of mercury laden fish or a bite of raw egg.

Then there are the men. The ones who drive their partners nuts by being utterly unreasonable will spread their wings eventually; either because their own wives kick them out, or because they refuse to ever get pregnant again. These men wander the streets, looking for anonymous pregnant women to pester.

“Let me carry that for you!” they yell, thinking you’ll tear an ovary because you’re carrying groceries. They’ll act insulted and hurt when you reach for your pepper spray, and they’ll say: “I was just trying to help!”

If you happen to work for one of these, please change jobs. If you only run into them now and then, you can handle them by kicking them swiftly in the shins.  Some of you may be related to such a man; just don’t visit for a while; you’ll be better off avoiding them.

If you’re worried about the OB-Gyn office; those nurses are so sick and tired of pregnant women that they wouldn’t start a conversation with you if you held a gun to their head.

Which leaves you with only one person to worry about: Your mother.

But that is a story for another time.

When you find out you are pregnant (especially if it’s the first time), it’s very common to run to the store and purchase every pregnancy book in sight. There is much to choose from; unfortunately, they are filled with advice you can’t really use.

I threw all of mine in the trash, so you’ll have to forgive me; I’m doing this from memory. What I found most annoying was the realization there were so many people in the world that knew more than me.  If you feel the same way, welcome to the club: this is the time in your life when even complete strangers have the urge to share their opinion, and you’re the least willing to listen. The books tell you what to eat, when to eat it; they tell you myths (Baby Blues for most women lasts only a few weeks) and outright lies: Morning sickness disappears after the first trimester.

Then they add the disclaimer that every woman is unique, and so is her pregnancy. That is a cop-out if I’ve ever heard one.

Well, thanks. So what they are really saying is: here’s what happens to most women, and it might happen to you, but then, it might not. You may be sick for three months, but maybe you will still be hacking up your lunch when your water breaks. You may start showing during the fourth month, but then, it’s entirely possible that people can’t see the bulge until you’re in month eight. You could develop hyper smell, or you could not. Maybe you will want only sodium-free foods; maybe you are tempted to have a salt lick installed in your bedroom. None of this is helpful to a pregnant woman who wants some answers. When I leave my house in the morning, I might get hit by a bus. Does that mean I should stay at home? 

Additional fun is to be had with the “What if” scenarios that apparently are a must for every self respecting pregnancy manual.  I remember one book that included one chapter for each month, aptly titled what can go wrong?

Excuse me?

Who thought up that brilliant idea? Look, pregnant women are paranoid by nature; they don’t need any help thinking up disaster scenarios. Think about it: panicking about whether the baby will be normal is something you can do anywhere anytime, it’s the one thing you can still manage even after six weeks on bed rest, when you’re as big as a whale, can’t see your own feet, and are contemplating selling your soul to the devil in exchange for thirty minutes of uninterrupted sleep.

(That thing with the devil doesn’t work, by the way; trust me, I’ve tried)

So why do pregnancy books continue to sell? Is it because everybody believes the hype about manuals being able to answer all questions? Is it because pregnant women get bored? Because, believe me, these nine months are looong, and boredom usually sets in around week seven. Having to pee all the time, not fitting in your normal clothes, and answering that hellish question “Do you have a name yet?” 5000 times all get old rather quickly.

I estimate that every pregnant woman buys an average of 3-4 books, which you have all finished before you’re even in your second trimester. You subsequently leave them lying around for another two months in the vain hope that your husband will read them (he won’t) and then you realize: I’ve spent $60 on something that is absolutely no help whatsoever.

If you are reading this and nodding, put them on EBay immediately, even if you haven’t finished reading yet. Then spend the money on something fun. Buy a body pillow. Buy two. Buy massage oil and tell your husband you will barf in his good shows if he doesn’t use it on you.  

I have a three year old who is –how shall I put this- somewhat obsessive in his tastes. It means he won’t eat a damn thing unless he has his orange Shrek spoon, and he only wants to wear certain clothes on certain days.  When a cookie accidentally breaks in half, he refuses to eat it; when you give him a boiled egg he only eats the white part.  It’s not enough to leave the yellow part on his plate, it needs to be demolished, rubbed in the carpet, to drive the point home that yolks are not acceptable. Feeding him an egg means watching him at close range, and taking the yolk away from him as soon as it’s free; your movements have to be slick and fast, kind of like a cobra going for a bunny.

I hear this type of behavior is normal for three-year-olds, and I wonder: since when is normalcy established by frequency? Just because millions of toddlers around the world deem this behavior acceptable, we have to live with it?

The obsessive behavior isn’t restricted to feeding time either; it extends into television habits.

My son likes Elmo. I know; he’s not the only one.

That red freak entertains millions of children on a daily basis. They learn their ABC’s from him, potty training, how to not be scared of all kinds of crap, and how to stay healthy. They also learn it’s okay to speak of yourself in the third person, something I find so unbelievably irritating that I’m having trouble breathing just thinking about it.

And here’s where the obsession becomes a problem. Kids don’t want to watch Elmo once, or twice. They want to watch him 30 to 40 times. Per week. You know how an episode of CSI goes from exciting to tiresome after you see it two times? Little children don’t see the world that way. They want to watch, And then they want to watch again. And again.  They are not satisfied until they know all the dialogue by heart (including the little piece at the end where Elmo advertises Sesame Street-dot-com) and you, the parent, are standing in traffic hoping someone will run you over.

People without children always say, “why don’t you just refuse to put the DVD in the player?” Listen, by the time they’re three, they know how the DVD player works. Also, if you want to get any work done around the house at all, you aren’t going to fight over this. You put in the damn movie, you sigh, and you accept the inevitable.

I, too,  started out as one of those parents that said “No Television!” Trust me, I was convinced I would not use the television as a baby sitter. But then I realized I had to scrub the floor and do the dishes from time to time, and I gave up. 

Some day, you will too.

At some point during pregnancy, every body part hurts; even your hair. Often, many parts hurt at the same time.  Of the approximately five million reasons for this, I’ve highlighted a few:

• It prepares you for the time your baby turns into a teenager. They will talk back, refuse to follow instructions, do everything in their power to rebel, and yell at you when you so much as interfere with their choice of jelly.  It doesn’t matter; by then you will be completely numb inside because you will still remember how much you suffered during those nine months.  Compared to an episiotomy, dealing with teen angst is like going to the circus. A boring circus.
• The pain will serve as a constant reminder to keep the father on a shorter leash; after all, he is the one that caused this mess.  Why should he have to go to the bar more than once a month? Why does he need to buy anything for himself? What do you mean, golf? Who needs golf? Why should you do stuff around the house, when he is perfectly healthy?  And if this is not your first baby, why can’t he take care of the other kids while you swoon on the sofa?
• Some people think pain is there to prepare you for labor; this is incorrect. Nothing prepares you for labor.  Only having been in labor before might give you some answers, and even then. The list of labor signs that every pregnancy book seems to include is always notoriously vague, and they -without exception- add a disclaimer that it’s different for every woman. Big fat help, that.
• Compared to pregnancy aches, your monthly cycle will almost seem like fun. Once it goes back to normal, that is.
• If you have one of those aggressive boy babies, the kind that start beating the crap out of you by the time they are 3, you can work on increasing your tolerance for pain now.
• It prepares you for some serious hurting at the gym, which is necessary for getting your old body back. Don’t think you can fix it by breastfeeding alone.

Bitter? What on earth are you talking about? I’m not bitter.