In India for my first trimester, I was rubbed with exotic ayurvedic oils and told that ghee (clarified butter) worked wonders on itchy belly skin as well as "the other parts that hurt after you have a baby." Since Indians are frequently so poor they can't afford either cosmetics or analgesics, I filed this under "quaint" and moved on, determined to pack as much travel as possible into the few childless months I had left.

In Italy during my second trimester, an older lady friend told me to get a natural-bristle nailbrush ($4) and to firmly scrub my nipples and areolae each morning. Since I'd heard that the initial weeks of nursing typically bring cracked, chapped nipples, I gamely soaped one up one morning but then balked when I noticed how uninviting it felt just to scrub the palm of my hand.

Once I got home, I abandoned the nailbrush and turned to my "guilt jar" collection for deliverance. Every woman I know has a collection of guilt jars -- aging pots of cosmetic preparations obtained on impulsive shopping excursions encouraged by ladies-magazine screeds like "Home Spa Cosmetics Good Enough to Eat." These guilt jars usually seem like a good idea during a pick-me-up shopping trip, but at home they languish in disuse for years. (I have cosmetics that predate my graduation from college.)

In my collection of moldy potions, I discovered a pot of key lime foot scrub ($7). (It was making a green ring on the porcelain of the shower.) Sandy grains suspended in the lime-green gel made it abrasive, but not as painful as the brush. I used it diligently for half a week, discovering in the process that it did a nice job of softening the skin not only on my chest but on my elbows, knees and heels. I was delighted: I'd used up a whole guilt jar and certain parts of my body were darned clean. But I was further from nipple calluses than I had been before I started. I gave up on the abrasion project in the 11th hour and thought, "Tough titties."

If only they had been. A newborn baby creates suction equivalent to a hand vacuum fitted with the crevice tool. Within a day of my son's birth, my nipples were as pink and raw as bologna sausage. They went well with the ankles swollen like French rolls, but I wanted relief, not deli.

The nurses at the hospital said the pain and redness were normal -- that the first 20 seconds of a feeding made every mother's face contort into a grimace worthy of a tragedy mask. They said I'd get used to it. So as my newborn son and I "established our nursing relationship," in La Leche League parlance, I silently screamed and grasped the hospital bed rails, my eyes watering -- and I was still on morphine.

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