Mommie fearest

I'm due in four weeks and if the predictions of my mother friends are accurate, I should feel like a total impostor, a crappy mom, a complete failure.

By Heather Havrilesky

Read more: Babies, Pregnancy, Motherhood, Heather Havrilesky, Life

Oct. 2, 2006 | The joys of motherhood await me! In about a month, if all goes well, I'll be the first-time mother of a newborn. According to my friends who are mothers, this means that the healthy glow and abnormally cheerful moods of pregnancy will soon be gone, replaced by a sallow zombie mask. I'll have trouble running a brush through my hair, my stomach will sag like an empty duffel bag, there will be big, dark circles under my eyes, and acquaintances will speculate as to the severity of my postpartum depression -- which will be very, very severe indeed.

Of course I'll try my best to do everything I've been told -- I'll try not to "overthink" breast-feeding but will aim to achieve a "good latch," I'll try to pump early and often, I'll nap when my baby is napping, I'll make my husband change every single diaper and walk the baby in a million little circles, I'll treat motherhood as my brand-new, overtime, around-the-clock job, I won't attempt to vacuum or shower or pay bills, I won't guilt myself into thinking I should be back at work prematurely -- but even so, I'm told that I'll feel angry and sullen and overwhelmed. I'll cry over nothing, or over the fact that there's a lamprey-like beast sucking my will to live straight out of my sore breasts.

Yes, just four weeks from now, if the predictions of my mother friends are accurate, I should feel like a total impostor, a crappy mom, a complete failure at my "new career," but I'll also be so spaced out and slow that I'll wonder if I can ever return to my old career again. I'll have to let my husband wash the lamprey, just in case I turn into Andrea Yates in a weak moment. I'll be just like Brooke Shields was after her first baby was born, except that I'll look like shit and I won't have the energy to write a book about it -- and even if I do, no one will buy it.

Occasionally, I'll make desperate, weepy calls to friends, barely able to string enough words together to describe the feeling of walking around underwater, spaced out, stuck in some hazy existential crisis. My closest friends, who are childless, will sigh sympathetically, then hurry off the phone, depressed by the prospect of procreating. My friends who are moms will chuckle sympathetically, then hurry off the phone to prevent their toddler from sticking a fork into the nearest electrical outlet.

Now and then, I'll go out for a walk, lamprey in tow, just like I'm supposed to do. My lamprey will whine and then explode into tears, but I'll sally forth, determined to make it to the local coffee joint, even though I can't actually drink any coffee, since I'm breast-feeding and the caffeine is sure to give my lamprey ADHD or autism or asthma. I'll stumble over to the "child play area," which always seemed to be full of moms trading epidural stories when I worked there on my laptop -- you know, back when I was a successful writer with a flourishing career and a life of endless promise stretching out before me. There'll be one mom there with a toddler and a camera-ready model baby, sleeping in its expensive stroller. She'll point out that I have my Baby Bjorn strapped on incorrectly, in a way that's known to increase the risk of suffocation. While she readjusts my Bjorn, she'll ask me polite questions about the lamprey sucking the life blood out of me, as if it's not strange at all, as if I'm not clearly starring in some sci-fi horror flick that ends badly.

Then she'll launch into her enthusiastic views of attachment parenting and other all-consuming child-rearing techniques that I know nothing about, other than the fact that they demand that mothers annihilate their egos and bend the laws of space and time in order to accommodate their children. While she talks, she'll begin unpacking a seemingly endless array of tiny Tupperware containers from her leather diaper bag, each housing a different organic, wheat-free, lactose-free snack, and she'll pull out several scent-free sanitary wipes and a sippy cup full of juice and a very expensive breast pump, and she'll (very discreetly) feed her very attractive baby with one breast while (efficiently and effectively) pumping the other breast, and she'll hand out small, tasty chunks of food to her toddler, all of them rich in Omega-3 and iron and vitamin C. Watching her will suddenly make me feel very faint, and my lamprey and I will hit the floor with a sickening thud that causes everyone in the entire coffee joint to turn their heads and gasp and vow never, ever to forsake their very promising and brilliant writing careers in order to procreate.

But things will get better for me a few months later, don't you worry! The lamprey will start sleeping for two-hour stretches at a time (What a luxury!), enough time for me to actually call my few remaining friends and tell them I can't make it to whatever fun-sounding event they're planning. I'll blame it all on the lamprey, of course, and I'll describe, in excruciating detail, how cute the lamprey's expressions are these days, especially when it has gas. I'll even check my e-mail, just like I did in the old days! Of course, once I get tired of reading old messages, I'll just delete them all and send out a group e-mail announcing that I can no longer be expected to return calls or e-mails in a timely fashion and I can't drive for more than three minutes without the lamprey crying (unless I sing "Farmer in the Dell" in a very happy, high voice, but that only buys me another two minutes), so anyone who wants to talk to me or see me will have to come to my house, where I'll be distracted constantly and will have one or the other of my bloated, pale, blue-vein-covered boobs out at all times.

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