Salon.com > Jessica Berger Gross

My bad baby-sitter years

Tue, 21 Aug 2012 00:00:00 +0000

When my son turned 6 months old, I began looking for a baby sitter. Not just any baby sitter would do: I imagined a modern-day governess. A brainy, artsy, warm college student. Part of me wondered if my desire to have the “perfect” baby sitter was just another form of helicopter parenting. After all, I could easily hire the high school kid down the street for half the price.

Then again, I was the kid down the street many years ago. And I remember what that was like.

My baby-sitting career began one early summer day in Rockville Centre, Long Island, circa 1986, when I posted an index card advertising my services on a corkboard at the neighborhood market. A mother called me a few days later. Her baby was 8 months old – I had just finished the eighth grade. Looking back, I’m not sure what she was thinking, hiring a kid to baby-sit. Probably something along the lines of, “Please, God, get me out of this house.”

My tiny hypocrisy: The Brazilian Blowout

Wed, 08 Dec 2010 01:20:00 +0000

I grow vegetables in my backyard. I wear organic makeup. I grind my own flax seeds. I write a yoga column called "Enlightened Motherhood," for crying out loud. But two months ago I had a Brazilian Blowout. Despite recent warnings that the conditioning and straightening formula contains high levels of formaldehyde -- a carcinogen and, yes, the stuff they use on dead bodies -- I want another one. And another one after that.

For years, my hairstyle could best be described as an "I give up" ponytail. Overwhelmed by work and motherhood after moving to Vancouver from our home in Boston, I paid my downstairs tenant, a stylist at a fancy salon, for my cut and color. Her toddler ran around during our sessions, while my son squiggled in my lap, which might be why my hair looked so drab. I upgraded to a tiny hipster salon in the neighborhood, where the aspiring musician/stylist told me from the outset he had no experience with curly hair, but whenever the professional blowouts washed out, I'd break out my ponytail holder again.

The baby I turned away

Thu, 03 Jan 2008 08:32:00 +0000

My husband, Neil, and I had just sat down to lunch when we got the call. We'd spent the morning reading books about infertility and assisted reproductive technology, and we were drained, exhausted from months of waiting on a stalled international adoption list and overwhelmed by the question of whether to pursue infertility treatments.

"You won't believe this," said Neil. "We have a referral, if we want it."

If we want it? Of course we wanted it. There was nothing we wanted more.

We'd started trying to get pregnant three years before. It took six months to conceive my first pregnancy, which I miscarried in the first trimester. I gave up my morning latte and the occasional glass of wine, took up acupuncture, practiced restorative yoga, went on vacation, charted my temperature and cervical mucous, peed on ovulation sticks and had lots of sex. Nothing worked.