The showdown

She likes it when I look mad. I mean, I don’t think we’re going to end up a New York Post headline or anything, like “Mom keeps demon baby in closet,” but she definitely smiles and claps at me when I try to get stern with her. Take this morning, for instance. I was watching an episode of Supernanny on TiVo, and she kept shutting the TV off. Now, I’ve got the remote; I could just turn it back on, but then it becomes a game to her. So I tell her in a firm, low voice to turn it back on.

I picked that one up from the Supernanny, who says “get down to their level, and speak in a low tone….” She says it in a plummy British accent and it sounds so perfectly reasonable, but when I try it on the baby, she laughs at me. I mean, I grasp the irony here. I’m watching this show to pick up pointers, because, god forbid, I end up raising one of the hell spawn they have on that show, but I can’t control my child well enough to get through an episode. And she’s one! What’s going to happen in a few years? So I think maybe I’ve already screwed up and I’m doomed to be on the show, with her at four calling me a “giant poopy butt” and biting me when I try to give her a kiss.

That’s my nightmare, that I become one of those moms on the show who asks her child permission to do everything and has to drag her kid through the supermarket by her ankle because she's throwing a massive arms-flailing, legs pumping temper tantrum on the floor of the Stop and Shop.

But the low tone doesn’t work, so the two of us are locked in a standoff. It’s like High Noon, only Gary Cooper’s two feet tall and wearing footy pajamas. And I’m trying to channel Jo Frost, my beloved Supernanny, by telling the baby that her behavior is unacceptable and threatening to place her on the naughty spot. I mean, I’m really working it; I even add in the British accent and mispronounce it like Jo does: “Your behavior is totally ‘unasseptable,’ young lady!” (Strange, this pronunciation. You’d think the producers would pull her aside or something. She says it like ten times on every show. )

But back here on the rug in front of the TV, I take her little finger and press the on button. Supernanny springs back into action, helping the TV mom whip two sets of twins into shape. My baby looks from the screen to my tense face and begins to laugh, her finger pointed at the off button like a six-shooter.

Great. I’ve been a mom for eleven point five months and I’ve raised Dillinger with an itchy trigger finger. Just think what havoc I can wreak in a decade.

Could use a nannycam right about now

I'm auditioning a babysitter as I type. She is upstairs entertaining the baby and I'm listening for cries between keystrikes. Man, this is odd.

Ah, arghh. It lasted ten minutes, but she's now crying. The baby, not the sitter. Better go rescue them...

I'm Ron Popiel in a nursing bra

As I'm going about my day with the baby, because I am a smart, talented person with no current means of expression except this blog and the perverse little twists I give nursery rhymes when the correct words escape me, I am always coming up with ideas for inventions.

If I had any business sense, I'd be contracting folks to build prototypes, do patent research, raise venture capital and whatever else one has to do to cultivate a tiny germ of a brilliant idea into a giant, fecund, fruit-bearing tree. And by fruit I mean money. And by germ I guess I meant seed.

So much for crafting metaphors, I need to be building a lucrative business empire. Or at least come up with one more cheaply produced piece of crap that people are foolish enough to believe they can't live without. And it just so happens that I think of things all the time. Here are two examples and the circumstances which inspired them:

Beeping Baby Shoes
My daughter is a veritable Houdini when it comes to removing her shoes. (Socks too, but those are cheap enough that I don't care so much.) Even when she is wearing this brand of elastic-topped leather bootie-like shoe that, besides being festooned with unbelievably cute apliques of ice cream cones, or puppy faces, or spouting whales and being crafted of butter-soft leather, is supposed to be IMPOSSIBLE for the kid to remove. But of course my daughter flicks them off her feet with abandon. And then strangers tap me on the shoulder and hand them back to me, making me feel both grateful and guilty for being such an unobservant mom.

So, I figured, how hard would it be to attach some sort of beeping device to each shoe that would activate when it hit the ground? You can buy greeting cards that sing Happy Birthday when you open them and magazine insert ads sometimes beep or play tinny little tunes, so how expensive would it be to produce a kids' shoe that alerted a parent when little Katie or Connor's shoe hit the mall floor in front of the Cinnibun stand? I figure I'll be a millionaire by the time my baby hits preschool.


Bubble machine
This one is another sure winner. You know how babies all love bubbles? How about a cry-activated bubble machine that attaches to the crib? Baby wakes up crying at 5:47 and you want to sleep until the sun comes up? Bubbles ON! Baby happily watches them and drifts back to sleep...

Breast milk filter
Decent ideas, no? They come to me all the time. I had another one since I started this post and it involves a Brita-like filtration system for breast milk. Since the stuff is worth more than gold to those of us who get performance anxiety when faced with the pump, how bad do you feel when you (and by you I mean me) have to dump a bottle after having a second glass of wine or puckeringly tasty margarita? I mean, I could stop drinking entirely, but motherhood's stressful.

So I made a few sketches, but they were on a cocktail napkin and I think I used it to wipe up a macerated cheerio on the bartop. (And yes, the baby has been to a bar. She sat in her infant seat and was rocked and fed and cooed over by our friendly neighborhood bartenders. We have anti-smoking laws, so it's not as tragic as it sounds.)

Anyway, the filters would attach to the breastpump. But now that I think of it, maybe we could also manufacture portable ones that would stick onto the nipple itself, like a pasty on a showgirl. But instead of a tassel, there would be a charcoal filtration system to remove impurities before they reached baby's little lips.

So what do you think? Anyone with a line on some venture capital?

Why don't people think?

So three people assumed she was a boy today. I never really minded the fairly frequent "how old is he?" comments that presumed gender on the basis of a blue or green stripe on what appeared to me to be fairly gender-neutral clothing. Likewise the "He's so cute!" that always went along with a particular turquoise t-shirt and yellow shorts ensemble I dressed her in on occasion.

But today had me baffled. Because she was wearing a navy onesie with a frilly, shirred collar trimmed in white, so you couldn't miss the little ruffles around her neck. And her pants, which may very well be the cutest garment EVER CREATED, were sherbet-hued with embroidered butterflies and flowers and pixies for all I know, little flared calf-length legs with a baby pink ribbon belt. They were so girly I never would have picked them out myself, but they were hand-me-downs I'd fallen in love with.

But these morons see blue, their brains seize up and they spout "does he sleep the night?" despite the fact that a baby Quentin Crisp would have rejected that particular outfit as too fey.

And yeah, they mean well. But why don't people think?

Baby Sounds

She's six months old now and babbling away. She does a lot of "bahbahbah" and "dadada" and luckily for my ego has recently added "mamama" to the repertoire. Its not like the dada stuff was directed at her dad or anything, nor does the mamama seem any more addressed to me than her toes, but still, I was starting to get a complex.

She also frequently shouts out to "Nginge!" (pronounced "ingingay" should you be interested in playing along at home...) We're not sure, but think she's supporting a largely unknown candidate for a Kenyan cabinet position. It definitely sounds like Swahili at any rate.

And when she's upset about some perceived slight, she makes a pathetic little whimper that sounds exactly like a sound Lassie used to make. I'm not talking about the sharp BARK BARK BARK Lassie employed when trying to impart the exact location of the well into which Timmy had clumsily fallen. Remember that one? Timmy's dad would listen for a few seconds and then say "What girl? You say Timmy and the Murphy girl are playing doctor in the O'Shaunessey's hayloft? And that Timmy's losing but doesn't seem too upset about it?" Not that hyperexpressive BARK. It's this other little whimpery noise -- a "hmmm, hmm, hmmmmmm" that the tot makes when angling for sympathy.

There's two of us now

It's now 2005. I haven't been on here in so, so long, but I have a very good excuse.

She's almost 5 months old and she's gumming her doorway jumper as I type. Anyway, I had a baby. There's no reasonable way to catch up with all I've missed reporting, so I decided to just stop procrastinating and return.

But I'd forgotten my password and ID name and so had to figure out how to get back on.

Oh, and now the baby's fussing. She does that...

...better go, but glad to be back.

I guess there aren't too many synonyms

Nursing the baby and Oprah came on featuring a baby born with a second head. Now this wasn't Maury. It was like Oprah suddenly changed format and became The Weekly World News. And of course since it was Oprah it was supposed to be a very empowering story about triumphing over adversity, but, oh, I don't know, maybe because Oprah said the phrase “parasitic head” 100 times in the first five minutes it took on the air of a very expensively produced freak show.

And Oprah just kept hammering that phrase: "parasitic head, parasitic head" as in "doctor, what did you feel when you first set eyes on the parasitic head?" or "did you ever, in your wildest dreams, imagine you'd give birth to a baby with a parasitic head?" Her writers could have given her some options, such as "secondary cranial appendage", "alternative face" or just called it "Claudine" for all we cared, just come up with some euphamisms so she didn't have to keep repeating "parasitic head" like she was trying to draw a croud on the midway.

What am I going to do?

December ^7th, 2004 25 weeks, 2 days

December 7^th is Pearl Harbor Day, “a day that will live in infamy” and also the day I found out the greedy ambulance-chasing law firm I thought was going to sue my former employers for firing my pregnant self was not, in fact, quite as greedy as I thought. They called to say they wouldn’t be taking the case! Actually, they left a message on my machine to that effect, which I thought was a pretty weasel-y thing to do.

So now I’ve been fired by both my bosses and my law firm. I called back to find out why they spurned me, expecting to learn that my case was too small-potatoes for them to trifle with, and they added insult to injury by telling me they’d determined I had no case. That I deserved to be fired, according to my former bosses, and that it had nothing to do with my condition.

“Well, OF COURSE they’d say that,” I patiently explained to the lawyer-drone I got on the phone, “that’s why you guys are supposed to tear their argument apart, do some lawyering, show them who they’re up against. They’d never get away with that kind of garbage on The Practice! Show some mettle; you guys are going to be advertising on subways next to Dr. Zizmor the ill-named dermatologist forever if you don’t learn to step up….”

And that’s when I found myself giving a pep-talk to a dial tone. The jerk hung up on me!

So I don’t know what to do. I’ll be OK for a while, but I have to get another job. I mean in addition to calling up my old corporate headquarters every fifteen minutes to call them spineless, backstabbing, baby-hating, devil spawn. And signing them up for subscriptions to The Watchtower and office visits from the Scientologists. And ordering them a dozen Bowflex machines to work off inevitable the weight-gain caused by being recent members of the fruit, organic goat cheese and smoked-meat of the month clubs.

These endeavors have been soul-satisfying, to be sure, but they don’t pay the Visa bill. And since it now seems unlikely that a seven-figure settlement check will be direct-deposited into my dwindling bank account in the near future, I’ve got to figure out what I’m going to do for work. That Olympic judge idea doesn’t seem to be panning out, and I don’t see any runway work on the horizon, given my current figure.

(OH!! I forgot to report on this little news flash: in addition to the whole ‘it’s Pearl Harbor Day and my greedy lawyers aren’t greedy enough’ debacle, today marks another low point for me: I am at a horrific state of equilibrium in which my 6 months swollen belly sticks out exactly as far as my giant pregobreasts. I’m glad I finally look pregnant and not just “damn, Marnie’s really packed on a ton”, but with breasts this frighteningly huge, I never thought I’d reach the point I’m at now.)

((And this isn’t any false-modest, I’m Gwyneth Paltrow and I look dewy and wonderful with my new pregnancy breasts in this month’s In Style magazine; these are enormous “old Russian lady with knee-high stockings rolled down to her ankles, pushing a shopping cart down the avenue” cantaloupe-sized, low-riders I’m sporting here.))

So I have to admit, my job prospects seem somewhat grim.

Got to think, got to think…

I wonder how one gets work as a voice for animated cartoon characters, because I bet I could do that. I mean I know they hire celebrities to do the big Disney movies, but what about the millions of cartoons on cable TV? Or maybe voice-overs for commercials? I could do that pregnant, so long as they taped them and I could take bathroom breaks. Does anyone out there have any connections in the voice-over or cartoon voice businesses?

Please let me know.

Or what would be even better is if I could invent some baby product or come up with some service or idea to sell. Like the baby-wipe warmer I saw the other day, or the rubber ducky that changed colors if the bathwater was hot enough to poach an infant. Just some hunk of plastic that would cost a nickel to manufacture and could make me millions AND make the world a safer and/or happier place for babies.

Like dog-walkers. Who had ever heard of dog-walkers ten years ago, and now they’re all over the place in Manhattan. Maybe I could spearhead a trend like that, and hire a legion of college students to do baby-walking, or baby-changing or something. Doulas are big right now, and I’d never even heard of them until a few months ago.

(They are like combination maternity coaches, midwives and cleaning women, from what I can tell. They advise you on breastfeeding, keep kids from contracting jaundice and will even move your car on alternate-side-of-the-week days.)

((But please, this is an uninformed opinion. If you or someone you love is a doula and I’ve grossly misrepresented the work you do, please take pity and let this one slide. I’m under a lot of stress, here.))

But this may be the answer – come up with a thing or an idea instead of getting an actual job.

Got to think, got to think…

Hey, whatever happened to wet-nurses? You used to hear about them all the time in Jane Austin novels and the like, but what about bringing them back? Maybe I could hire a corp of supermodels that belong to Mensa and charge covetous Manhattan moms a fortune for the chance to have little Madison nurse at their gravity-defying, formerly in Italian Vogue superbreasts…

Forgive me for my hasty exit, but I’ve got a business plan to start.

You know who you are

December 5^th, 2004 25 weeks, 0 days

I am crushingly, epically tired, but if I mention it to ‘friends’ or family, all I get is a lecture along the lines of “you think you’re tired now…” Well thanks for reminding me that things will get worse in the sleep-deprivation department; I really appreciate your bringing this up. Do you, by any chance, also have any “48 hours of labor” horror stories to impart or helpful anecdotes about your secretary’s sister’s brush with death courtesy of pre-ecclampsia? No? Well then maybe you’d like to show me your cesarian scar or describe your battle with a hemorrhoid the size of a turnip….

Because I have to say, you’re really not helping. Not with the “Worried? It’s after they’re born that you really start to worry…” and most especially not with the “You like the name Jade? Don’t you know that’s a stripper name?”

Now think a moment: I just said it was a name we were considering for our innocent, peachy, unborn baby, and you go and make an association to women who work on the pole. Do you think I think it’s a stripper name? Yet I’m supposed to find that comment constructive? It wouldn’t be so bad if I’d asked for your opinion, but to voluntarily cause me to associate strippers and my unborn daughter is really beyond the pale.

And you do know, when you volunteer criticism of the names we’re considering, that I run through my mental rolodex, call up the names of your progeny and pass a little judgment of my own, right? Along the lines of “She named her daughter Madison and I’m supposed to take her opinion to heart? Works fine for a college town, Manhattan thoroughfare or Square Garden, but for a second-grader? Maybe not so much.”

I read that last part over just now, and I have to say, I think I’m feeling a wee bit touchy, so I apologize. I get cranky when I’m tired. And despite the fact that I’m in the second trimester, the supposed “dream time” when I’m supposed to be filled with energy, euphoria and purpose, I still feel the same numbing fatigue I did during the first 14 weeks. I still feel nauseous some days and I still have to pee with metronomic regularity.

But there is a huge upside, and that is that I am finally starting to believe that this may actually happen. (Yeah, I did just knock on my wooden desk, but at least I’m able to say I feel less nervous.) I have had no medical reasons to think things wouldn’t work out, but given the fact that it was supposed to be more likely that I’d be knighted than pregnant, I know where the worry comes from.

And the fact that I’m 25 weeks into this and getting huge and looking at cribs and a contemplating the purchase of a frightening assortment of day-glow plastic and petal-hued terry-cloth items seems to indicate that at least part of me thinks this is actually going to happen. Wow. I mean I know sexually precocious 14 year olds and crack moms across the land give birth on a daily basis, but the fact that this might actually happen to me fills me with awe and gratitude.

So sure I complain about the fatigue and the nausea and the fact that I did a round of ‘female grooming’ by feel the other day because I couldn’t see past my stomach, but the big truth is I couldn’t be happier about this all. I just don’t want to sound too happy and cause something bad to happen by way of cosmic retribution.

I guess I’m just trying to lay a little low.

Stage 2: Trying not to go postal

December 2nd, 2004; 24 weeks, 4 days

All right, so I'm off the couch. I've moved past shock and am now firmly in my 'anger' phase. (A big shout out to Kubler-Ross) So now I’ve hired a lawyer who came highly recommended by the subway ad I read while returning from my prenatal yoga class, and the plan is to slap those morons with the biggest wrongful termination suit since Omorosa got kicked off The Apprentice.

And I’ve been taking deep, cleansing breaths between bouts of cursing and trying to figure out what I’m going to do for money as I enter this new chapter in my life……after all, this is an opportunity, not a setback!

Note to self: pick up a Learning Annex catalogue.

Question to research: how does one become an Olympic judge? Because this is something I could really see myself doing. I’d have a lot of time off, travel to exotic locales and meet male gymnasts. Surely some of them are straight….I would have to hide these peccadilloes from my Dear Husband, but aren’t indiscretions that take place on the other side of the international dateline considered free passes?

I rather enjoyed watching the trampoline-based events in this last Olympics and remembered wondering at the time how one became accredited to judge a ‘sport’ that didn’t actually exist. The judges all sat there, taking notes according to what one supposes were the ‘rules’ of the apparatus, but since the trampoline, unlike, say, the marathon, cannot trace its roots back to an ancient Greek practice, who can really say what they were doing. And if the field of applicants for trampolining judges is full, maybe I could get in on the forefront of some new exhibition sport…maybe freeze tag or nucumb. Or maybe Monkey-in-the-Middle, which I was always very good at, could be renamed the Synchronized 12-yard Dash or something.

There did seem to be a good many events added to that Olympics by virtue of their being made into synchronized competitions. Ask Trevor to petition the Olympic Committee to include Synchronized Beach Volleyball in their next foray…I could sell commemorative t-shirts and make a fortune. And if you’ll permit me a further mommy-brain digression, did anybody find watching beach volleyball rather like watching a David Hasselhoff-less version of Baywatch? Who designed those uniforms? You can’t tell me sand didn’t get under there with all the lunging and diving into sand those girls did. Trust me; a pregnant woman knows what she’s talking about when it comes to chafing.



December 5, 2004, 24 weeks 5 days

After a temporary, though short-lived, period of exultation following my untimely dismissal from my full-time job, reality struck me swiftly and hard. (Olympic judging? What was I, insane? Oh wait: stage 3 is denial, right? Maybe I'm just getting better.) While it was fun to ponder the various career options open to me, I am forced to face the painful fact that I am unemployed, 6 months pregnant and dangerously hormonal. These facts, coupled with the unfortunate truth that I have to take potty breaks roughly every 14 minutes, renders me something other than the ideal new-hire

So I’d like to make a radical suggestion. One of you should hire me. I’m smart, as you know from reading my column, I’m strong, as evidenced by the way I dispatched that belly-rubber in the Pathmark, and I’m able to learn from my mistakes. I can now freely admit that I may have over-reacted in both my violent treatment of the afore-mentioned belly-rubber and in my somewhat excessive maternity leave request to my previous employers.

Just give me the chance to show you what I can do.

DAMN IT

Some day at the end of November

I'm sorry its been so long since I wrote, but I've been in shock. I still can't believe it -- the bastards fired me!! I'll write again as soon as I can, but I'm going to go back to bed with Ben and Jerry right now.

Empty Sleeves for Arms

In addition to the sciatica and the inability to finish a multi-clause sentence without taking a bathroom break, I've developed a new symptom: dead arms. Now, my shoulders have been aching for weeks and I haven't complained. They hurt because I've been forced by the the pregnancy police to sleep on my side. (Wait, don't arrest me...I meant my left side.) But today I woke up and my arms were numb. I figured they were asleep (But both? What was I, doing barrel rolls?) but they are still tingly and numb. They're not quite dead, but feel worse than with your standard-issue pins and needles.

You know what it looks like when you slip a jacket over your shoulders, but don't put your arms into the sleeves? So when you make a turn to your right, the sleeves swing around after you and slap ineffectually at your back? Well that's what it feels like, walking around with pregnancy-induced dead arms.

The Baby's in their Court

So I just faxed my proposed maternity leave over to my bosses. I compromised and asked for something between what I’d get in a small West-African nation and in Scandinavia. I requested 20 weeks off, with pay and a weekly Swedish massage, which seemed reasonable to me, especially after I learned that in Canada, not only can you take a year off, but the government sends a Lapp teenager around to your house every other week to prepare you well-balanced meals and shovel your driveway.

Maternity Leave

I’m home doing a little research before presenting my bosses with my proposal for maternity leave. The company is so new that I’m the first person to get knocked up and need to address the issue. The last place I worked, all you got was an office baby shower, a turtle cheesecake from The Cheesecake Factory and a termination notice.

(Turtle cheesecake was to die for.)

((While you’re eating it, it almost compensates for the company’s lack of actual maternity leave. Of course the next day you’re up 2 pounds and jobless.))

Where was I? Oh yes; did you know that The United States is the only country in the Americas to pay women 0% of their wages during maternity leave? And that we also have the shortest leave duration? We are the maternal-leave misers of the free world; we are the temporal equivalent of that restaurant in the old Woody Allen joke with terrible food ‘and such small portions’. This really infuriates me; for such a so-called progressive nation we offer a leave package only marginally better than that of Papua New Guinea.

(Mothers in Papua New Guinea get 6 weeks, unpaid, to our 12. However, that nation is the #2 ‘Most Murderous’ in the world, having the second-highest murder rate per capita. Therefore, they are operating under a population deficit and are under considerable pressure to return people to the workforce as soon as possible. As such, our maternity leave policy still rates as one of the worst in the world. It is exactly the same policy the working mothers of Lesotho get.)

((Now before I get letters I want to be perfectly clear: I am proud to be an American and there are a myriad reasons why I would rather live here than in Lesotho, not the least of which is the fact that one cannot procure Stoneyfield Farms non-fat yogurt in Apricot Mango at ANY of the finer food shops in Lesotho. I know -- I googled it. Although there is a convenience store in Thaba-Tseka that says they’ll order it for me if I can wait 6 months.))

So I really love it here in America, but was startled to learn how badly we stack up against other countries in this respect. For instance, if I lived in Sweden, I’d not only be entitled to 96 weeks of maternity leave and get most of my salary throughout, but I’d bet I could get cute IKEA baby furniture without paying exorbitant shipping charges.

(Yup, my assistant Trevor just googled them and found I could get an adorable Blǚurka dresser and Stoole changing table shipped to my home for only 11 krona. Then again, I don’t know the exchange rate….Trevor?....so this may not be that much of a deal.)

The Belly-rubber must die

11/17/04: 22 weeks, 3 days

Today I experienced a first: a woman in the supermarket tried to rub my belly.

I was waiting in line and reading about Reese Witherspoon’s annoying supermom-ish abilities in my favorite tabloid when she tried to cut in front of me (the stranger, not Reese Witherspoon)to purchase a bag of celery and a Lean Cuisine. Now this pissed me off for 2 reasons:
1) there is no emergency situation which would necessitate the purchase of a bag of celery and
2) I’m a pregnant woman who cannot spare her the extra minutes at this juncture because

I HAVE TO PEE.

If you need more convincing that this woman was taking up room on the planet that could be put to better use, here’s a bonus reason: she bought a stupid 3-point Lean Cuisine. For those who have never been on Weight Watchers, a 3-point Lean Cuisine has the lowest possible calorie total of any of the frozen boxed concoctions and pretty much consists of 3 BandAid-sized strips of compressed chicken thigh meat with faux-grill marks laid over a colorful, though flavorless mélange of frozen vegetables.

As compared to say a 5 or 6 point box, which although containing an equally hamster-sized portion, might actually be fortified by the decadent addition of overcooked pasta or non-fat cheese-food.

OK, so back to the check-out line. I told the woman, ever-so-gently, that I was a pregnant lady in need of a comfort station and that if she tried to cut in front of me I would not be accountable for what I did with the plastic grocery divider wand I was now brandishing like a light saber.

Somehow, she managed to reach out and rub my stomach without being hit by the grocery divider, but once I looked down to see her manicured nails caressing my bump through my Target maternity top (Liz Lange, stylish and reasonably priced) I think I blacked out.

I remember only the sharp sound of contact as I brought the plastic saber down on her skull.

I came to in the manager’s office, or rather, his wood-paneled cube on stilts. I cunningly got him to leave me alone for a moment by asking if I could lie down on the floor and practice my kegel exercises. Once I explained the concept, he could not have disappeared faster had a transporter room been involved.

It’s a lesson to be remembered: mention your ‘pelvic floor’ or the pithy phrase ‘clench the muscles you’d use to stop the flow of urine’ and you can instantly create a bubble of privacy.

Once alone, I got up and watched through the two-way mirror on the wall until the manager drifted away towards some shelf-stocking crisis or another and I made my hasty escape.

I am embarrased to say I don't know what happened to the woman. She very well may be dead, although I would like to point out that she does bear some responsibilty for the fate that befell her. Suffice it to say that there are a lot of hormones waging war in a pregnant woman's body, and they may seize control at any moment.

If you must approach us, use caution. So now you've been warned.