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  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Preface

  The Fourth Trimester (0 to 3 Months)

  The Fifth Trimester (3 to 6 Months)

  The Sixth Trimester (6 to 9 Months)

  The Seventh Trimester (9 to 12 Months)

  The Eighth Trimester (12 to 15 Months)

  The Ninth Trimester (15 to 18 Months)

  The Tenth Trimester (18 to 21 Months)

  The Eleventh Trimester (21 to 24 Months)

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Praise for Knocked Up

  Copyright

  For Susan, Glenda, and Rowan Joely

  Preface

  Here’s the thing: you could say I didn’t exactly enjoy being pregnant.

  I woke up, knocked up, just over a year ago. It had been the first, and only, time the Fiancé had…you know…in me.

  We had been at our engagement party, not even thinking about the possibility of one day becoming parents. Life, it turns out, doesn’t happen when you’re busy making other plans. Life, apparently, is what happens when there’s an open bar. That’s what happened to us anyway.

  After way too many cosmopolitans, me stupidly (but passionately) calling out, “Just cum in me!” and the idiot Fiancé actually listening (in his defense, he was drunk too), our engagement party turned out to be our “conception party.” Four home pregnancy tests—or was it five?—and one blood test later, the Fear that I was pregnant was a reality.

  I was knocked up, not married, and not even living in the same city as the Fiancé. But I convinced myself, and the Fiancé, that having a baby was not going to change our lives. Not. One. Little. Bit.

  Yes, I had to change cities, leave my friends and family, and, for the first time, actually live under the same roof as the Fiancé. But I could handle all that. Surely life with a baby would be easier than being pregnant!

  I was not good at being pregnant. By the end of my third trimester, I had gained forty-seven pounds (almost half my body weight), walked like a penguin, had wrist fat, couldn’t see my cheekbones, and was wearing red slippers in public and asking the Fiancé, “Is my ass fat?” three times a day. (Okay, three times an hour.)

  But I had survived being unexpectedly expecting. I remember being pretty damn positive that once this thing came out, I would get my old life back. I would party with friends again. I would get back to the career I loved, writing at the newspaper. And I would lose the baby weight as quickly as Heidi Klum lost hers, and maybe even faster.

  But, somehow, it didn’t happen.

  I went from being knocked up straight to being, well, knocked down. I’m a friggin’ idiot for thinking my life would ever be the same. It’s not entirely my fault for being so naïve.

  How was I to know that pregnancy would be a ninety-minute massage compared with life now?

  No one warned me I’d be so wiped. No one warned me about a lot of things. Why didn’t anyone warn me?

  Ten Mommy Moments People “Forget” to Mention

  1. You will feel like a walking, talking zombie.

  2. You will obsess about the baby weight gain, which is not coming off.

  3. After the flurry of congratulations, you will realize it’s not “all about me anymore.” It’s all about the baby.

  4. The father of your baby will annoy you.

  5. Your in-laws will annoy you.

  6. From the moment you bring baby home, all conversations will be only about baby.

  7. Newborns are cute, but they are boring too.

  8. You will find yourself aimlessly walking the streets almost daily.

  9. You will say your baby is sick, even though she is fine, when you want to cancel plans.

  10. If you have a boy, he will be mistaken for a girl. If you have a girl, she will be mistaken for a boy.

  Present day…or is it night?

  Sometime, somewhere, some year

  “OH SHIT!”

  The pain hits, without warning, as if someone has just thrown a brick at my face. I fall to the floor. “Shit!” I cry out again, blinking back tears.

  “What? What is it? What happened?” the Fiancé asks in a loud whisper, after racing in to find me rocking back and forth, groaning, on the floor, in a ball.

  “Shit! Shit! Shit!” I shriek. I’m seeing stars and fighting the urge to pee, which is always what happens when I hurt myself. What the hell just happened to me? What the hell did I just do? Where the hell am I? Who the hell am I? Shit!

  “Shhh!” the Fiancé demands. He doesn’t sound as compassionate as he should, especially upon finding me, supposedly the love of his life, writhing in pain on the floor. “You have to be quiet! What happened?” he asks, hovering over me.

  Is it just me, or does he sound incredibly annoyed? As if I wanted this to happen! What had happened?

  I lift my head and see the red digits on the alarm clock. It’s 3:37 A.M. “Turn on the light! Just turn on the light!” I say, not even attempting to keep my voice down. Now I’m the one who sounds irritated.

  He flicks on the switch. Right. I’m in our bedroom. Right. I haven’t been to sleep yet. Right. I haven’t slept a full eight hours in weeks. I touch my nose and feel wetness. I look at my hands. They’re covered in blood.

  “I think I just broke my nose!” I cry, letting the tears fall.

  “What the hell happened?” he asks, looking at the blood pouring out of me like my nose is a tap. My entire face is pounding. I have a sudden migraine. I’m sweating. Even my teeth hurt. I think I might very well be one second away from throwing up.

  I’m now in full-fledged sob mode. I manage to stutter, “I, uh, walked, uh, right into the, uh, wall! I, uh, think my nose, is, uh, broken!”

  “Oh God! Oh God! How did that happen? Okay, I’m going to get you some ice and a towel. But please, try to be quiet! You have to be quiet!” He still sounds annoyed. His tone infuriates me. I didn’t mean for this to happen! I fight the impulse to tell him to go screw himself. He’s not the one who’s bleeding! He’s not the one who just broke his nose! He’s not the one who just walked smack into a wall! He has no idea how much pain I’m in.

  I know he’s right though. I have to calm down. I have to be quiet. I pick myself up off the floor and wobble back into our king-size bed, trembling and sobbing like a baby. Of course I know now that babies don’t exactly sob. No, “sob” is definitely not the right word. Babies scream bloody murder, for hours, and for no reason. Whoever came up with the phrase “sobbing like a baby” apparently never had a baby, and certainly never lived with a newborn, like we do, in a two-bedroom condominium.

  4:00 A.M.

  I’m lying in bed with a bag of frozen peas on my face and two pieces of tissue stuck up my nose. I wonder where the Fiancé found the bag of frozen peas, since I don’t recall us ever eating frozen peas. Then I remember that I feel like I’m dying. I kind of wish I were dead. Why we have frozen peas in our freezer is the least of my worries.

  “At least she’s finally asleep,” the Fiancé grumbles, climbing back into bed beside me. “I thought she’d never shut up. I can’t believe I have to get up and go to work in two hours!”

  I’ve always pitied the Fiancé, not only because he’s a corporate lawyer but also because he has to wake up at such ungodly hours to do whatever it is he does all day being a corporate lawyer. I should say something sympathetic to him right now like “I know, sweetie, I know. I feel for you.” But I’m too tired, and in too much pain, to feel sympathy for anyone other than myself. I’m the one so exhausted I just walked directly into a friggin’ wall!

  The Fiancé did, to his credit, halfheartedly suggest we go to the emergency room. I declined. “I’m too tired. I’m just so tired,” I said. Plus, the baby was finally as
leep. After four hours of nonstop crying, the baby was asleep. Not even to find out if I had a broken nose, not even if I was having a heart attack, not even if Johnny Depp called and asked me to come over to his place, would I dare go anywhere if it meant possibly waking the baby.

  It was my fault I may have just given myself the nose job I’ve always thought I might like to have. I had been trying to get the baby to fall asleep for what seemed like six months. I couldn’t take it anymore. I had called out to the Fiancé, who was in bed, “Can you come in here? Please?”

  I knew he hadn’t fallen asleep yet either. There was no way. A fire alarm was a more soothing sound than this baby’s wails.

  “I can’t take it anymore. I just can’t! I might hurt her if you don’t take over now!” I had told him. It was the first time I had actually thought about dumping the baby into her crib, putting a pillow over my face to drown out her cries, and giving up. I had tried everything to get her to fall asleep. I’d run tap water. I’d put her in her car seat. I’d rocked her. I’d sung to her. I’d put her in the swing. I’d walked around with her. I’d changed her. I’d fed her. I’d burped her. I’d put her in her bassinet. I’d done everything I could think of.

  But every time I thought, “This is it. She’s finally down! God doesn’t hate me after all!” and attempted to tiptoe out of her room, she’d start wailing all over again. I honestly felt that if the Fiancé didn’t take over, I might injure the baby. At least I knew enough to know that I had had enough. I didn’t really want to harm the baby. I just wanted her to shut up, shut up, shut up!

  When the Fiancé came into the baby’s room, I handed her over and headed back to our bedroom. That’s when I walked straight into the wall. Fuck.

  “It’s so rewarding, isn’t it?” the Fiancé asks as I rearrange the bag of peas on my pounding face. I’m too tired to even attempt a smile. In fact, I don’t think it’s funny at all. How is it all those parents had told me when I was pregnant that having a baby would be “so rewarding”? Liars, all of them. Did their babies not make them want to run away from home and check in to the Four Seasons for a week? Or was it just this baby? Or was it just me? At what point would having a baby become “so rewarding”?

  8:20 A.M.

  I’m awake. I think.

  For the past few weeks, I’ve constantly felt half-asleep, or is it half-awake? I haven’t been optimistic lately, so I choose half-asleep. I cannot tell you what day of the week it is, although I do know it is a weekday. I know this because the Fiancé is not beside me, which means he’s left for work. Pre-baby—was it only five weeks ago?—the Fiancé would have kissed me good-bye on my forehead before leaving and told me he loved me. That was when he liked me though. He’s been in a less-than-cheerful mood since I came home from the hospital…with the baby. He’s been downright grumpy. I hear the clatter of dishes in the kitchen.

  Nanny Mimi must be cleaning up our dishes from dinner last night. What did the Fiancé and I even eat for dinner last night? Did we eat? I have no idea. I hear no sounds from the baby’s room, which means she’s gloriously still asleep. I manage to force myself out of bed and head directly to the place I’ve gone first thing every morning since the baby came home.

  No, I don’t go check on the baby, which is probably what I should want to do. I head immediately to our washroom, where I look in the large mirror over the sink and lift my shirt while sucking in my gut. Phew. My stomach is going down. There is a God!

  My favorite part of waking up each morning is looking at my stomach to check on its progress. Because I had a C-section, I’m not supposed to work out for six weeks. I now think not being able to work out for six weeks is a definite argument against having a planned C-section.

  Sure, a planned C-section meant it only took twenty minutes for my baby to come into this world. Yes, I felt as elated as any mother who went through natural birth when I saw my daughter for the first time. Sure, I knew exactly when she was arriving, so I could prepare the baby’s room and make sure my mother was in town for the big day. Sure, I actually chose to have the baby cut out of me because the only other way the baby could come out of me made me hyperventilate at the very thought.

  But my best mother friend, Ronnie, who has given birth to three children, said she was back on the treadmill a week after each birth. I’m regretting not having had natural birth, only because I’d like to get on a treadmill and walk the fat right off of my ass. Every time I moan, “I just want to work out already!” the Fiancé tells me that not working out for six weeks, in the big picture, is not a big deal. He hasn’t gained forty-seven pounds in nine months! How can he possibly understand what it feels like to look at your body and not recognize it?

  Don’t get me wrong—I’m not some fanatic workout freak. I hate working out. But even more than I hate working out, I hate how when I lie down my ass feels like its own entity. My ass fat spreads out beside me, taking up half the bed.

  When I was pregnant, one of my mother friends told me that my ass would “never be the same again” after having a baby. I laughed then. As if!

  But I’m not laughing now. I hate how I still look six months pregnant, even when I wear a baggy sweatshirt. Except now the skin around my stomach isn’t tight like it was while I was pregnant. My stomach is simply a blob of mushy, droopy flesh, like a three-day-old helium balloon.

  I’ve seen photographs of me holding the baby, taken during the first couple of weeks after she was born. They’re not pretty. I mean, I’m not pretty. I’ve debated cutting myself out of the photos because the sight of my bloated stomach is not something I want to be reminded of. Ever. I also hate that I’ve lived in sweatpants and extra-large T-shirts for almost an entire year now.

  And I really hate it when people tell me, “Well, it took nine months to put the weight on, so it will take nine months to come off.” I just want to tell them to shut up.

  Ronnie had a horrible thing happen to her once. She was picking up child number one at school and another parent asked her when she was due. The problem was, Ronnie wasn’t pregnant. She had given birth three weeks earlier. You always hear these stories, and you’d like to believe they’re just myths. They’re not. It happens.

  At least that hasn’t happened to me. Yet. Of course, I’ve barely left the house since giving birth, and when I do leave, I make sure the baby is with me, so people know that I just gave birth and that’s why I’m fat.

  There’s no way it’s going to take me nine months to get all this weight off. My glee in looking at my slowly deflating stomach immediately vanishes when I see my face, something I’ve tried to avoid doing for the past few weeks.

  Even after getting out of the shower, washing my face, or brushing my teeth, I make sure to avert my eyes from mirrors. I’ve learned that no good comes from looking at my reflection. The dark bags under my eyes depress the hell out of me and make me look how I feel—haggard. Haggard at age thirty-one.

  This morning I catch a glimpse. (Okay, I always catch a glimpse. It’s so hard not to look in mirrors!) I see two black eyes. Fuck! The wall. Right. I had walked into a wall only five hours ago. My nose, aside from being swollen, doesn’t look crooked. I’m sure it’s not broken. But it could have been! How is it possible that I haven’t had a drink in months, yet I still look worse than I ever did hungover, after a long night of partying?

  Who am I? How did I get here? What has happened to my life? This is not my life.

  8:30 A.M.

  I suppose I should go say good morning to Nanny Mimi and check on the baby. My heart pounds. I’m still not used to these two new humans in my condo. Every morning I wake up feeling like it’s final-exam day, something I just have to face, get through, and that there’s a good chance I could fail miserably. The baby makes me nervous. The nanny makes me nervous. I’m always nervous.

  I remember first coming home from the hospital to see Nanny Mimi waiting for us in our condo, her arms wide open to hold the baby for the first time. I remember thinking how cute it w
as that this nanny was wearing overalls and had her hair in two ponytails. I remember thinking how skinny Nanny Mimi was too, and that kind of made me hate her immediately.

  It was always our plan that we would have a nanny, mostly because neither the Fiancé nor I had any clue what to do with a baby, and we still wanted to have lives. Even my own mother, who raised four kids without any help, suggested I get a nanny. It hadn’t disturbed me that everyone seemed so worried about me finding help once I gave birth.

  The fact was, I was worried too. I knew I needed help. I’m not beyond asking for help. For the first couple of weeks, having Nanny Mimi in our two-bedroom condo was exactly like having a stranger in our two-bedroom condo. Mostly I tried to hide, which, as you can imagine, is kind of hard to do in a two-bedroom condo.

  When Nanny Mimi was in the kitchen, I’d go into the living room. If she was in the living room, I’d head to my bedroom.

  Granted, I am recovering from the C-section—a major operation, as I keep reminding the Fiancé when I am too lazy to fetch myself a Diet Coke—but mostly I have no idea how to interact with this woman, who is my—gaa!—employee. I am her boss!

  I have never been a boss. I’ve only had bosses. I don’t know how to be a boss. I only know the thoughts I’ve had about some of my bosses, and they aren’t exactly kind thoughts. I certainly don’t want Nanny Mimi thinking bitchy things about me and complaining about me to her friends, like I complain about my bosses to my friends.

  Making conversation with Nanny Mimi is like being on the longest, most uncomfortable blind date in the world. Except this blind date begins every morning and lasts eight hours, five days a week.

  “Hi, how are you?” I always ask when she arrives.

  “Fine. How are you?” she says politely.

  “Fine.”

  Uncomfortable silence.

  “So, did she sleep last night?” Nanny Mimi asks.

  “Not really.”

  “Oh. Well, she’s a baby,” Nanny Mimi says.