Read Online Exploiting My Baby by Teresa Strasser - Free Book Online

bit pregnant,” a sonogram image of my fetus at eight weeks is not compelling to anyone else. Like the dried-out ballpoint pen, melted ChapStick and expired insurance cards also rattling around in my glove box, its usefulness has passed.
    The likelihood of miscarrying seems smaller now that I’ve seen the fetus, and I’m increasingly anxious to tell. Mostly, I want to tell the listeners of the radio show, who have been with me through Billy, the guy who met the love of his life when I declared us “on a three-month break”; Anton, the guy I met on MySpace and almost married in Vegas on our first date before I sobered up; and countless other dating misadventures, not to mention the blaring sound of a clock ticking that our sound effects guy, Bald Bryan, had been playing for years whenever I discussed my personal life. The morning show is going off the air, because the station is flipping from talk to Top 40. After almost three years, I just want this one moment with the anonymous masses who have traveled with me. I want it though it isn’t prudent; I want to tell though I know there is no way to un-tell a couple of million people, what with the show going off the air and all. I would wait the entire twelve weeks, but I can’t because the end is nigh and 97.1 FM will not be a place for anecdotes, but instead for a steady dose of Taylor Swift and Lady Gaga.
    Our last day is a Friday, a month before I’m officially out of pregatory. I still have no idea whether I’m going to say anything on the air. As always, Adam Carolla throws it to me to do the news. I hear my news music through my headphones (or “cans,” as I like to say to act like I know what I’m doing) and I have no idea what I’m going to do. There is a pause while I grip a stack of the day’s news in my sweaty hands.
    “The lead story today ... I’m pregnant.”
    Adam is so touched, he has his assistant Jay run into the studio and hug me.
    I get my dramatic moment, lots of callers congratulating me, and coworkers running in to squeeze me and mistake my estrogen surge for a “glow.”
    Though I’ve now spilled the beans to a couple million listeners, I don’t call my mom. I sometimes think she will call me, when she hears it through the grapevine or reads it online, but I know that comes from the fantasy place of the little girl who thinks her mom will do lots of things she won’t—pick her up from school when it’s raining, smile at her when she enters a room, tape her lousy drawings to the refrigerator, be able to name her elementary school teacher.
    Now, if my uterus plays its cards right, I’m going to be someone’s mom, and the only good thing about this rising level of concern for my baby is that it proves I’m already attached. My constant worry is like a friend whispering in my ear, or perhaps posting a note on my esophagus written in stomach acid and bile, saying, “You will not be your mother.” You will fuck it up in your own way, but not in hers.

five
    I’ll Miss You, Toxins
     
     
     
    E ven someone like me who isn’t particularly good with babies, who looks at them and says things like, “Hey, buddy. Look at your little face,” before resorting to a flaccid round of peek-a-boo and then running out of material, even I endeavor to err on the side of caution when it comes to chemicals. After years of wondering if I’m cut out to be a mother, I’m relieved to find that the instinct to protect this fetus is so strong, or at least the image of me smoking a Camel while balancing a tumbler of Jameson on my bulging stomach is so distasteful, that I figure all of my favorite chemicals can wait.
    And I really love chemicals.
    Being pregnant makes me feel toward booze and Xanax and Retin-A the way Emily from Our Town felt about food, hot baths and milk delivered to your door. She didn’t appreciate the simple things in life until she returned as a ghost to Grover’s Corners, relived one day as her twelve-year-old self, and asked