Geez, Meredith.

"So," I said to my playgroup yesterday. "The hot mommy topic this week is cocktail playdates." I got blank looks in response.

"Moms are getting together and having a glass of wine in the afternoon while their kids play," I explained. "The Today Show did a feature on it and made it into this big controversy."

"Oh, I saw that," my friend Dina said. "I don't really understand what's controversial about it. I mean, it's one glass of wine, right?"

"How is that different from having a glass of wine with dinner?" another mom asked. "Or a beer at the circus?"

"Or for that matter, a beer at Chuck E. Cheese?" I added. We laughed and agreed the whole thing was a non-issue. All of us knew some moms who might have a glass of wine with friends and some who might not, but we didn't know anyone who'd care what others did either way. It's just another media-generated battle pitting mommy against mommy and frankly, I'm getting tired of it.

Particularly now that Meredith Vieira is involved.

I always liked her on The View. She was smart and pretty, opinionated and informed. Honestly, the Meredith I saw on TV back in the View days would've been the perfect mom to kick back and have a cocktail with while the kids played; we could talk about everything from the spread of AIDS in Africa to the odd glut of nude Jude Law pictures on the Internet.

Besides, she had co-founded ClubMom. That meant she had to know about the online revolution that was taking place on the websites and blogs of mothers around the world- She must've realized that women were quietly and persistently revolting against the pressure society and corporate media put on moms to be perfect housekeeping, wage-earning, childrearing drones, all with boringly similar goals and agendas (1. Make sure Bobby and Susie test into the gifted program! 2. Earn enough per year to keep the kids in private school! 3. Get whites whiter and brights brighter!). After all, ClubMom had hired some of the most original, no-holds-barred mommybloggers out there to write for its website, moms I tend to think would be first in line for the bottle (behind me, anyway) at any given cocktail playdate.

That's why I was pretty damned irritated to watch Meredith Vieira attempt to rip Melissa Summers of Suburban Bliss a new one in a Today show segment on cocktail playdates.

It all went downhill from the moment she opened the segment by spitting out, "It has got everyone... buzzing." The reporter piece that followed contained soundbites from moms that screamed taken out of context! to the television journalist in me. And after that piece, Meredith's frowning and hostile line of questioning to Melissa in the studio left no doubt that she was supposed to be the bad guy in this conversation.

"You use these cocktail parties sometimes to weed out certain moms?"

"How would you feel if it were a bunch of babysitters sitting around with alcohol? Would that be acceptable? What's the difference?"

All I could think was that Meredith somehow believed she'd score points with ClubMom advertisers by pursing her lips and shaking her head at the obvious lush in front of her. How dare Melissa have a glass of wine in front of her children? How dare she?

The concern, according to Today's online story, was that a child at one of these playdates might get hurt and need to go to the hospital. Who would drive? the article wonders. The moms, I suppose, would be so wasted on their one glass of wine that they would all be passed out in the sandbox, unable to get behind the wheel.

Oh girl, please.

Meredith, I realize that we could all take a lesson from you in mothering- Most of us couldn't host Today and Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, write a blog for iVillage and run ClubMom, all while still spending plenty of quality time with our kids. I have no doubt you spend many wonderful hours interacting with your children every single day- or at least, your babysitter does, which is basically the same thing, right?

But the last thing we need is your judgment, particularly when it seems to have come straight out of Leave It to Beaver. I suggest you read some of your ClubMom bloggers' uncensored personal blogs (you know, the ones where they're allowed to curse) to find out what's really on our minds.

Because Poo Poo Has Feelings, Too.

Baby is sitting on her big girl potty, straining with all her might.

"Come out, poo poo!" she commands threateningly.

"Oh no!" she responds in a squeaky voice. "Baby poo poo is afraid of falling!"

"No, iss okay!" she says reassuringly.

"Baby poo poo wants its mommy!" she squeaks back.

"Baby poo poo will be so happy in the potty," I reassure my little Sybil. "That's where Baby Poo Poo wants to go." I can't help feeling very strange. I mean I never imagined I'd establish dialogue with, you know, poo poo.

"Baby poo poo is so scared!" Baby says mournfully.

Frantically, I start thumbing through my toddler manuals. Where are the sections on what to do when your child's poo poo develops a personality? How could the child psychologists have overlooked this obvious potential landmine?

Finding nothing, I decide to treat Baby Poo Poo like any other imaginary friend. As far as I'm concerned, it doesn't exist. I set no extra place for dear Poo Poo at the dinner table, leave no seat cleared for him in the car. And for a while it seems to work. BPP isn't mentioned again.

Until this morning.

"Mommy, we don't love pee pee and we don't love poo poo," Baby reported while I fixed her hair.

"That's right," I said, "We don't. We want them to go away and get in the potty."

"Oh no!" she cried, wounded. "You hurt Poo Poo's feelings!"

"What the..." I said, before stopping myself. "But we don't love Poo Poo."

"Baby Poo Poo's nice," she said defensively. "An' he's so sad now."

I stared at her dumbly.

I hurt my daughter's poo poo's feelings.

Isn't this supposed to be the part where they come and take me away?

Atkins Fatkins

When I learned I was pregnant for a second time, I knew that one of the most difficult hurdles to cross would be the dreaded Third Trimester.

It's a special rite of passage for all moms-to-be, a time to get up close and personal with the Great Big Pimple-Assed Ugly that lurks deep inside all of us. I don't care how petitely pregnant you are, how perfectly toned your arms and legs, or what a cute little shape your butt has stayed up to your eighth month of baby incubation. By the Third Trimester, not only will you- all of you- swell up like a bag of microwave popcorn, but you'll likely sprout a double chin and a sprinkling of belly hair to boot. Ask anyone who's birthed a baby- That's just The Way It Is.

Why else do you think that every last picture from my inaugural Third Trimester is securely stashed in a double-locked box that's buried in concrete ten feet below the house? There are some things the world just doesn't need to see, including but not limited to all visual memories of the two-hour mingle-of-shame in which I let my mom convince me to wear her clothes to my baby shower (leaving my friends, many of whom I hadn't seen in months, to deduce that pregnancy had transformed me from Queen of the Minidress to Rue McClanahan's extraordinarily bloated Number One Fan).

Fortunately, once Baby arrived, the weight came off fairly quickly. Moving on to fetus number two, when the eighth month approached and I noticed my ankles begin to inflate, my face plumpen and my ass spread, I remained unflappable.

"Two more months and I'll be on my way back to normal," I told myself. "Just avoid all mirrors and everything will be fine."

But then something happened. Something truly horrible.

"I'm going on the Atkins diet," Hubs announced last week with an infuriating smirk on his face.

"Yeah, right!" I laughed, my double chins shaking with merriment.

"I am," he insisted. "I'm going on the Atkins diet. Starting tomorrow."

Outwardly, I remained silent. But inside, my inner banshee took over.

Could his timing BE any worse?! The man hasn't gone on a diet in a good two years- So he decides to do it NOW?! Now that I'm growing at the same rate as Posh Beckham's CREDIT CARD BILL?! I'll bet he wants to lose weight just so he'll look even thinner beside his freaking Supersized Wife!

Whatever, I told myself. He can diet all he wants. We just won't talk about it.

Ha. The diet soon became the only topic of conversation in this house.

"Unbelievable. I've only been on this diet one day and I've already lost a pound!"

"I feel so great right now, like I've really got my weight loss momentum going again!"

"You can tell I lost weight, can't you?"

"At this rate, I can lose 15 pounds and be back where I was when we married!"

"This diet is really easy! I gorged last night on sausage! Gorged!"

"I just weighed myself again and I haven't lost anything. I'm really down."

"You can't really tell I've lost any weight, can you? Or can you?"

"I'm going to go to the gym five nights a week from now on!"

"I just weighed myself 30 minutes after the last time I weighed myself and I'm back down another half pound! Can you believe it?"

Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes, honey. I can believe it. You're on a diet. Woo de fucking hoo. Let me just put down my Ben and Jerry's and get the girls to roll me over on the sofa so I can hear you better.

Toward the beginning, I gently mentioned to Hubs that while I was of course totally supportive of his weight loss efforts, perhaps we could limit diet talk to, oh, about 70% of our conversation, as opposed to the current 100%. After all, I explained kindly, it's hard to get excited about his amazing new diet and how great it's making him look-- while at the same time personally fielding such remarks as, "Boy you are really going to have a hamburger there, aren't you?!" from his best friend when he laid his eyes on my belly last week (I don't know what that meant, either, but it couldn't have been good).

But honestly? I think Hubs's ear canals are so stopped up right now with Atkins-approved congealed bacon grease and his brain synapses so clogged by carb counting that there's no room for anything else in there but jargon culled from repeated readings of the Atkins Diet Handbook.

Now, a week later, he's nine pounds lighter. Helpless with rage and indigestion, I lie beached in a maternity mumu, plotting my future revenge.

I'll wait 'til he gains all the weight back! And then I'll lose all my baby weight in like, a month! Like Katie Holmes! And I'll wear a BIKINI to the YMCA pool at the same time that he's gasping away on the treadmill and I'll splash around in front of everyone from our neighborhood! He'll be SO MAD! And I'll be so... THIN!

And I'll have to get all new clothes, because nothing I own will fit me anymore! And I'll get, um, hair extensions, even though I don't need them! Because that's what you do when you're thin, you get hair extensions! And an orange spray-on tan! And he'll be SO MAD! And I'll be SO THIN! And so ORANGE!

Yep, in just a few months, things are going to be very different around here... He'll be sorry he ever messed with eight-months-pregnant-me.

Best. Hate Mail. Ever.

In this week's Nashville Scene:

Why is it that your reporter Lindsay Ferrier always uses poor language in her “reporting.” There is no need for phrases like “What. The hell. Happened.” (Suburban Turmoil, June 8)—which is not punctuated correctly—or last week’s “cheap-ass” comment (Suburban Turmoil, Jan. 11). I wonder: have you lost advertising with this? Your publication has certainly lost class with this.

I was a reporter for years, a columnist too, and I never used such unprofessional language. There was no need and I am too classy to do so. I find her offensive and ignorant, and find you even more so for paying her. Maybe that is what you are wanting—a Howard Stern, if you will. Well, my wine tastes do not like your stale, cheap-beer reporter/ing and lack of respectable copy-editing. I look forward to your next trashy article from Ms. Ferrier, as my cat needs something to catch his urinated litter granules as he exits his cat box, or, as Ms. Ferrier would call it, his shitter.

-Henrietta Percy

Whoa. What is it with me pissing off little old ladies? And why are they reading the Scene, anyway? Is there a Little Old Lady Scene Demo that I wasn't told about? Ironically, this issue also featured a headline on the cover about my reporter husband, which blared, Among [convicted murderer] Perry March's last words to Dennis Ferrier: 'Eat shit and die.'

We like to keep it in the family, Henrietta.

One of you reader types e-mailed me the other day, asking how I handle the mean comments and e-mails. I wrote back that it was pretty easy, because I've yet to receive a venomous e-mail or comment that didn't sound like it came from a complete weirdo. I actually appreciate it when someone writes to me and politely disagrees with what I've written. I have nothing but respect for different opinions and perspectives. But when someone calls me names for daring to say that I didn't fit in to their playgroup, for example, or for questioning whether or not to circumcise my son, I just have to laugh. Because really, that kind of behavior is ridiculous and pathetic, isn't it?

And beyond that, when I take into account all the e-mails and comments I receive, the mean ones are so few and far between, they're hardly worth noticing... unless they're very funny and cleverly crafted, a la Henrietta Percy (I don't believe this is her real name, by the way, so don't get miffed over me "outing" her to the world). I have you guys to thank for that. You've been kind, most of you, even when I let my sick kid sit on the well side of the doctor's office... even when I didn't return my library books on time. Thank you for that.

Anyway, with Henrietta in mind, I present to you this week's installment of the Nashville Scene edition of Suburban Turmoil. In it, you will find the words penis, jackass, and Carrie Underwood. You've been warned.

The Winners!

Ladies and... Ladies, we have our winners.

The Funniest Pregnancy Story Award goes to....

Nancy! (Entrant #13)

And the Worst Pregnancy Story Award goes to...

Minnesota Mom! (Entrant #30)

Hearty congratulations to both of you! You will each be receiving a set of personalized stationery from Lauren Goessling Designs, a blog makeover by Shaz and a winning blog button for your sidebar from MommaK. I am sending your e-mail addresses to our sponsors and you should be hearing from them shortly.

Thank you all so much for participating. Let me say that I've had three more migraines in the past two days (one is going on right now, actually) , all with scary accompaniments... everything from the aforementioneld "temporary brain damage" to tingly extremities to spots in front of my eyes to losing the feeling in my tongue.

I would be feeling really sorry for myself right now if it weren't for you guys. Every time a migraine strikes, I think about your stories- and how much worse I could have it- and I stay (well, mostly) calm and upbeat about the whole thing. You did that for me! And from what I hear, your stories are doing the same thing for others out there, too. Thanks again for sharing. You're all extraordinary!

VOTE HERE!

It's time for a vote!

Choose your picks for the a)Most Horrifying Pregnancy Story and the b) funniest pregnancy story and put your vote in the comments of this post. To vote you must have either a registered Blogger account or leave a valid e-mail address. I have numbered the finalists' stories, to make it easier for you to leave your selections.

Voting will take place all day Thursday, until my um, bedtime (let's say around 10pm, CST), at which time I'll turn off the comments. I'll announce the winners on Friday morning.

Each winner will receive her own cool blog button, made by MommaK, her choice of a 25-card stationery set from Lauren Goessling Designs, and a blog/site/e-store makeover from reader Shaz. Thanks, ladies!

And now, without further adieu, the finalists:

1. During my third pregnancy I had an ongoing yeast infection for the entire third trimester.
The only thing that made it manageable was to eat three cartons of yogurt a day. The doctor thought that as long as I was in a "holding pattern" she didn't want to medicate me.
Good days, I tell you... -Gretchen

2. Well...I discovered I suffer from a VERY rare thing called ICP (Intrahepatic Cholestasis of Pregnancy, occurs in 0.5% of pregnancies). Basically, bile doesn't get secreted from the liver and backs up which results in lots of crazy things, but mainly itchy skin in the 3rd Trimester. And not just skin itching from streaching. ALL your skin itching so so SO bad with nothing that works to stop it. I still have scars on my feet from where I scratched them in my sleep and they'd start bleeding. -Tina

3. I couldn't go without peeing every 15 minutes. And if I did, I wet myself a little. And I got a horrid chafing rash from pantyhose, so I walked with even more of a waddle than normal, and then got a horrid yeast infection. And I wore the pantyhose because I was told it would help with the awful swelling in my legs. -Interstellar Lass

4. I don't even need to have smelled a particular smell before: just imagining what it might smell like is enough to make me gag hard enough to not only pee my pants and/or throw up. -Mamaloo

5. I threw up in the grocery store and probably scared a little boy into being permanently freaked out by pregnant women (projectile vomit. Always a crowd pleaser.) -Woman with Kids

6. Three weeks before giving birth to my second child, I got a terrible sunburn on my shins at the beach. The agony of the sunburn was compounded by the pregnancy-induced swelling of my legs and feet. I seriously felt like my legs had been doused in lighter fluid and set aflame.
A happy camper, I was not. -Kelly

7. A delivery doctor... dropped my baby on his head. The baby was not even ten seconds old. Baby comes out, baby gets dropped. course it did make for a cool birth video. -Bluepaintred

8. Anyway, my horror story - bulging blue grape like veins coming out of my, my well, my vagina! Hideous. I did like you and freaked, but the Midwife said "oh, that's normal". Seems like anything is "normal" with pregnancy. They did go away when baby was born. I called it my "bearded clam stuffed with grapes" condition. Hubby was horrified. -Vic

9. During my second pregnancy, at week 20 my baby was diagnosed with Trisomy 18, a rare and most often life-threatening type of dna-disease and I was told to come to the hospital in order to terminate the pregnancy (without actually asking me, but that is a different story). On the day, I checked into this hospital, the doctor took a look at my papers and told me to do a second round of examination, just to "make sure" the baby is indeed with Trisomy 18. Guess what? According to their data, he concluded that it is most likely that the baby should be perfectly healthy. And indeed after being very nervous for the rest of my pregnancy, I delived a perfectly healthy girl! -WeinKata

10. My OB/GYN delivered her in the morning. Lost his medical license that afternoon because of negligence. Not me, but many others. -Lisa

11. I was 17. -Annie

12. My left leg would suddenly go totally numb and give out.. no particular reason. Id be walking or just standing still and suddenly I was on the floor. It happend almost every day. It was like I was some wierd push button donkey. -Michele

13. I was sitting on the pot in my third trimester with this big old uterus resting on my upper thighs. I saw a bit of lint or something on the floor and reached down to pick it up.
*POP* ScReAM!!!!
I broke my zyphoid process....for freakin'real. It is that little wiggly, dangly portion at the end of your sternum, at the bottom of your rib cage...the part of the body that can be broken during CPR if not careful. However, NO ONE warned me you can break your own if you have a really large uterus and you pound it into the top of your equally large late-pregnancy fat thighs while taking a constipated dump!
I felt like I had been stabbed and could not straighten up. So, I sat there on the pot, barely able to reach around to give a courtesy flush before screaming for the hubs to come rescue me.
I told my doc about it who totally blew me off with "you can't break those like that!" (Duh, I am a nurse and I KNOW you can...and I DID!)
Fast forward to delivery and skipping the whole horror that was my labor. When the kid with the watermelon sized head was finally out, the doc looks over my blue paper draped knees and sees my zyphoid process pointing all wonky toward my right leg. He said, "Hum, I guess maybe you DID break it after all."
Then he reached up and POPPED that sucker back into place! If I could have gotten my fat legs off those stirrups, he would have gotten a round house kick to the head he would never have forgotten!
Annnnnd, I had to suffer the embarassment of the snickers and whispers from almost the enire hospital staff (I was an ER/OR nurse there at the time) when they HAD to come see my self-inflicted, almost-episiotomy.
It happened like this:
I roll my fat blob self out of a water bed (??!!) on the morning of delivery with the tremendous urge to pee YET AGAIN..only to discover it was my water breaking...so I take a shower to get all April fresh or whatever...step out to dry myself off, swipe "down there" as best I could...what with a 400 pound baby inside me and a broken zyphoid process and all. I feel a searing pain...and draw back a bloody towel and figure I had just given birth but can't find the baby.
Nah, it seems I had given an extra vigorous drying to "sensitive tissues" with a towel that an errant sewing needle had nested into during the wash....and I ripped that sucker right thru the you-know-what!
Yeah, that one was good for a few Nurse Lounge laughs.
But I got revenge on all of them cause I had diarrhea with every labor pain and they had to take care of that. So there. -Nancy

14. My husband and I were living in Peru when I got pregnant. We decided to just have the baby down there because, after all, people have babies everyday in Peru, right? It was almost 15 years ago, but I will never forget it.
At that time, Peru was dominated by a great deal of terrorism. The terrorists blew things up all the time and tried to control the city. They would announce certain calendar dates and say that anyone on the streets was fair game. So often, the police would put up road blocks on these days. I was close to my due date and they announced another day. I was certain that I would go into labor and not be able to get to the hospital, or worse yet, my doctor who was the only doctor in Lima that I trusted would not be able to get there. So, I convinced my doctor to induce me. Yes, I was induced because of terrorist activity. Besides this, there was an earthquake while I was in the hospital and the terrorist bombed some of the utility services, leaving me without water to shower for 3 days after giving birth. Didn't feel that pretty for a while. --The Everyday Mom

15. I'm a cyclist, and like runners, we have naturally, ahem, limber pelvic bones.
Which explains how I got knocked up three weeks after a knee surgery that left me in a thigh to ankle cast.
Aaaanyhow, the downer is that when I hit mid-second trimester where the pelvis starts to open up a bit, my hip and pelvic bones popped in and out of place with every, single step I took for 12 weeks. I spent the last 8 on crutches.
Step, pop, grind, pulled-muscle feeling in my hip and crotch, then pop again. Repeat for next step. And then repeat for each step for 12 weeks. -Mir

16. I sleepwalk. Only during pregnancy though. The one I still get laughed at for was the one where I was convinced that an ice cream truck had gone down our street with it's music blaring at 4 am. With about 5 patrol cars chasing after it, sirens blaring. I even heard my husband talking to his boss about it on the phone in the living room. When I finally got up to see what was going on, the house was completely dark and quiet. My husband asked me what I was doing and when I asked what happened to the ice cream truck and the police? I thought he'd have me comitted. -Mrs. X

17. I was home from work one afternoon for lunch just relaxing on the couch with my feet up. Suddenly my crotch was completely soaked. Thinking crap, my water just broke, I immediately called my doctor as I was not due for another two weeks. She has me come to her office to check me and give me orders to take to the hospital. I get to the doctor and she does this nifty little test that confirms that NO my water did not break, the baby must have just kicked my bladder and I peed on myself. It was fun having to explain that to everyone. -Jennifer

18. We stayed in the hospital the requisite 24 hours, as this was during the drive-thru labor days, and then got tossed. But my cardiologist and OB didn't want to release me because I wasn't doing too well. My insurance refused to pay for one more night, and wanted me to send A home alone. Without me. Um... nope, not gonna happen. My OB ended up paying for an extra night for me out of her own pocket. What a peach she was. They sent B home a few days later at exactly 4 lbs. She was so small that nobody wanted to hold her. It was ridiculous, but that was the policy in those days. It has since changed to 5 lbs. She had also had a brain bleed and was jaundiced. B was too small and weak to nurse, and the nightmare continued. It was really disasterous to have her come home that early and she's still reaping the consequences of terrible insurance and bad hospital policy. -Margalit

19. I'm one of those people who didn't know she was pregnant until she got to the hospital. I went to prom 3 days before she was born in a size 8 dress. First, I went into labor on the bus. My boyfriend took me home and when my mom got there, he left for his Boy Scout meeting. (go ahead, laugh I know you want to ). We get to the hospital and they ask if I might be pregnant, and since I hadn't had my period in a while, I said I guess. So, they slap a fetal monitor on my and you guessed it, a heartbeat. Then came the words "Emergency C-section". When I wake up I have a 3 pound 12 ounce beautiful little girl. She is 3 weeks overdue and fully developed just underweight. I found out I have a small wall in my uterus that kept her to one side and only allowed her to grow so much. I also had toxima and was extremely anemic. I had to have a blood transfusion and magnesium IV, and almost died twice once when I was in labor and once when my Blood pressure sky rocketed because of the toxima. I got to go home 6 days later. My daughter is an extremely intelligent 8 year old and perfectly happy. -MGal

20. When my first son was 23 weeks along we had an ultrasound and his heartbeat dropped to 20 bpm during the time that we were doing the ultrasound. Low low low. It stayed there for a little bit, and then rose back up slowly. Immediately I was put on HIGH RISK alert and the OB told me that she wanted to give me a steroid shot in case of emergency cesarean (AT 24 WEEKS!) because my uterus didn't seem to be a safe place for my baby. I had to come in every other day for monitoring and I lived an hour away. The nurses would just leave me in the room with the monitor, as I had to chase the little fish baby around my uterus with the monitor thingy, they're so small then, they are hard to get. I felt like my baby's life depended on me getting a good reading, so it was a lot of pressure for a first time mommy.
Finally, after three weeks of this, the OB decided to send me down to UCSF so that the baby could have an echocardiagram, in utero. The first thing the specialist told me was that she saw this sort of thing once a week! She said the technicians push down too hard with their instruments on the little squishy baby and it cuts off the baby's circulation.
They almost gave me a c-section at 24 weeks (only 50% chance of survival) because the technician had cut off my perfectly healthy baby boy's circulation.
I went back to the OB with that information and she said, "Well, I think we could *consider* taking the high risk label off of this pregnancy.
I switched hospitals. -Rae

21. During pregnancy I develop a immune reaction clotting process. I need twice daily blood thinners in the behind. Already not fun. At 22 weeks I also got cholestasis(the devil itch). I spent 10 weeks in hospital, away from my then 18 month old.
At 34 weeks I was induced, I suffered a 23 hr 50 min drug-free(not by choice) labour, to give birth to a yellow baby-bird like creature. She shared my room for two weeks with her blue strobe-like biliblanket. She's now 6, bright and beautiful. -Lili

22. I had pre eclampsia, gestational diabetes, pancreatitis and gall stones!!! -Toni

23. Um, my liver failed. Do I win? -Lena

24. I actually got kidney stones during my second trimester. Sorry guys, pushing a baby out is much harder than pushing those little suckers out! -Hissyfitz

25. During my 3rd trimester with my third baby I had my gall bladder go out on me. I was dealing with gall bladder attacks that I thought was heart attacks to start with. So till she was born I had attacks about every other day and they did a c-section because I was wiped out! 6 months later I got it removed. It took so long because it was bedly infected and they had to wait. Just to let you know, nursing at the same time you have a gall bladder attack is the most horrific thing. -keltybug

26. I got pregnant with twins on our 7th IVF. I started bleeding at 5 weeks. They never could figure out why, but every time I was sent to the hospital and was told I was losing the pregnancy. This went on weekly until week 14. At week 16 we were in for our amnio when I was told that I was in labor, losing both babies, and needed a cerclage ASAP. I was nearly 3cm dialated and fully effaced at this point. I was put into the hospital that same day and was to receive a rescue cerclage. During the spinal they kept missing and hitting a nerve instead. It took 8 sticks into my spine to get the thing done. At that time, I was put on strict bedrest. I could shower twice a week and go to the doctor. Otherwise I had to lay flat on my back. 3 weeks before my daughters were born, my best friend of 35 years died of breast cancer. I couldn't travel for the funeral. I went into labor at 34 weeks, 5 days. I was 8 cm dialated when my blood pressure bottomed out and the babies heart rates dropped to the low 30's. I lost consciousness and woke up as they were cutting me for the c-section. I also had gestational diabetes... and lost my gall bladder because of my pregnancy. -BSumner

27. I had kidney stones and Gestational diabetes. I was in the hospital for a month away from my 1 year old. Then when I went to deliver by c-section they had to put me to sleep. -Amanda

28. With my third, I had a uterine infection which made every move I made excruciatingly painful. Even breathing brought me to tears. After admiting me to the hospital, they hooked me and my unborn daughter up to 10 different iv's/ monitors/ oxygen/ and who knows what else. She came out when I coughed, the doctor missed it, and the nurse was screaming for him to "get the hell in here... this baby is out!". My little girl was in the NICU for 5 days hooked up to tubes and wires. She acquired the infection that I had and I was sent home. Leaving her at the hospital was worse than the pain of getting her here. -Picklemomof4

29. At 35 weeks, we discovered the baby was growing too big, too fast. No I did not have gestational diabetes. At 38 weeks, we induced. The epidural was put in place. And did not work. The anesthesologist did not believe me. My OB came in and judging from the finger nail marks in her hand, she did believe me. She asked the lady (let's call her B for bitch) to do the epidural again. B refused, and said "it will just take a little bit to work." So I delivered a 10 lb 3 oz baby with no pain med. I pushed her out when I was only at 8 cm dialated so my cervix prolapsed. My OB had to hold the cervix open. Good times. -CPA Mom

30. What I thought would be a routine appointment turned into a nightmare. Dr. XXX called me into the exam room for my appointment, he did the normal stuff, blood pressure, listen to my heart, and then said he was concerned with tightness in my belly and some discharge. He performed an exam and said I would be admitted immediately to the hospital. He said I was fully effaced, dilated to 3 centimeters and baby was breech. I was having contractions and he could feel the feet of our baby. After being admitted, more ultra sounds were performed. The doctor said he was sending a minister up to see us. He said we were having a boy and probably our son would be born that evening and the chances of survival were slim due to his size (11 oz.). I remember the shock of all this news. It all happed so fast. Being admitted and then the start of the evil drug, magnesium sulfate. I was swollen from head to toe from this drug. My eyes swelled shut, my fingers were the size of bananas, and my face the size of an over inflated balloon. My skin was as red as tomatoes and hot. My husband said it was so hot to the touch that it felt like a severe sunburn. My hospital bed was tipped to try and drop the baby back into me. I had no clue as to what day it was or how many days had passed. After I had been in for 4 days, completely unaware of anything my contractions had stopped.
I gave my son 41 more days in utero. Each passing day was a blessing giving him one more day to grow. Our son was born at 27 weeks weighing 3 lbs. -Minnesota Mom

31. My labor was progressing very slowly, so much so that my epidural was wearing off. They started to re-dose and I started having shooting pains up my spine. They might as well have been shooting acid into my body. The pain was worse than any labor pain I ever experienced and it never went away. I laid in the fetal position, grasping the rail of the bed because now I could also very much feeling the labor pains, since they couldn't give me the full dose -- labor pains, plus shooting back pain, not my idea of a good time. When it was time to push, I was so exhausted and my back pains kept me from being able to sit up. I literally didn't have it in me to push.
13 hours of labor turns into a C-section... and the story continues. The regional anesthetic didn't take. They kept poking me with what felt like a thumb tack, asking if I could feel it. Yes... I can feel it. "Do you feel it less here?" Yes... but I still FEEL it... please don't cut me open yet! I had to be put under, hubbz couldn't be in the OR and I slept through The Boy's first hour and a half of life. -Jill

Good luck, everyone!

An Award for Your Suffering! Nifty! *Updated with Another Prize and Lots More Stories!!*

Boy, some of you out there made my pregnancy brain damage look like child's play. I had no idea so many things could go wrong during pregnancy. Really, how do we survive it at all?

I couldn't let these great comments go to waste... So in honor of today's Oscar nominations, I'm nominating my favorite pregnancy horror story comments for a special award- The Pregnancy Horror Story Award! Winners will be awarded in two categories- Most Horrifiying Pregnancy Story and Funniest Pregnancy Story. Each will receive a cool little blog button (i.e., badge of honor) made by my friend MommaK, and your choice of a 25-card stationery set from Lauren Goessling Designs! Thanks, Lauren! You're awesome and so is your stationery- I was looking at it last week!
Also, the estimable Shaz is donating a blog/site/e-store facelift for both of our winners! Thanks, Shaz!

If you'd like to add another prize for the two winners in exchange for a mention, e-mail me at lucindathemom@yahoo.com. If you'd like to enter your own pregnancy story, do so in the comments of this post no later than 10:00pm CST on Wednesday. I'll put all my favorites in a new post at that point, and you can vote on your two favorites (funniest and most horrifiying) in the comments of that post all day on Thursday. The only requirement to vote is that you must either be registered with Blogger or give me a valid e-mail address.

The Mind Boggles

How do I love thee, third trimester? Let me count the ways.

Sciatica. Swollen ankles. Backache. Fatigue. Chocolate cravings. Weight gain. Sore boobs. Unquenchable thirst. Indigestion. Insomnia. Impatience. The feeling that my pelvis is about to split open. Swollen feet. Hoarseness. Ligament pain. Loose joints. Frequent kicks to the ribcage. French fry cravings. Feeling like the baby might fall out if I don't keep my legs crossed. Hormone-fueled anxiety. Shortness of breath. And worst of all?

Brain damage.

Well, technically, it's called an ocular migraine, but it seriously feels like brain damage. It all started during my last pregnancy, when I noticed a tingling and numbness running from the left side of my face down my left arm. Shortly after that, I couldn't see straight ahead and had to rely on my peripheral vision for about 15 minutes. Since I was writing a TV show at the time, I figured it was carpal tunnel, at least until a few weeks later, when I woke up and couldn't talk.

I mean, words came out, but they didn't make any sense. "I don't know what's wrong with me," I tried to tell my husband. But what I said was, "The chair is over two interrupt," or something like that.

We did what anyone would do- We freaked the hell out and called every doctor we could think of. Because clearly, this was the end for me, and I wouldn't even get to tell everyone goodbye; I'd only be able to say, "Tree farm." While we were waiting for calls back, Hubs rang up my dad, who's an eye doctor, expecting him to scream at us to call an ambulance, for heaven's sake. (I had resisted the emergency room option by shaking my head and saying, "Wicker basket!" repeatedly.) Instead, Dad maintained an admirable calm.

"It sounds like the onset of an ocular migraine," he said. "It should go away in a few minutes, but she'll probably have a horrible headache for the rest of the day."

He was right. Within a few minutes, I could talk again and within another hour, I had a crushing migraine headache. Later, I remembered that my OB had told me that if I already had migraines (and I do, although they're generally very minor), pregnancy would likely either make them much better or much worse. Sure enough, when I had my baby a few months later, the migraines went away.

Fortunately, this pregnancy, it looked like I was going to be migraine-free. At least until two weeks ago.

I woke up at about 6am and realized in a stupor that something was off. It felt like my brain had short circuited. "Oh shit," I thought, before going back to sleep. An hour later, I woke up with a migraine. Going downstairs, I attempted to make 13 a sandwich for her lunch but felt like I was moving through a fog. When Hubs saw me, he knew immediately what the problem was.

The fog cleared and I did okay for most of the day, but by the time Hubs got home from work, I'd had it. I went upstairs with the worst headache of my life and slept for 14 hours. It took a full three days for the migraine to go away completely.

"Why didn't you call my office?" my OB asked when I told her that the migraines had returned. "I could've written you a prescription."

"The stuff you gave me the last time didn't work," I said.

"Well this will," she said grimly, writing on her notepad and handing me a slip of paper.

I looked down at it. Whoa. "Is this safe to take while I'm pregnant?"

"Well, I wouldn't want you to take it every day," she said, "but it's fine on the rare occasion that you have a migraine."

So now, I have the option of either enduring the splitting headache or sitting around like a drooling, drugged idiot. I think you know what I chose when I got another migraine last week.

Of course, pregnancy woes are a common topic of conversation among new moms and I've tried a few times to commiserate with my own problems. It doesn't go over so well.

"I had the worst hemmorhoids of my life," one mom will say, blushing.

"Well, my ankles swelled up like elephant legs," another will admit.

"Oh my gosh, I woke up one morning and couldn't read or type or say anything!" I'll gush. Silence.

"I've never heard of that," someone will say finally.

So come on. I'm begging you. Top my third trimester brain damage with a horror story of your own.

Please?

Awkward Moment of the Day

Me: I have got to get a haircut.

Her: You know, you really should cut it off and donate it to Locks of Love.

(Silence as everyone looks at me expectantly)...

Me: Oh no, I'm too selfish. Heh.

(More silence).

Me: I mean, they made me cut it off for news and then it took me forever to grow it out and I swore then that I... um. So, it was great seeing you all again!

(Did I mention she has long hair, too?)

-fin-

Down the Rat Hole

Chuck E. Cheese.

The name alone is enough to strike fear and loathing in the hearts of parents everywhere. As if cramming a pizza place chock full of coin-eating video games and crappy rides weren’t bad enough, putting a rodent in charge of the whole shebang is just plain disgusting. The health department doesn’t allow mouse droppings in restaurant kitchens… Why on earth is it letting one greet diners at the front door?

With that in mind, I resolved when Baby was still in utero that she would never see the inside of what might be the world’s second-most-famous rat hole (the first being, of course, Disneyland). But before I realized what was happening, the damned rat had somehow gnawed his way onto PBS, following up every airing of Clifford, The Big Red Dog with a five-second lure that seemed designed specifically for my daughter.

“Chugga Cheezes. Chugga Cheezes. Chugga Cheezes,” she began chanting after a few viewings of the dirty vermin

“You don’t say that, Baby!” I shrieked, rushing over to turn off the television. “Those are bad, bad words!”

Chugga Cheezes. Chugga Cheezes! CHUGGA CHEEZES!” She laughed uproariously as I glowered at her.

“That doesn’t surprise me,” tsked one of my mom friends after I sadly told her of Baby’s latest obsession. “I’ve always said Chuck E. Cheese’s is a gateway to gambling.”

“What?” I said disbelievingly.

“The tokens. The tickets that you trade in for toys. The stage shows.” She counted each offense off on her fingers. “The Rivergate Chuck E. Cheese’s doesn’t even have windows, so you won’t realize that you’ve been playing Spider Squash for four straight hours!”

It was even worse than I had thought. I realized then that as a mom, I was duty-bound to penetrate Chuck E. Cheese’s sordid lair and investigate this so-called kiddie casino for myself. My daughter’s future depended on it.

And so last Tuesday, Baby and I agreed to meet two moms and their band of toddlers at Chuck’s place. But before we could get past the joint’s velvet plastic rope, we had to schmooze with the bouncer, known in Chuck E. Cheese parlance as a Staff Cast Member.

“Welcome to Chuck E. Cheese’s!” she said in a tired singsong voice, stamping our hands. “This stamp will help us make sure that if you come in together, you leave together.”

“Darn,” I laughed. “There go my plans to unload this brat on someone else!”

The woman stared, openmouthed. I cleared my throat and went on inside.

While Baby squirmed with excitement, I bought some tokens, dumped them in a token cup, and entered the game area. Looking down at my daughter, I noticed with horror that already there were dollar signs where her pupils had once been. She ran toward the machines and flashing lights with open arms, choosing a dinky merry-go-round as her first target. Effortlessly, she learned how to put the tokens in the slot by herself and within a few minutes had learned a new mantra.

“More to-kens! More to-kens! More to-kens!”

Clearly, the child was well on the way to earning her seat at Gamblers Anonymous.

After exhausting every ride option on the floor, we visited the games section and tried out a few, which mostly consisted of me playing the game and Baby greedily grabbing the tickets that spewed out of the machine at the end. Unfortunately, Chugga Cheezes had instituted a no-violent-games policy, which sucked because I had really been hoping to give Baby some target practice on Area 51. Stifling a yawn, I led her over to the stage and saw something that will likely haunt my dreams forever.

In a DJ booth beside the stage, a six-foot-tall animatronic Chuck E. Cheese was crooning UB40’s version of “The Way You Do the Things You Do.” On a dozen television screens positioned around him, some sort of creature with a gigantic plastic chef’s head strutted down a runway to the beat of the music. I covered my ears and began to tremble before remembering that I had always turned down acid in high school. Breathing a sigh of relief, I grabbed Baby’s hand before any more damage could be done to her developing neural tubes and led her quickly to the “pizza” that had arrived at our table.

From what I could glean, the finishing process on a Chugga Cheese pizza involved running over it in a flatbed truck. The moms and I eyed the two-dimensional pie warily before divvying it up for the toddlers. I handed a piece to Baby, waiting for a horrified wail, but to my surprise she grinned wildly and began gobbling. Three pieces later, I had to place myself between her and the pizza in order to save some for the rest of the crowd.

Her eyes glassy, Baby sat back, burped, and resumed muttering, “More to-kens. More to-kens,” through a pizza sauce-ringed mouth. Oh sweet, merciful heavens. My precious child had been Chugga Cheesified. And it was all my fault.

Noting my horrified expression, my friend smiled grimly. “Gateway. To. Gambling,” she said, folding her arms. I stood up shakily.

“I guess we’ve gotta go,” I whispered hoarsely. Baby made a few weak cries of protest, but she was too far gone to put up much of a struggle. By the time I strapped her into her car seat, she had fallen into a stupor and would end up sleeping six hours before waking in her crib and demanding another round of Skee-Ball. It would take months of Dr. Phil episodes before things were truly back to normal.

And so, parents, I urge you to do whatever it takes to avoid the lair of the pizza rat. No good can come from that place, unless you manage to score the 500 tickets necessary for a lava lamp. And even then, is a tacky lamp really worth the brainwashing of your precious peanut?

Don’t answer that.

Bug Bites

"Mommy!" Baby whined, running into the room and clutching her bare chest in mock discomfort. (This is, by the way, Hey-I-can-take-off-my-shirt-by-myself! Whenever-I-Want! week.) "I have bug bites! I want them off!"

"Baby, those aren't bug bites," I said, laughing. "They're nipples and everyone has them. Mommy has them, Daddy has them, and your sisters have them."

"Mommy, you have bug bites too?"

"Yes," I said. She didn't look convinced. Oh geez. "Would you like to see them?"

"Yes."

We were home alone, so, what could I do? I showed her my bug bites.

"Maybe Daddy can show me his bug bites when he get home from work!" Baby said gleefully after seeing the evidence.

"I'm sure he'll be happy to," I said. Heh.

I sort of hoped that Baby would've forgotten about the bug bites by dinner, but of course, Baby doesn't forget anything.

"I have bug bites," she announced importantly, looking around the table as we began eating. "Daddy, will you show me your bug bites?"

I had told him the whole story on the phone, so he knew exactly what she was talking about. Obligingly, Hubs unbuttoned his shirt as the girls groaned in protest.

Baby looked over his bug bites, then checked inside her own shirt before looking at her sister.

"16, will you show me your bug bites?"

"NO!" 16 screeched.

She looked at her other sister. "13, will you show me your bug bites?"

"Um, anyway," 13 said, tossing her hair and rolling her eyes.

Teens and toddlers in the same house. Now that's entertainment.

The Golden Globes: A Recap

Nicolette Sheridan managed to keep her legs together last night by simply tying a bit of rope around them.

Poor Rachel Weisz admitted that she spent so much money on her dress, she had no money for jewelry, a hairstylist, or even shampoo.

When luggage containing his Golden Globes tuxedo was lost en route to LA, the clever P. Puffy Diddy Daddy improvised using a needle, thread, and his hotel bedspread.

The Trumps' demeanor begged the question, Who farted?

Just a few feet away stood their answer.

The hair, the dress, the lipstick... All served as a painful reminder that breaking up is indeed hard to do.

Beyonce announced that she's signed on to host a new spin-off television show, called What Not to Wear, and How Not to Stand if You Wear It.

In homage to her hit show, Desperate Housewife Teri Hatcher brought her trashman as her date.

Madame Tussaud's loaned out two of its most popular wax figures for the evening.

Photos courtesy Yahoo.com

Changing Times

One of the most memorable interviews I did as a television reporter was in Columbia, South Carolina, when I spoke with a man who had worked closely with Martin Luther King, Jr. in the 50s and 60s.

At his house, we sat for a long time looking at newspaper clippings and pictures of various demonstrations against segregation that he'd helped organize as a young man. I was about 23 at the time and felt more like a student than a reporter as I looked at the photographs of sit-ins outside the state park and in the downtown area, Whites Only signs outside bathrooms and buildings and angry sneers on the faces of the city's white residents as they confronted their Black neighbors.

"You know," I said, looking up at him, "I have to say I'm dumbfounded looking at this. I feel bad, but I can't even imagine living in a place where this was allowed to happen."

"Don't feel bad," he said, smiling. "My grandchildren say the very same thing when they look at these pictures." Tears formed in his eyes as he continued talking. "And to be honest, hearing your generation say that makes me feel like we accomplished so much during that time. What more could I ask for, than to have my grandchildren look at pictures of segregation and say, 'I just can't relate to that?"

Oh, I'm under no illusions that racism is a thing of the past, believe me. But that conversation had a profound impact on me in terms of realizing the degree of change during the Civil Rights Movement. Even now, I see far less racial prejudice among my stepdaughters' generation than there was among mine at their age. The further removed we are from segregation and outright prejudice, the less sense it makes. When I told the girls several months ago that some adults are still really opposed to their children dating someone of a different race, they were literally flabbergasted.

"Why on earth would that matter to anyone?" they asked, genuinely surprised. I couldn't believe that in the short period of time (15 years) between my adolescence and theirs, interracial teen relationships were no longer a topic of gossip or discussion among their schoolmates, even in the fairly conservative, Bible Belt area in which we live.

I seriously wonder whether racism will ever be entirely eliminated; I think humans have a natural fear and mistrust for those who aren't "like them," whether the difference lies in their age, their gender, their religious beliefs or their skin color. But I think this day is a good one to celebrate how far we've come as a society in 40 short years, and how much further we can take it in the decades to come.

The Final Word. For Now.

Just as I was getting totally fed up with this circumcision debate-turned-trainwreck (which I'm still undecided about, by the way- I really need to talk to my OB next, whom I trust and adore), Annie went and cracked me up. No matter what side of the debate you're on, I hope you have enough of a sense of humor to laugh at her "Daily Prayer":

Jesus was circumcised.
Neener, neener, weener!

It's Just Sick.

I really hate going to the pediatrician's office.

The waiting room is stocked with a filthy plastic kitchen, a grungy plastic slide and a whole bunch of developmental thingamabobs that look like they haven't seen so much as a Clorox wipe in years. Occasionally in the summertime when the office is practically empty, I'll let Baby play with the "toys," making sure afterward to liberally douse her with antibacterial gel. But when it gets cold outside?

Forget it.

"I want to play!" Baby will whine, staring wistfully from my lap at the other (green snot-nosed, phlegm-flinging) kids clamoring around the germ-laden playsets.

"No," I say firmly, clutching her by the elbows and feeling like a jerk. After a few rounds of try-to-keep-the-baby-on-my-lap last year, I finally resorted to waiting to feed her until we got to the doctor's office, then keeping her securely in my clutches by plying her with peanut butter sandwich halves and fruit snacks.

The thing is, I shouldn't have to resort to such chicanery. There's a walled-off section of the waiting room that's just for sick patients. A walled-off section that's always empty, except for the poor schmuck daddy who got roped into taking his three-year-old in for her ear infection, not realizing that it's just not cool to take your kid to the sick side, even if she's come down with the bubonic plague.

I glare at the moms casually flipping through Parent Magazine on the well side, the ones whose kids are running to them every 15 seconds demanding a tissue or a baby aspirin, the ones who really couldn't care less if every other kid in the place comes down with their brat's conjunctivitis or flu bug. I glared especially the other day at the super skinny mom who sauntered in and flung down her Louis Vuitton before carefully sitting down beside me on her Ralph Lauren-clad butt and stretching out her legs to expose a pricey pair of European-styled leather boots. Her two uniformed children stood solemnly before Baby and me. They wanted to know Baby's name and age.

After I told them, the girl gave Baby a big hug, then pointed at her punky-looking little brother, who was absentmindedly fingering one of the waiting room toys. "This is Ethan. He's five. We think he has a stomach virus."

"Hmm," I said. "We've got to go now." I picked up Baby and moved her to the other side of the room, where I gave the kids' mom a look that I hoped said, Eat rotovirus and die.

"Can you even believe it?!" I asked Hubs later. "There she sat, letting puke boy touch everything and everyone! I mean, she had a lot of nerve."

"Did you say something to her?" Hubs asked incredulously. "Did you tell her to go sit on the sick side?"

"Well," I hedged. "No."

"Why not?"

I sighed. "Because Baby was there for a stomach virus, too."

Baby Brains

I wrote the MUZZY post yesterday as yet another example of the increasing amount of pressure on parents to either spend big bucks on developing the brains of the under-three crowd or face dire consequences.

Since Baby was born, I've felt continual pressure to enroll her in baby developmental classes or baby sign language classes or to buy her flashcards or Little Einstein DVDs or whatever developmental toy is in fashion at the moment. And you know what? I'm sick of it. I'm sick of the pressure and I'm sick of the guilt I feel sometimes, wondering if by turning down the expensive toys and classes, I'm denying her important learning tools that will help her keep up with the other kids.

I know a lot of moms who take their toddlers to developmental gyms or music appreciation classes and absolutely love them- and that's fine. I think that if you have the money to do it and you'd like to meet other moms and babies, go for it. But I really resent the implication (made occasionally by moms, but more often by the literature and "sales" people for these classes) that if I don't enroll my child, I'm setting her on a path to destruction from which she may never recover.

On Gymboree's website: It's essential for parents and caregivers to nurture a child's development during this time [birth to 3 years]. The Gymboree Learning Program is a critical component to supporting this development.

Critical? Er. Okay.

The Music Class: Research shows that early childhood is the window of opportunity to increase the lifelong music aptitude of a child. TMC provides several programs that capitalize on this critical time period.

Again with the critical.

I don't know, right now, I consider my child's critical needs to be food, water, clothing, shelter and diaper changes. Everything else that's provided for her is a bonus, because I love her. Using the word "critical" in a description of expensive baby classes seems a bit ridiculous.

Still, I wouldn't want to judge the trendy baby curriculum without trying it out for myself. I had been meaning for a long time now to go to a few sample baby classes and find out what exactly my child was missing. You can find out what happened here, in this week's edition of the Nashville Scene.

Oh, and by the way, if you're still following the circumcision debate, don't bother. This morning (at 7:30am if you care to track it in the comments- I put note in there when I noticed it), it was picked up on the Mothering.com discussion board (which, if you know anything about this site, is going to be mostly anti-circumcision) and has since degenerated into a rude, angry insultfest by a group of men and women who are rabidly against circumcision. I am sure that some nice women and men participate on Mothering.com, but I have seen that board trainwreck more than one discussion and that's exactly what's happening here.

The interesting thing is that as someone on the fence, I was really impressed that for 140-odd comments, both pro and anti-circumcision parties were able to, for the most part, keep their cool and have a good discussion. You all have made me see both sides of the issue much more clearly than I did before. It reflects badly on the mothering.com community that their posters have ruined what was a civil and respectful exchange of opinions. I thought of deleting some of the more mean-spirited comments, but I'm going to leave them up because they are so vastly different in tone from the majority of the commenters who were participating prior to their involvement.

MUZZY.

This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

I stared in wonder at the brochure I received yesterday in the mail. It was advertising Muzzy, a European language program so effective, you could use it on kids too young even to talk in their own native language! Eagerly, I flipped through the colorful pages. There was Craig, a MUZZY German wunderkind who ended up with a Fulbright Scholarship! Sydney, who started MUZZY French at 15 months and began speaking the language fluently by 18 months! Debbie, who took up MUZZY French at age two and went on to become a Harvard student (a Harvard student who looked pretty silly carrying her big MUZZY cartoon book around campus, but still!)!


As I sat back in my chair, a lazy smile spread across my face. All I had to do was buy a bunch of DVDs and let my kid start watching. In three months, she'd be a bilingual brainiac, practically guaranteed admission to an Ivy League school, and in the meantime I would have made my way through Little House on the Prairie Season One undisturbed. It was a win-win!

But I had to act quickly. There's no such thing as "too young" for MUZZY, the brochure assured me, but if you wait, it could be too late. Disquieted, I looked at a picture of a bilingual two-year-old. "One day she spoke English-only," her mom wrote, "The next day she was a bilingual wit!"