My Stroller, Myself

From Here to Maternity: The Education of a Rookie Mom
by Beth Teitell

A side-splittingly funny look at the transition to motherhood-and the little-known truths new mothers really ought to know.

When Beth Teitell first learned that she was pregnant, her mind raced with important questions: Does a handful of Milk Duds count as a serving of calcium? If I sneak a Diet Coke when no one's looking, will it harm my baby? Where does Gwyneth Paltrow buy her maternity clothes, and is $95 way too much to spend on a cotton T-shirt if you're not routinely-okay, ever-photographed by paparazzi? Then, just as she was getting into the swing of things, the unthinkable happened-a baby showed up. And then the trouble really began.

From Here to Maternity offers a hilarious, highly perceptive look at the often surreal experience of becoming a mom, exposing the delightful absurdities of modern parenting that your doctor will fail to warn you about and your fellow mothers will be too embarrassed to admit. From coping with SUV envy (that is, Stroller Utility Vehicle envy) to learning "The Rules" for dating other mommies in the playdate social network, Teitell explores what it's like to be a mother in a culture responsible for $700 Bugaboo Strollers and Baby Einstein, and tells it like it is-what to sing if you don't know any lullabies (the Brady Bunch theme is a perfectly valid choice), how to avoid scarfing down your toddler's animal crackers when his little back is turned, and how to keep the most important person in the family (your nanny) happy-with consummate style and laugh-out-loud irreverence.

A winning, utterly original look at the lighter side of the most serious job on earth, From Here to Maternity is the ultimate treat for mothers everywhere-second only to a hot bath and the phone number of a good babysitter.

Chapter 1

My Stroller, Myself

If there's one thing they drum into your head when your due date nears, it's this: you can't take your baby home from the hospital without a properly installed car seat. But as long as that's all set, the kid's yours, even if you prove irresponsible in more important ways, like forgetting to pack cute going-home outfits, or failing to finish the border you'd been stenciling in the nursery.

Since everyone makes such a production about the seat, even if you're the type who usually wings it-at my wedding I was writing place cards as my guests searched for their table assignments-this is one matter you take care of way before deadline.

Think how embarrassing it would be to be sent home sans bundle of joy. Friends, family, coworkers, and neighbors, all eager for a peek at the new baby, would be stopping by bearing gifts and lasagnas, and in your best I Love Lucy impersonation you'd have to bar them from the nursery, hustling them on their way before the absence of crying aroused suspicion. "The baby just fell asleep," you'd whisper, peeking into the empty bassinet and ushering the intruder toward the front door. "But really, thanks so much for coming."

Or . . . maybe you wouldn't go home empty-handed if you didn't have a car seat. Maybe you'd get to stay in the hospital with your baby. Think what a great scam that would be. That's where all the people who know how to bathe and diaper an infant are-and they work nights. If only I'd "forgotten" the car seat, to this day I'd still be living large, having meals prepared for me, my bed made by someone else. My only task would be periodically putting off the nurses and health-insurance auditors. "Should be anytime now," I'd say as I scanned the horizon, pretending to look for my long-lost car seat.

In the old days, there was no KGB nosing around the back of your car as you attempted to leave the hospital. The baby would ride home in the front seat, sleeping happily on Mom's lap as she lit a cigarette, exhaled some secondhand smoke, and swigged a mai tai from a thermos. Although this was arguably less safe for the kids, it did mean that Women on the Verge weren't sentenced to an afternoon of car seat selection and purchase.

Actually, it's not the car seat itself that's so problematic. It's where it leads. Because many infant car seats are sold as "travel systems," the need to buy a car seat forced us to immediately confront the dizzying world of strollers. You know how every piece of furniture in your home is part of a network so intricate that the introduction of an ottoman in the living room can affect the decor of a room two floors away, and a bad couch bought right out of college can set up a chain reaction of color and fabric choices that will haunt you to your death bed? Well, the car seat has equally enormous ramifications.

With my due date looming, and my willingness to be seen in public diminishing, I realized we simply had to go shopping. Ken thought we should do a little research first. (Have I mentioned he's an emergency room doc-a pediatrician, no less?) So he read Consumer Reports for safety ratings, and I studied People and US Weekly to see what Hollywood mothers were pushing. Finally we were ready to make a purchase that was second in cost and importance only to our new home: baby's first stroller.

At the time, we thought it would be baby's only stroller, but that was before we learned that strollers are like shoes or bicycles. Specialized gear is required. You need one stroller nimble enough to maneuver through the aisles of the independent bookstore, a workhorse for the mall, a jogging stroller (but don't worry-as with running shoes, no actual jogging is required), a quick-folding stroller for the bus, so you're not set upon by an impatient public, and a formal stroller for weddings and bar mitzvahs. By the time our second son was a year old, Ken and I had amassed a fleet, and our vestibule looked like a parking lot. I'd become so obsessed with tot transportation that I'd wave to moms who happened to be pushing the same stroller I was, much the way Prius drivers acknowledge each other with a friendly toot.

In addition to a celebrity endorsement, I wanted a stroller that came in a fabric to complement a gorgeous red suede jacket I'd bought at the Loehmann's Grand Opening Sale in Boston, marked down from $1200 to $200. (Getting the stroller before the child, I didn't realize that a clashing pattern would be the least of the threats facing the garment, which succumbed to Similac stains before my son was four months old.)

Walking hand in hand into the baby store, Ken and I were more nervous than we would be several weeks later on our way over to Brigham and Women's Hospital to have our baby. Maybe it's because at the hospital we didn't really know what we were getting ourselves into, but in the store it was all too clear: we were poised to spend hundreds or thousands of dollars on enormous pieces of equipment and garish furnishings that would engulf our apartment, destroying what little decor we had-which was not quite Stickley, but was a step or two above Mickey.

We were assaulted by ExerSaucers festooned with every rattle and spinning toy known to marketing-kind, enormous swings that played tinny tunes, breast-feeding pillows in taxicab yellow, play mats with hanging octopuses, tartan baby seats. And their single unspoken message? As bad as this piece of equipment seems, not having it will be worse.

The baby stores should be required to provide on-site emotional counseling. Because beyond the obvious decorating challenges-how do you arrange furniture around the Fisher-Price Winnie the Pooh: 1, 2, 3 Exploring Tree?-lurk more serious issues that the baby merchandise brings to the surface.

It was at Babies "R" Us that one of my best friends, Dana, was forced to confront the kind of mother she was going to be (the rest of us had known for years): one who might go with the less expensive softer mattress-the increased risk of SIDS be damned-if it meant she could still go to the expensive highlights place. And a mom who preferred not to have a baby monitor. "If they'd sold white noise machines for the parents' room I would have taken one of those."

Dana told me she fled the store without making a single purchase. Almost every new mom I knew had similar stories. Soon-to-be urgently needed baby bottles, changing tables, cribs, all went unbought as expectant parents panicked about what lay ahead. Somehow-maybe it was Ken's years of medical training-we managed to buy what we needed on our first trip. Or perhaps we made it because we were lucky enough to get one of the store's nicer employees, a grandfatherly man (though not, it would emerge, an actual grandfather), who had come out of retirement to answer a calling to sell travel systems. Some people bond to a hairdresser, and come to believe that that person, and that person only, understands their bangs. We felt that Sol was the only person capable of understanding our baby's transportation needs, and we'd always call ahead to make sure he was on duty when the near-weekly need for subsequent purchases arose.

These included a playpen-excuse me-a play yard, which we bought despite intense societal pressure against caging children. We paid in cash, so there'd be no paper trail, and smuggled the yard into our apartment after everyone in the building had gone to bed. I wouldn't even own up to the purchase now, except that we returned it a week later because it threatened to fold up on our child.

Much later, we realized that Sol, well-intentioned as he was, had no idea what he was talking about. If he weren't so nice, I'd sue him for malpractice for letting us buy a two-ton travel system. But that first day, Ken and I thought we'd happened upon Dr. T. Berry Brazelton himself.

"What kind of stroller are you thinking of?" Sol asked as he walked us past wipe warmers, baby bathtubs, toy cell phones. Who knew such products existed? "Look at that," I said, pointing to the phone. Sol laughed. "They got all kinds of meshugena stuff now."

But it wasn't just the merchandise. The customers seemed a bit meshugena, too. "Can we register for gift certificates?" one father asked. A pregnant woman turned feral on her own mother when the expectant grandma suggested they look at Disney-themed bedding.

"It looks like a car showroom," Ken said when we arrived at our destination. There were sleek racing models, economy rides, sedans-all that was missing were infants draped seductively over the sun shades. Some strollers were so big I feared ownership would brand us as Stroller Utility Vehicle People. "Think what one of those would do to a Combi in a head-on collision," I said to Ken. "I wonder if any come with side-impact air bags?"

The threat to our reputation aside, we couldn't get one of the larger strollers. Even folded, they wouldn't fit in the trunk of our car and allow room for anything else. Unless we bought a minivan, or better yet an eighteen-wheeler, or moved closer to the store, many options were unworkable. My baby wasn't even born yet, and already doors were being closed.

"People like this one," Sol said, pointing at a Graco, the practical but unexciting Saturn of the stroller world. I gave it a push. "How does it feel?" Ken asked.

Unlike jeans, where I can tell with a glance that the thighs won't work, with the stroller I had no idea where to start. Would a fully reclining seat be important to me? Umbrella-style handles? Ball bearings? A toy bar? A foot brake? A beverage caddy? A retractable sunshade with UV-protected peek-a-boo window? Shock absorbers? A front-wheel steering system? A telescopic-folding aluminum chassis? Did I want an acoustic canopy with speakers for playing tapes or CDs to my child? Was I a pram person? Who could possibly know?

Sol showed us how to collapse the Graco, but I'd stopped paying attention. Amid the panicky couples I'd noticed a small group of very slim women, stylish in that Soho-meets-Greenwich way, one of them pregnant, though she barely looked it. They were gathered around a stroller that was commensurately attractive. "This is the one you want," one of the friends said with authority. When they walked away (to look at Petit Bateau clothing) I hustled over: for the first time in my life, I understood how men feel about Ferraris. I ran my hands over the Maclaren. It was, as I knew from my research, the stroller of the stars. Uma's baby rode in a $2,000 model, which, I learned, is upholstered in black leather so buttery a baby could sit naked in it. (Although of course you wouldn't let a drooling baby anywhere near it.) I pictured myself with the Maclaren, lunching in Hollywood with other stars and maybe a Miramax executive or two.

Could it be? Was I imbuing a Maclaren with the same transformative powers I usually credit to a brow wax? Actually lusting after a stroller? Yes.

This particular Maclaren cost almost $300-without a car seat. And yet, part of me thought the expense might be worth it. The Tiffany engagement ring of the stroller world, the Maclaren does your talking for you. "This is where we should splurge," I told Ken, "even if it means skimping on baby food."

But since we were poised to drop $175 on a high chair, we went with the Graco travel system. Like shoes that are comfortable in the store but turn cruel at home, the Graco seemed light enough in the showroom but became immovable once we set it up, which was no simple matter. It took us two hours and four smashed fingers to put it together. The instructions kept referring to various "tabs," and none appeared to exist. "Maybe we'd have better luck with a Japanese-language manual-is there one?" Ken asked as he struggled to insert what we had decided to designate as "tab A" into "tab B," while he pushed on what we figured must be "tab C." It would have been easier for him to reattach the limb of a child injured by the stroller than to install the wheels.

We told ourselves we could buy a new stroller anytime, yet the Graco hung in there, like a boyfriend you keep meaning to replace but never do. For the first year or so, whenever I saw a mother browsing calmly in a store while her child sat peacefully in some upscale brand, I'd think: If I only had a designer ride, I could do that with my child. In the grip of stroller envy, I believed that the right stroller was all that kept me from being able to poke around a bookstore with my kid (and then kids). I became so bold-so desperate-that I'd ambush parents on the street to find out what they were pushing, or shadow a nanny in an attempt to get a glimpse of the stroller's logo.

After a couple of years and many, many strollers, I realized the stroller wasn't my problem; it was me and my anxiety that my passengers might start to cry or need an emergency diaper change. And, unfortunately, stress is a problem even a $700 Bugaboo can't solve.

Copyright © 2005 by Beth Teitell. Excerpted by permission of Broadway, a division of Random House, Inc.

About the Author

BETH TEITELL is the lifestyle columnist at the Boston Herald and a contributor to the public radio program Marketplace. She has been quoted on NPR's Morning Edition, and her work has been featured in Working Mother and in the anthologies May Contain Nuts: A Very Loose Canon of American Humor, and Nesting: It's a Chick Thing. She lives in Brookline, Massachusetts, with her husband and two children.