But it’s trendy! And creates all kinds of extra effort and opportunity for douchebaggery. It would certainly be harder to say, leave your kid in day care while you work if you’ve set an arbitrarily high standard about what it can and can’t eat. Rich people can get nannies to do the shit work, of course. Everyone else is just going to have to deal with their inadaquacy as a parent.

Pregnancy an end in of itself? Of course! Because there is nothing in this world better than a breeding woman and nothing more that a woman would live for.

‘The major shift was about five years ago. It became much more experiential. People began to see pregnancy as a major accomplishment and they really began to think about it as the moment itself.”

Which moment? The moment his cock ejects sperm into my throbbing cevix? Nirvana!
The wingnuts couldn’t have invented a better tool than Julia if they tried. Here she is to tell us all that pregnancy should entertain and of course fulfill. The obverse of this is of course, that if you don’t want a pregancy what kind of woman are you? Now you are not only a sinner, but you are completely out of touch with fashion!

And just in case you career woman forget yourselves and got to thinking you are smart and got it all together in the office, or even the world, you ain’t seen nothing yet when the sperm meets the egg. Now what? Call Julia of course!

“You take a woman who has accomplished great things in the career place. She’s used to having support personnel under her; she knows how to solve problems. You’re literally throwing her down on her back at the bottom of the learning curve.”

women are stupid and especially when they are doing the most difficult and arduous task in the world, they need to Julia’s in the world to tell them how. Never mind that the rest of the living creatures on earth manage to breed and nurture with little more than instinct.

Then she can’t help it, she opens her mouth a little wider and suddenly we catch a glimpse of her fangs:

“I’m fixated on everyone else trying to pretend they’re pregnant—I call it pregnancy by association.”

And apparently, since she believes that all of us who grew up in, or raised kids in the seventies, or say, the past thirty years or raised kids and read books and used our own brains are all dead, she makes this assertion:

“The other trend that is here but growing by leaps and bounds is the green baby. Certainly celebrities are embracing that trend, and, as always, they’re the first. They’ve been doing organic baby food on the West Coast for a while.”

Celebrities, the Great Gurus of middle class America. Has anyone asked them what we should do about Iraq or if they know who the next pres will be? Oh, wait a minute, I’m a woman, I should go get pregnant or something and shut up.

Oh my god, Kyso. You’ll make me embarrass myself.

First of all this whole notion of being very pleased with your pregnant self, this notion of finding ways to celebrate pregnancy by having very interestingly themed baby showers or very well-thought out nurseries or a higher standard of baby carriage.

What vain, silly children women are these days. Pleased with themselves for being pregnant? What happened to quiet dignity and silent suffering?

Granted, I had my babies so long ago (1974-1978) we made do with stone knives and bear skins, but this mania for pricey specialised goods makes my head spin.

Vintage fabrics? What the hell? My base line for baby-related fabric was ‘can this be washed to get out the vomit/urine/feces which baby will inevitably cover it with at 3 A.M.?’. Pre-registering your fetus for nursery school and music teachers? How about you wait to meet the poor little critter and find out what he/she is like as a person? Maybe the little darling will have a, wait a minute, what’s the word? Oh, yeah, a mind of its own.

I blame the patriarchy, which is clearly trying to lure women back into the nursery by bribing them with costly goodies and gadgets. Not to mention getting a head start on training the babies to be good little consumers. Can’t have them thinking, in their silly baby way, that blocks and balls and maybe a pan and a wooden spoon to hit it with are actually entertaining, now can we?

You know the parents that sign up their child for preschool before they are born? These $800 strollers are for them. Same with the rest of this nonsense. The ones who throw tandrums about not getting into the right preschool, kindergarten, etc. This screams them. They need to top everyone. “Look at me! Look at what I can provide my child” Nevermind that all a child needs is love and caring after.

(can I swear on your blog?) Forget that!! (of course, replace forget with another “f” word)

As the mother of two boys, none of this is necessary. Babies do not require material stuff. Expensive strollers, decorated bedrooms, nothing. Babies want to be held. And coo’d at. And rocked, sang to, all that stuff.

Yeah I’m rambling, I should just go to bed. Those people just annoy me tho, and should really get a clue to life and what it really means to raise a child and be a parent.

1. If pregnancy were an end, that would make sex the means.
2. If pregnancy were an end, children would be a waste product.
3. However, pregnancy is clearly not an end but a means, as evidenced by the fact that sane people are distressed by stillbirth.

Julia’s statement therefore manages to satisfy at least five criteria of patriarchal loonspeak, asserting:
i. women shouldn’t have sex for fun,
ii. women ought to get pregnant, and – as pregancy by all accounts sucks –
iii. ought to enjoy pain and debilitation;
iv. real already-born people are comparatively unimportant.
Also, (v) it’s obvious and complete mooseshit from start to finish.

That’s five blames in 16 words, a highly concentrated 31.25% blamability. I’d translate these units into some kind of logarithmic scale and then name it after Twisty, but I am unworthy.

I couldn’t have said it better if I were an OB-GYN!! I just hope I’ll remember it the next time I see some insufferable excess of attention over a pregnancy. And for the record, I love my daughter and am forever indebted to her mother for the 40 weeks and after. Having her almost makes up for the fact that mom is a pathological liar.