Read Momfriends for Free Online Page B

baby’s head. I feel delirious and half drunk all the time and not in a good way. I had Steve bring home six-packs, because I heard beer was good for milk production and also because I needed something to lighten the mood. I took a few sips and felt as if I was going to pass out. I used to drink like a fish. Nine months off will ruin your tolerance.
    I didn’t believe anyone when they said it was tough. I didn’t understand moms who looked at me when I was pregnant and told me I should be taking a nap. I had no idea what tired was. I thought tired was being seven months pregnant and having to walk down five flights of stairs during a fire drill. But you know what I did when I was seven months pregnant? I got a pedicure. I got a bikini wax. I went to the movies. I went on a date. What I did not do is cry. What I did not do is know what every day’s episode of Oprah was. I did not reheat a freezer-burned piece of bread that I didn’t even know I had and slather it with butter. I did not not shower for days or wear clothes with a drawstring. I did not pull the drawstring out of my favorite jammies accidentally on purpose to give myself more room.
    “Are you okay, Ruth?” Dr. Kim asks.
    “Yeah, I’m great,” I say. She looks at me for a minute, trying to gauge if I am telling the truth.
    “Okay, well if you have any kind of pain or trouble let me know. Oh, and just as before, do your kegels. Lots of women have trouble with incontinence after a baby.”
    “Sexy,” I say. Dr. Kim looks over her glasses at me.
    “You sure you feeling okay?”
    “Super. It’s everything they said.” I nod vigorously. My head is about to fly off from so much enthusiasm.
    “And you’re breast-feeding?”
    “Of course.” I say. Breast is best, isn’t that right? Isn’t that another thing that they say?
    “That going okay?”
    “Great.” I feel my breasts ache a little. The whole thing really still grossed me out.
    “No pain?”
    “A little pinch here and there, but nothing I can’t deal with.”
    “Okay, well let me know if it gets worse. You can call the office anytime and they can page me. And if you ever need a referral for a lactation consultant or a counselor or anything let me know.”
    “I’m totally fine,” I say.
    “Great, good to see you again, Ruth. Give that baby a kiss for me.”
    “I sure will and thanks for you know . . . getting him out okay.”
    “My pleasure.”
    I left her office through the waiting room with all the other expectant moms. They look like they have no idea what was coming. Someone needs to warn them. I wish someone had warned me six weeks ago when I was sitting there in the waiting room not knowing that I was going to go in for my thirty-six week checkup only to be told I had to be induced that day. If only someone would have said, “Hey, you with the perfectly coiffed hair and designer shirt that doesn’t have large wet stains on the nipples, get out now. Run, Ruthie, run. You are not prepared for this.”
    But ignorance is bliss and there is no way those soon to be moms with their faces made up in ways only someone with time could do would listen to me. I am just a woman in her husband’s baggy T-shirt and a skirt with an elastic band that would only be fashionable on a sixty-year-old school librarian. My stomach no longer looks pregnant in the tight healthy way. Now I have a belly pouch that slithered next to me when I lay down and took up its own space in the bed.
    These ladies wouldn’t heed my warnings. They were rubbing their bellies and trying out names in their heads. They were imagining how nice their husband’s push present would be. They wouldn’t accept that they should be home, studying their vaginas because they would never want to look at them again.
    “Buy yourselves a doughnut seat, a sitz bath and some ice!” I consider screaming, but I don’t.
    I let the elevator doors close and ride down to the street. My gynecologist is right in the heart of Soho, and I