When you're a single mom like me, write another one about co-parenting with yourself: "We don't believe Johnny needs to be on Ritilin; we're opting for a non-medical solution in astrofeedback."

"We" being me and the voices in my head.

Seriously, it IS hard. You're going in with a good attitude. There's no way you can be disappointed! And the moments in between being sucked dry and utter exhaustion will more sparkly and vibrating than you can imagine--just pretty short-lived at first.

Best of luck to you--hopefully you have a strong sense of yourself and aren't letting the mean letters get to you even in your hormonally altered state.

Here's to an amazing ride!

These worries sound about par for the course. Pretty soon, though, you'll stop worrying so much about your maternal inadequacies because there will be so many other things to worry about, namely, all the menaces that threaten your innocent child (See: News headlines from any day). This phase of worrying lasts, oh, I guess for your entire life.

If it's any comfort, some of my biggest prenatal worries (such as the prospects of getting no more sleep ever and lurching around in a permanently bloated body) did not come to pass for me. But plenty of other worries took their place!

It helps to have a sense of humor, a sense of humility and, as we all know Heather has, a tolerance for bad TV for those times when you're a couch-bound shut-in.

Heather, I'm due the same time as you and this made my day.

Hope I meet mommies like you at the local Starbucks - which is all of 2 blocks away, and is my maximal daily goal for the first month or so. Well, that and basic personal hygiene. Oh, yeah, and taking basic care of the baby, right.

Good luck with whatever unholy alliance of Bradley method and narcotics gets you through the delivery process and keep us posted! (Do come to TT if you're of a mind, people will get the joke there.)

Miiki,

No offense Miiki, but you're a fucking idiot.

Oh yeah, you're right. Heather writes a silly essay, in jest, about her upcoming delivery, and your reaction is to 1) tell her to give her kid up for adoption, or 2) seriously say that she's going to fuck up her kid.

You should just stay off the internet and go clean up your house. Sorry to sound cruel. Maybe you'd better go take some Walnut Flower Essence so that you'll feel all better.

Lighten up!

Pewella

Pull your head out of the Diaper Genie and smell the hyperbole!!! This was a SATIRE.

All I can say is that you nailed it right on the head. I don't think I laughed this hard since before I was a pregnant! During my pregnancy I liked to use the term Invasion of the Body Snatchers or Pod-People Syndrome to describe what I was feeling. I was convinced that I would at any moment bust open a-la-Alien. Trying explaining that to your childless friends!

What mde me laugh even harder, although in a completely different way, were all the negative responses (mostly male) to your brilliant essay. It seems that motherhood can not be humorous anymore especially since it has become so fetishized. (This does not include Ayelet Walman, she is just whack!)

Parenting is hard work but that does not mean that everyone loves every minute of it. Is it really helpful to beat the crap out of those honest enough to admit it? Heather, keep bringin' it for all your fellow dark-sisters out here. We got your back.

YES. Heather Havrilesky describes it perfectly. But she forgot the best revenge that a parent can have one's offspring: GRANDCHILDREN.

My lampreies are all grown up. I'm just sitting around wearing unsmudged clothes, in my nicely decorated, clean and quiet house, eating from unchipped dishes that match, completing thoughts uninterrupted - longing for grandkids. Don't dispair, odds are your kid will have your sense of humor.

Though I completely 'get it' (the satire i mean) this is just a crappy piece of writing that went beyond simple literary humor and into ego-filled, whining, self indulgent schlock.

Hey, Heather.

At first, I was not going to write anything at all. Then, I was going to write a funny letter about how you need to watch out for the lamprey, later on, when it reattaches to your checkbook. I was never going to write what my friend said, the one with whom I share your writing: he says motherhood is turning you into Erma Bombeck. That, I doubt.

Concerning the particulars of your upcoming motherhood experience, I believe most of the things you fear will never come to pass, and that you will probably do better than 50/50 on your hopes. Here's hoping, anyway.

Keep writing clever stuff.

Richard

I have two of 'em. Picture them as the angel on one shoulder and the devil on the other. Picture the infancy of one as zombie bliss, that of the other as zombie hell.

Good luck. YOU NEVER KNOW.

The first is Florence Nightingale: generous, sensitive, loving, respectful, with the face of an angel and a heart the size of Greenland. We billed and cooed at each other for five fat happy years. I can see her face the first time I yelled at her: she was three (!) and we were in a paint a pot place and she almost (!) broke something. We were both shocked at the sound of my raised voice. That was likely the last time, as well.

The second is now calmly referred to as Dr. Evil: stormy, intelligent, loud, self-centered, with the face of an angel and the energy of a lightning bolt. We've been yelling at each other since the moment she came flying out of there. I cannot believe the things I say to her, and how they come back in casual conversation.

My husband and I found parenting the first one so lovely, so loving, so joyful, that we thought we knew the formula: respect the kid, the kid will respect you.

The joke has been on us.

But the bottom line: you will love this thing so profoundly, so wholly, that it will scare the shit out of you. Its face will be the thing that appears to you when you are in danger, in love, in sickness. Its laugh will be the music, its cries will be the pain.

You're in trouble, you're in luck.

(And, you should be in: coffee, gin, dark chocolate...)