An excerpt from I Need a Lifeguard Everywhere but the Pool by Lisa Scottoline and Francesca
We’re Having a Baby!
Francesca
I was hunched over my laptop, reading an article aboutwhich baby stroller is best for city dwellers, when my mompeered over my shoulder.
“Do you have something to tell me?”We’re having a baby!
Well, my friend group is.
I’ve been part of a stable group of six, dear girlfriendssince we were in the sixth grade, and now the first of us ispreg- nant. We’ve moved through many steps of life instride, but a baby is a new frontier.
I am beyond excited.
Last night I couldn’t sleep, my brain was too busy think-ing of baby names.
Don’t worry, I would never be so presumptuous as tosug- gest any.
(But in case she’s reading this: if you’re curious, I have alist, and it’s totally okay if you hate them, but I’m justgonna email . . . )
In addition to researching strollers, I’ve scoured Sephorareviews of the best stretch-mark cream and scouted thecoolest
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maternity clothes websites. I’ve pre-selected my friend’sbirth- day, Christmas, and Groundhog Day presents.
And I haven’t even gotten started on gifts for the baby.
Actually, I take that back—I did preorder a board bookentitled Feminist Baby, because I’m staking my claim asthat aunt early.
Thanks to my web search history, every online advertise-ment thinks I’m pregnant.
If I see one more pop-up for breast pumps . . .
Last week, the New York contingent of our girl gang gotdinner with Mama for the first time since she emailed us allthe happy news.
The moment she slipped off her coat and revealed the ti-niest baby bump, I girl-squealed.
And I never girl-squeal.
I found myself making sure she sat out of the way of thepassing busboys, wanting to pull the chair out for her, thenwanting the waiter to bring water faster, and bread, lots ofbread! I wanted to order everything on the menu and watchher eat it.
Even as her friend, seeing her triggered an animal urge tonurture and protect her.
Our pride is having its first cub, and we lionesses need tocircle the den.
When the waiter brought the wine list, we waved himoff. It went without saying that we were abstaining insolidarity.
We made about two minutes of small chat before I cavedand said, “SO, what is it like?” and we unleashed a torrentof questions.
Pregnancy is simultaneously the most universal femaleex-
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perience and the most unfathomable one. You can’tpossibly imagine what it’s really like until you experienceit.
Or, second best, until you see it up close.
And until this moment, I’ve only gotten as close as a so-nogram photo on Facebook.
I’m an only child, and in my small extended family, Ihave only one cousin—and he’s older. On both sides, theScot- tolines and Serritellas are bad at reproduction.
No one can stay married long enough.
I babysat the neighbor’s kids as a teenager, but actual in-fants were above my pay grade.
I’ve cooed over babies but never heldone. Pip doesn’t count.
When I’ve had an acquaintance or distant relative an-nounce a pregnancy, I congratulate them, but I don’t feelcomfortable asking any questions. I never know what is andisn’t polite to ask, it seems too personal.
But nothing is too personal between friends of twentyyears. So I had a million questions at this dinner.
How do you feel? Are you nauseous? Are youstarving? Are your boobs awesome now? Oh no, theyhurt?!? When does it kick?
Does this mean we can order dessert?
She laughed and patiently answered our questions andfilled us in on all the things that she did and didn’t expect.She told us the best news ever:
It’s a girl!
I tried not to immediately burst into tears. I nearly suc-ceeded.
It was at once surreal and fitting that I was again leaning
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over a table with these girlfriends to learn about this mostmomentous experience of womanhood, just like we hadwhen we were sitting around the lunch table in middleschool, com- paring notes on the most trivial firsts ofwomanhood.
These are the girls with whom I puzzled out puberty. To-gether, we figured out which razors wouldn’t nick yourknees, even with a shaky hand, which maxi pads felt leastlike diapers, which tampons were the least scary. Theyreassured me that I was not the only girl on earth to haveslightly unequal-sized breasts.
Whoever did anything first had to report back to thetroops. We compared notes on what to do with your tonguewhen you kiss. When the first of us saw a guy naked, lunchbreak became a Grey’s Anatomy lesson, complete with crude diagrams drawn on the back of a napkin.
And it wasn’t just boy stuff, we conferred on SAT prep,college essays; anything big and daunting was tackled as ateam.
After college, we no longer hit life milestones in lockstepwith one another. That can be a source of jealousy or angstin some friendships, but only if you reduce major lifeevents like marriage or a child to merit badges ofwomanhood.
I have truly never felt competitive with these friends, butI think that’s because we always helped each other.
Childbearing is more complicated than shaving yourlegs. It will probably take all six of us to get acomprehensive sense of this remarkable, insane, beautifulfemale experience.
Friendship is like a longitudinal study of how to behuman. We’re here to be each other’s test subjects, and touse our findings to tip the scales toward happiness.
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Not that Mama is our unlucky guinea pig—it evens out.Yes, she’s running the diaper gauntlet first. But she has allof us unencumbered single ladies around to support her.Her baby girl will be the object of adoration of five happyaunties and last-minute babysitters.
Those of us who have children later won’t need as muchhelp, since we’ll have cribbed notes for years. Plus, we’llget the mother lode of hand-me-down baby clothes.
And if any of us is unsure that having kids is right forher, she’ll have five of us living, breathing, spit-up-coveredpros-and-cons lists to help her decide.
For the last twenty years, these girls, now women, havebeen my brain trust. Thanks to them, for the last two de-cades I haven’t had to figure anything out alone.
And Baby Girl, you will always have a high chair at our table.
