Crystal Balls

Undoubtedly, now that we are sure that the uterus does not wander and that orgasms are not just between a crazy woman and her doctor, it's safe to proclaim that books on female reproductive health are fairly accurate these days. In fact, our species knows so much about the subject, reading one of these books is a lot like going to see a psychic. Every week is laid out for you in extreme, clairvoyant detail. You will feel sick this week, crampy the next, and great three weeks later. On this day, you shall feel a kick, find out the gender, experience this or that profound feeling. It's both comforting and totally creepy. Why doesn't this kind of book exist for adolescence?

Then, there are the real psychics- moms. I recently ran into a friend of mine as she was out walking her dog and her one month old girl. She gleefully, I dare say even sadistically, said, "It's really, really, really hard. Harder than you think it will be. You've got two. I feel sorry for you."

Hmm. I haven't imagined that first month being especially easy. I'd like to think that I have a pretty clear picture of it: me, half asleep, reclined on a mound of pillows in bed trying to get two screaming infants to latch on at the same time. Later: me, almost totally asleep, tandem diaper changing, laying the little guys in their crib, cranking some Steve Reich on the iPod, then putting in some ear plugs so I can do what my body is telling me to do.

But, the psychic is telling me that I have it all wrong. She has said that there will be no more me. I will devolve into a blithering, incomprehensible mess of womb-man, incapable of controlling the situation nor defining the terms- a mindless being with shattered crystal balls.

The book doesn't tell us this part. It talks about the labor, the post-partum blues, the recovery, positions for breastfeeding. Nowhere does it say that I will be destroyed by this. At this part of the story, the book that has been so accurate gets very foggy.