“We had a reason to get engaged,” I continued. “Jionni asked me to get married because . . . I’m pregnant.”
Her jaw nearly crashed through the floor. It was a lot to take in, although she had to have noticed I’d put on a few pounds. She probably thought that was just winter padding. But still. You tell a friend you’re pregnant, you want her to jump up and down and scream, “Congrats!” You want her to throw out baby names and ask if she can hold your hair while you barf.
Jenni was in shock. I knew she reacted that way out of concern for me, and probably for my baby. She told me later she wasn’t sure I was ready for motherhood, and if I could handle the demands of filming while pregnant. This was her show, too. We were in it together, for better or preggers. She wouldn’t quit or walk off. But she was obviously worried about it, and worried about the changes in my life.
The doubt in her eyes? I felt it, too.
I wasn’t sure I was ready to be a mom either. I wasn’t one of those women who saw a baby and started drooling. I thought kids were sticky, loud, annoying brats to be avoided in airports and supermarkets. I’d see one coming and think, Ewww, get away from me! Thank God Jionni was great with kids. He had seventeen first cousins and a handful of nieces and nephews. He coached wrestling. He babysat one of his nephews every day at lunchtime. I was an only child and don’t have cousins. I’d changed one diaper in my life and nearly puked. In several months, I’d be elbow deep in diapers. Holy crap.
Life threw me a curve ball—a sperm ball. The timing wasn’t great—for life or the show. The next eight weeks of filming would be rough. But they’d be a blip on the radar. The baby was going to be around (knock on wood) for the rest of my life. I knew Jenni would feel excited about the baby and that she’d love the peanut like her own. She just had to wrap her mind around it.
“Will you be the godmother?” I asked.
That snapped her out of her speechless trance. “Of course!” she said, and gave me a tight, boob-crushing hug. I almost cried—from how much it hurt my swollen tits. (Jenni’s implants are kind of hard.) I knew she was really happy for me. But there was something funky left in the air—no, not only the smell of fart. It was the first season of our spin-off. It was supposed to be a blow out. My pregnancy was like pouring ice water into a hot tub.
“I promise I’ll be fun,” I told her, and meant it. I wasn’t going to let pregnancy ruin our good time. I thought I could be my same old self, minus alcohol, plus a huge belly. Just because I was pregnant didn’t mean I had to be a boring loser. I was still me, after all, only with a mini-me growing inside.
Which was totally stupid and naïve to think. I had no idea then how much pregnancy would affect my body and mind.
That was the general opinion from all of our friends. “You don’t know what you’re getting yourself into,” they said. “Babysitting isn’t the same.” Not that I’d ever been a babysitter either.
Yes, we were clueless. But no more so than other first-time parents. Everyone goes into parenting blind. I think this is why pregnancy lasts so long. It takes a good nine months for the future mom and dad—and everyone in their lives—to get adjusted to the fact that a baby is really and truly coming.
(As it turned out, the doubters were right. We didn’t know what we were getting ourselves into. But they were also wrong. You don’t need to know what you’re doing beforehand. In fact, it’s better not to know. That way, you won’t freak out when things don’t go down the way they’re “supposed” to. Going in blind is the best way to see parenting clearly. Ignorance = bliss. Totally true.
Since clubs and bars were out for filming, we had to come up with creative alternatives for funny scenes. Jenni and I filmed in a pet store, in a baby clothing store, at a psychic’s, and at the doctor’s office. We went shopping and out to restaurants. We shot at the firehouse loft and at Jionni’s parents’ house.
Still with me? You haven’t fallen asleep yet? That was how I felt while filming the entire season. In the end, we made it work. We managed to cobble together some hilarious and intense moments. Highlights of the season for me were dyeing Jenni’s dogs pink and purple, taking Jionni and Roger to Lucky Cheng’s in Manhattan to see a drag show, and my first sonogram (more on that later).
Jenni and I dragged around two dolls that looked, cried, and pooped like real babies to see how tough it was to care for an actual human infant. We dressed them up in swag outfits. I stayed up all night “feeding” the doll. I really wanted to prove to myself that I could do it, no matter how tired I was. I was up anyway because I had to pee every ten minutes. I’d never peed so much in my life. Urinary tract infections have nothing on pregnancy bladder. Most women don’t accidentally pee their pants until the third trimester, but this bitch was self-wet from sneezing, coughing, blowing her nose, and laughing too hard. Forget the Real Baby. I was the one who needed a Pampers.
In nearly every clip of the show or any photo taken of me during filming, I looked depressed. I wear my heart on my face. I was miserable! No matter what or where we were filming, I had to run to the bathroom. Due to pregnancy exhaustion, I dragged myself through every day. I pounded bagels and cream cheese to stop the queasiness, which made it worse in a way. Every night, I’d finish all my dinner and then point at Jenni’s plate. “You gonna eat that? Because I will.”
“What aren’t you gonna eat?” she asked.
Exactly. It was a weird combination of feeling starving and like a fat slob at the same time. I’d sit down at the table, hungry enough to eat a cow—and then I’d eat the whole herd. I polished off jars of jelly with a spoon. I’d slurp down an entire pineapple by myself. After every meal, a food baby grew on top of the fetus. My little offspring probably liked swimming in the yummy taste of spaghetti and marinara sauce, but I felt horrible and huge. I’d heave myself up from the table, stumble to the couch with crumbs and food stains on my shirt, belch, fart, wet myself with pee, and then fall asleep with my mouth open. Sexy! And all of it caught on camera.
I didn’t crave specific foods until later, but I hated things right away. I got insta-queasy from the smell of eggs and . . . pickles. The food pregnant women are supposed to lust for, my favorite food of all time, suddenly made me sick. Pregnancy turned loves into hates, and hates into loves. It was just an upside-down world. If I thought about mourning my pickle love, I’d have to run to the bathroom to dry heave. Again, sexy!
The absolute worst part, though, was gas. It felt like someone stuck an air pump into my navel and inflated my bowels like an air mattress. An alien was growing in my belly and would later emerge whole from my vagina. Fine. I accepted that. Why this process produced so much gas, I will never understand.
I was terrified of getting pregnancy hemorrhoids, which I heard was a fate worse than death. Sitting down with a golf ball shoved up my ass would give new meaning to the phrase “rhoid rage.” Apparently, hemorrhoids grew from pushing too hard when pooping. To avoid that, I would camp out on the toilet and just wait for the shit to slide out without bearing down. Yeah, it took a while. And considering how much I was eating, there was a lot of waiting involved. And a lot of farting. I never forced my farts out, either. If anything, I suppressed them on camera and whenever I was with Jionni. Call me old fashioned (I dare you), but I don’t think it’s sexy to fart the alphabet in front of my fiancé. My gas relief needs also sent me running for the bathroom, along with peeing, and dry heaving, and the shits. When pregnant, ladies, you will get to know every inch of your bathroom intimately. Every water stain on the ceiling. Every crack in the paint. The order of the bottles lined up on the shelf. I could draw a picture of that firehouse bathroom from memory, but it might give me nightmares.
This was my life. I wallowed on the toilet or the couch, feeling like Pizza the Hut, desperately missing Jionni—and stone cold sober.
I really was at a breaking point when Jenni suggested we get a change in scenery and head down to Cancun, Mexico, in March. My old friend Ryder and another girl were going to
come along. I agreed to go on the trip with mixed feelings. It would take me even farther away from Jionni. And what was the point of going to Mexico without tequila? On the other hand, getting out of freezing New Jersey and away from that freakin’ bathroom—and into a brand new bathroom—seemed like a good idea. I forgot that it was Spring Break. On the plane down, I realized, Holy crap, a million college girls in tiny bikinis are going to be crawling all over the beach like sand crabs while I flop around like a whale.
From the minute I stepped off the plane, I knew it was a mistake. Jenni and Ryder wanted to hit the beach first thing. They tied on string bikinis. I put on my fat-lady caftan. It was a pretty caftan, purple and floral. Perfect for the beach. But I didn’t feel comfortable taking it off with all those sexy bodies around me. My friends ordered margaritas. I got a seltzer with lime. They wanted to hit up hotties. I was engaged and pregnant, aka, the opposite of DTF. They were slurping away on margaritas, laughing, and acting crazy.
When you’re sober, drunk people are really annoying. Now I could see why people were annoyed by me for all those years.
Although I was sharing a suite with my best friends, I felt completely isolated. I asked at one point if Cancun was an island, and they made fun of me for that. Hey, I knew Mexico wasn’t an island. It just felt like I was alone on one. Jenni and Ryder got pissed off at me for whining about my fat pregnancy ass the entire time. It might’ve been selfish of me to wet blanket their fun. But in my hormone-laced brain, it seemed like they were rubbing my face in what I couldn’t do. I was resentful. They lost patience with me. Fun. Meh.
I couldn’t break free from that miserable mindset. I tried to snap myself out of it by going to a club. The girls were doing shots and dancing. Some douchebag elbowed Jenni in the eye, and a fight started. I could have been more sympathetic that she got hit in the face. But all I could think about was my baby and that a club was no place for a pregnant woman.
“God forbid I get punched in the stomach and have a miscarriage!” I said to her, while she was holding her just-smacked face. Maybe it wasn’t the ideal moment to complain about my own safety.
Pregnancy forces you to see the world through fetus-shaped glasses. Everything I said, thought, did, and ATE was a reaction of my condition. I was obsessed, but not by choice. My body made me obsess. And that affected every moment of the trip. I couldn’t even go to a restaurant without the pregnancy taking over my brain. Looking at a menu, half the items made me feel sick, and half weren’t healthy for the baby. My friends were smoking and knocking back shots, and it made me depressed. I didn’t crave alcohol and cigarettes at all—until I was stuck at a table watching Jenni and Ryder sucking them down. Even fun activities sapped my energy. We went swimming with dolphins, which was cool. But afterwards, when my friends wanted to go to the bar, I had to take a nap.
There was a strange day in Cancun when we went to a gator zoo. I brought Crocadilly, my fave stuffed alligator, which was such a bizarre impulse. Because of the pregnancy, I couldn’t do all the things I thought of as “adult.” I guess I regressed into a child myself, lugging around a stuffed animal for comfort. My friends treated me like a big annoying baby anyway.
Jenni said, “Pregnancy is not a handicap.”
Bullshit! A handicap is something that prevents you from functioning like a normal person. Okay, so pregnancy is temporary, and by choice (or by accident, whatever). It’s not like being paralyzed or having a broken leg. Obviously, I wasn’t going to park my car in handicapped spaces. But I did feel like I couldn’t function like a normal woman. Back in New Jersey, it didn’t seem so bad. But in Cancun, every time I turned around, there was something I couldn’t do.
The only times I felt happy in Mexico were with the dolphins and at the zoo. I could relate to the animals. The humans? Everyone made me furious. I like being the center of attention. When I feel ignored, I take it to heart more than other people might. Even if I didn’t have homicidal hormones coursing through me, I would have been upset by my friends’ treatment. It wasn’t an ego thing, me bitching that the spotlight wasn’t on me. Not at all. It felt like I’d been excluded.
When the girls went off to drink and party and left me behind, I cried on the phone to my dad. He calmed me down. When I hung up, I had a cool realization. One day, the baby in my belly might feel bad on a trip to Mexico and call me to calm her or him down. My baby would need someone to make him feel better, and that person would be me. I wasn’t really alone in that hotel room. I had my family with me, literally, in my belly.
Don’t get me wrong. I was still really pissed at my friends. But it made me feel a lot better to widen my view of life. They were headed for the club; I was moving in a different direction entirely. Yes, I wished my friends were more sympathetic about what I was going through. But some sacrifices and bumps were to be expected when expecting. I was creating a human life here! That was a huge deal. Some things would have to be put aside until the job was done. The physical and emotional changes were beyond my control. I would have to roll with them.
Wiping my tears in that hotel room, I made my peace with the fact that, for another six months, I was going to have a hair-trigger temper and mood swings. I’d have to drag my fat, tired ass around, annoy my family and friends, feel super sensitive and scared, and hate how my body changed. I would look in the mirror and feel like crying. I’d be bloated, exhausted, and miserable. I wouldn’t be happy, but I would try to accept being unhappy.
And when it was all over, I’d have a baby . . . that I had no clue what to do with or how to raise. What the hell had I gotten myself into?
Chapter 3
It’s a Meatball!
When I was twenty weeks pregnant, I had my first sonogram. It was the second major test to see if the baby was okay. I don’t know how I would have reacted if the fetus weren’t developing right. Like all expectant moms, I imagined some nightmare situations. But I tried to push them out of my mind as quickly as possible. It’s not productive or purposeful to agonize about worst-case scenarios. My heart goes out to anyone who has to make tough choices as the result of early pregnancy testing. It’s impossible to know how you’d react unless you were actually facing it. Things do go wrong. Nature isn’t reliable. When we found out our baby was healthy, it was a tidal wave of relief.
Jionni met Jenni and me at the doctor’s office. The ob-gyn was Jionni’s mom’s doctor. And his sister’s and his aunt’s. He knew my in-laws’ vaginas inside out. It felt good to keep it in the family, and to have my best friend and fiancé with me.
I lay back on an exam room table during the knuckle-biter bitch of a test. The technician lifted my shirt and covered my belly with K-Y jelly. Lube! Were we going to get frisky, or do the sonogram? Then she put a sensor wand that glowed blue on my stomach and rubbed it around.
The probe thing sent sound waves—so high-frequency humans can’t hear them, but I bet a bunch of poodles started howling in an alley nearby—into my body. The waves bounced off my organs. The same probe (love the word “probe”—it makes me think of aliens and anuses) received the echoes, which traveled up through the cable into the computer. The computer analyzed the distance between the echoes (do not ask me to go into better details about how the hell that works), and an image appeared on the monitor.
“That’s your baby,” said the sonographer. On the screen, a little half-moon-shaped peanut with skinny legs appeared.
Jenni said, “It looks like a shrimp!” Uh, yeah, it did. Like mother, like father, like shrimp.
My first reaction was to say, “Eww,” as in, The hell? What kind of freaky weird parasite thing is that? I covered my mouth with my hand and felt like I might throw up. Then again, I always felt like I might throw up. Right there on the screen, I could see the fetus stretching and doing backflips. But I hadn’t felt a single flutter yet. For a second, I didn’t believe the fetus was actually inside me. We could make out a bunch of body parts. A foot. The leg. The profile and spine. No sign of the gender yet. It was
too early to tell.
The sonographer told us everything looked good. The baby was fine, and proportional. I’d been worried for nothing, but that was a good first lesson on becoming a mom. A mother worries about her kids from the second she pees on a stick until the day she dies. Today at least, I could relax. The baby was healthy. It had all its parts and was growing well and according to schedule. Jionni beamed with pride. Jenni just stared with her mouth open. Until she saw the baby on the monitor, I didn’t think she really believed, in her heart of hearts, that I was going to be a mom. I don’t know if I did, either, until that moment.
Then we heard the heartbeat. A dull thump-thump muffled by the amniotic fluid filled the room. I reached up for Jionni’s arm, smiling ear to ear. I wondered if we could hear the baby burp or fart, too, if it made a loud one. But I was so blown away by what I saw and heard that I forgot to ask.
I started to cry, a total involuntary emotional explosion. Happy tears! Freaked out tears. Amazed tears. I also started giggling, which I always did when nervous and excited. My baby was strong. It was chugging along inside me. In another twenty weeks, it would come out and rip my vagina to the butthole. And then, my massacred crotch and I would be a mom. The sonogram was proof that the pregnancy was genuinely happening. No joke. My wild child was doing cartwheels in my uterus right now, while I watched.
We got our first ever baby picture. I thought about sending it around with the subject line, “It’s an Alien Parasite!” We walked out of there on Cloud 19, way higher than Cloud 9. The huge hurdle was cleared, and I felt more committed than ever to this incredible, scary turn my life had taken.
Our next sonogram was a month later. By then, I was living in Seaside Heights, filming Jersey Shore Season Six. I brought my roomies Sammi, Deena, and Jenni along for that appointment. Jionni was really excited that day. We would be able to tell if the meatball was a girl or a boy.
Baby Bumps: From Party Girl to Proud Mama, and all the Messy Milestones Along the Way Page 3
