Oh, Pro Moms. What a special breed. A group of women so headstrong and organized, they could easily have run Fortune 500 companies, but have elected to invest said energy into the (equally important!) task that is child rearing. They read the books, they listen to the podcasts, they buy the Montessori kits, they eliminate all traces of chemicals from their households and spend nights researching preschools that are most likely to catapult their peanut-size bundles of joy to Harvard. Mommy and Me is the equivalent to their weekly industry Happy Hour, the place they go to cross-reference integral developmental milestones, such as how many inches their baby can crawls in a two-minute time period. Here are some of the things I always secretly fantasized about saying to them.

“I didn’t sleep train.” (Lie.) Nothing is more triggering to Pro Moms than sleep training, which, in recent years, has become an industry in of itself, complete with Ferber methods and feng shui nursery gurus and 500 dollar mom shrinks masquerading as “sleep therapists.” (Tip: get yourself a fellow Pro Mom friend who pays for one and bombard them with questions). And yet, no matter how much money you spend to be reassured that letting your kid cry it out for a couple of nights won’t ruin their lifelong psychological and emotional well-being, there’s always a part of you that is convinced that you will. Hearing a fellow mother tell you that she selflessly forwent said practice at the expense of her own sanity is a stage 10 trigger.

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Oh, pregnancy. It is the thinnest of times (ref. first trimester morning sickness), it is the heaviest of times, it is the age of excitement, it is the age of complaints, it is the epoch of cute kicks and Jacadi gifts, it is epoch of farts and hemorrhoids, it is the season of anticipation, it is the season of endless waiting. In my case, it has also been the season of amassing information and making simplistic generalization, which, at week 39.5 of this glorious endeavor, I am finally ready to share with you guys.

1. You will be scared silly. 

The job of fancy private OBGYNs, other than delivering your baby, is to test you for every single condition under the sun, measure your baby at every geometric angle, and discover a few minor discrepancies from the so-called “norm” that will have you perusing forum boards late into the night. While it’s hard to stop yourself from freaking out, just remember that almost every pregnancy has some sort of minor complication, most of which are revealed only due to our overly meticulous western pregnancy monitoring practices. In the words of my mother while listening to my woes about percentiles, “Back in the day in Russia, they didn’t measure any of this stuff, and everyone turned out okay.”

P.S. The fancier the clinic, the more tests they will perform, and the more terrified you will be. Basic math. 

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I remember the day I received the email from the publisher. It was early 2017 and I was working for a company I secretly despised, when it landed into my mailbox, directed to myself and my (nonexistent) agent. Based on my reaction, I might as well have been invited to star in the new Batman, alongside Robert Pattinson. Here it was, I thought, my claim to fame, my escape route from jobs I secretly despised, an opportunity to wave a middle finger at the world as I catapulted to overnight stardom. (Because, you know, authors always become world-renowned stars overnight. Especially when they release books abroad.)

I responded in the time frame that you respond to a very lucrative date offer – not too quickly, yet not delaying it long enough for them to think I’m not interested. What came next was a year of crafting a book proposal, negotiating terms, translating a French contract, signing a French contract, followed by six months of procrastinating and about eight months of fervently penning the book. Over the course of these two years, I experienced a family loss, spent months reconnecting with my old life in Russia, went through a tumultuous relationship (followed by an equally tumultuous breakup), and endured a TMJ issue that sent me straight to limbo and back.

By 2019, I had enough material to fill a separate manuscript…and yet there I was, still micro-analyzing my romantic misadventures from 2013. The format of the memoir was simple: five years of my life, relayed through 12 romantic encounters that shaped me along the way, with each one teaching me a specific life lesson. As I delved deeper into each one, with the inimitable Jordan Nadler challenging me to search for bigger meanings and truer truths, I had no choice but to explore areas of myself that I had previously veered away from. I learned to understand my past, to recognize my patterns and my issues, to take a deep look at myself the mirror, torse-nu and under aggressive LED lighting. It was the most gruesome form of self-therapy, and yet, towards the end, I could feel myself arriving at a new kind of clarity. I knew exactly who I was, and I was okay with her. 

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