'Parcel Out Your Despair' and 'Do Not Throw Up Near Your Dog'

March 8, 2011 -- Moms, file this under pregnancy advice you probably never received: "Parcel out your despair, month by month, in subtle winces and sobs."

Or this: "Do not throw up near your dog. He will delight in the warm snack you have provided him via your mouth. And then you will throw up all over again, and for the rest of your life."

Both nuggets of wisdom -- and many, many more -- come courtesy of Alice Bradley and Eden M. Kennedy in their new book "Let's Panic About Babies!" (Subtitle: "How to Endure and Possibly Triumph Over the Adorable Tyrant Who Will Ruin Your Body, Destroy Your Life, Liquefy Your Brain and Finally Turn You Into a Worthwhile Human Being.")

Suffice it to say, "Panic" is a bit of satire -- a humorous lampooning of a world not known for an ability to laugh at itself: the pregnancy and pediatrics punditocracy.

"For new moms and anybody who has been through the whole thing, it helps you laugh at it and it gives you perspective," Bradley, 41, said. "There are plenty of people in the country who think that motherhood is sacred and you don't laugh at this stuff. We use the F-word. And the S-word. There are some words."

When Bradley was pregnant with son Henry, she was a nervous wreck. The stress of merely being pregnant triggered migraines and caused her to break out in hives. A self-described neurotic anyway, Bradley would fervently consult every last bit of literature she could find on healthy pregnancies.

"It was such a mysterious process and I got so nervous because there was this thing growing in me," she said. "I got very literal. I would look at a book and it would say, 'Here's what you should be feeling at the fourth month,' and it wouldn't say 'nausea' even though I was still queasy."

Before long, Bradley, a New Yorker, started a blog called finslippy, and connected online with Kennedy, who blogs across the country in California as Fussy and has a similar sensibility.