What to Expect When You’re Expecting

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          A Glossary

All advice is suspect, though I offer this reminder:

before you were born, you too were an abomination,

coated with lanugo, your basic layer of wolf fur.

Downy they promised, but really: a pelt, a snowless dark

eaten after unceremonious molting, the final exit

fecal in nature. Remember that all babies are also

grown inside a pee bag. It’s a common fetish,

harmless but unsettling. What kind of creature

inhales what it expels? What a sense of economy.

Jumpstart your brain by picturing his

kicks as part-poltergeist, part-

live wire — like Frankenstein, but the scale is

miniature. Today, your baby is the size of one

nurseryweb spider. (If your baby has excess

offshoots, you have some things to consider.

(Please don’t hesitate to ask your doctor

questions about all your terrible options.)

Remember: 60 % of your child is

shared DNA with the common banana,

turning — we hope — the cannibalism fear

upon its head. 99% of a human is also the bonobo,

who has been observed French kissing, refusing

xenophobia by boning face-to-face with strangers.

Yen, we know, is our lingua franca, evident soon after birth.

Zoology is the crassest science. (Read the baby books about animals.)