No Booze for You!

Non-alcoholic wine (aka grape juice) is made more
tolerable in a high-heeled shoe bottle holder,
both a gift from girlfriend Beth.

I have an experiment in mind. I'd like to walk up to a bartender, literally bellying up to the bar as my pregnancy arrives anywhere well before I do, and order an alcoholic beverage.

I hope I would get a response akin to the Soup Nazi on "Seinfeld": "No booze for you!"

Like most reasonable people, I don't think a small glass of wine every once in a great while during pregnancy is the end of the world. Regularly having a glass of wine -- or four -- is a problem.

And forget dirty martinis, my favorite cocktail. Whether hard liquor is that much more damaging to a fetus isn't my issue. It just seems tacky.

Lots of moms recount tales of finding out they were pregnant after they had imbibed at some fabulous party, the details of which they can remember only because someone posted the pictorial evidence on Facebook. Many an obstetrician has soothed a panicky (and possibly hungover) mother-to-be with assurances that as long as she didn't continue such behavior, everything was going to turn out fine.

I was slightly surprised that giving up alcohol seemed relatively easy this time around. I am the parent of a teenager, after all, which can drive anyone to drink. (Prohibition was more difficult with my first pregnancy, as it pretty much crimped celebrations during my senior year of college.) I even cut back while I was trying to conceive.

Unfortunately, I recently became a member of Chaine des Rotisseurs, a supper club of sorts that pretty much revolves around wine. Events can be rather steeply priced, to cover the cost of said elixir, which seems wasted on a woman who can't even enjoy it. Luckily, my local chapter's bailli is willing to give me a price break.

For most of my pregnancy, I haven't really craved any alcohol. Well, except for one colossally stressful night when my husband found me sobbing in the sunroom, a full wine glass in one hand and an unlit cigarette in another. He pried both away and wisely left me there to bawl it out.

But as my due date approaches and the weather gets more beautiful, I'm beginning to feel twinges. My fingers involuntarily curl as if around a glass stem. My ears hear imaginary ice cubes tinkling together. My lips pucker for a big swig of olive juice swirling in a vat of vodka.

Those twinges had better go away. I'm planning on breast feeding, and I've yet to find a sippy cup that doubles as a cocktail shaker.

Perhaps we'll have some success with pumping and bottle feeding, which could mean that mommy gets her own big girl bottle of booze for an evening. But I think that would just be a first step in me wanting it all the more and bringing an untimely end to breast feeding.

I'll have to let you know how the bartender experiment goes.