(Peter Oumanski)

My pregnancy, of course, was largely dry. (Both my general practitioner and my midwife assured me that the occasional drink—even a few ounces of wine every day!—would be fine, but I found that my cravings for egg salad sandwiches and watermelon eclipsed my nostalgia for riojas and tempranillos.) It wasn’t until high summer, when I was seven months along and needing to relax after a long day at work, that I decided to break my alcohol fast, and even then I watered the two fingers of sauvignon blanc down with so much seltzer that I probably would have gotten more of a buzz using mouthwash.

I harbored abstinence-induced fantasies of glugging a fishbowl-sized glass as soon as I went into labor, but since that ended up happening at 6 a.m., the first contractions promptly followed by retching over the side of the bed into a Citarella bag, I did not, in the end, feel like bellying up to the bar, and even for the first few weeks postpartum, the suggestion to crack a bottle of celebratory champagne sounded about as appealing as doing a Jäger bomb.

That all changed by the time my son was about two months old. Once I had adjusted to the constant sleep deprivation (which, like drunkenness, tends to negatively impact your decision-making skills—as I discovered in the wee hours one morning as I hovered over the toilet, holding my wailing infant to my chest and trying to keep his swaddle out of the stream) and completed the Mensa application that is the unassisted donning of a Moby Wrap, I felt ready to resume semi-regular drinking.

This has been much easier said than done. My husband works late, and as a freelance writer I can’t afford much paid babysitting. So boozing, for me, necessitates doing it with baby in tow.

I started with an adventurous outing, meeting a friend, who in my former life had been a favorite drinking buddy, at Noho’s Five Points for happy hour. I ordered a $5 glass of wine and single-handedly demolished a bowl of complimentary potato chips with the vacuum power (and approximate grace) of a Flowbee. Nothing abnormal there. But as the dinner rush started and people filled the bar, I received some questionable looks. Because on my lap, buried under the potato detritus, sat my son. He was relatively quiet, especially given the din, but seemed out of place attempting to gnaw on the craft beer taps. My friend was proud of me for balancing motherhood and malbec, and even bragged on Facebook that she’d lured Sam out to his first bar. But I was self-conscious, and for once not willing to raise my blood alcohol level enough to numb it away.

A few weeks later, I learned that a German beer hall in my neighborhood hosted weekly “play dates” in the mid-afternoon, before patrons employed by larger and presumably more continent bosses got out of work. I showed up at 2:30 on a Thursday to find colorful mats covering the floors, and fellow nursing moms nursing hefeweissbiers cross-legged as their infants flailed beneath them.

The atmosphere seemed friendly enough, until a sour-faced twentysomething bartender approached and had me sign a sobering waiver promising never to let my child touch anything outside the boundary of the play space and swear upon pain of expulsion to use the changing table for diaper duty—which was inexplicably in the men’s room. I get that it’s health code stuff, but the contract still seemed awfully formal. That, coupled with the fact that there were no drink specials, left me cold. So I turned to my last resort: Playgroup.

Every week I meet with a small klatch of other new moms and their babies at one of their Park Slope homes. Emails are exchanged the day before to plan the potluck menu.

“I’m picking up some hummus and carrot sticks!” one will write.

“I’m trying some no-bake energy balls I saw on Pinterest!” another will chime in.

One week, the host was going through a personal crisis. I jumped at the opportunity.

“If only you were a drinker, I would bring a bottle of wine for ‘snack,’” I typed, adding a winking emoticon to communicate that I was totally kidding, ha ha, unless... she was into it.

I hit send.

Seconds later, a reply came from one of the other members: “So glad you said it—I've been dying to suggest a little boozy playgroup but didn't want to sound like the alchy mom!!”

That Wednesday we cheered impishly as we popped a bottle of Prosecco. If David Attenborough had been narrating the scene, he might have observed, “The American stay-at-home mother, shamed out of consuming alcohol under cover of darkness at the local pub, is now content to tipple away during daylight hours with others of her species.” In my pre-baby life, daytime drinking might have signaled a problem; now, it seemed the only socially acceptable time.

But though I’ve found a tribe, I do confess to sometimes feeling irresponsible. The old, wine-soaked me who worried about being too hungover to go to the gym and the new, spit-up-soaked me who worries about the frequency and consistency of someone else’s feces seem somehow at odds. It’s as if, upon conceiving, my motherboard should have been replaced, deleting my appetite for mood-altering substances and increasing my tolerance of insipid cartoons—but it doesn’t have to be a complete reprogramming.

I know that there is a line between someone like Lucille Bluth, the comically negligent, perpetually soused matriarch on Arrested Development, and a self-sacrificing teetotaler like June Cleaver (what a scold!)—and that I remain, as ever, appropriately in between. I also know that less than 2% of what I imbibe reaches my breastmilk, and that if I am sober enough to drive I am sober enough to nurse, not to mention operate the heavy machinery that is my stroller.

Finally, I know that my husband feels free to drink wherever and whenever he so chooses without fear of societal scorn. So, as long as one of us remains sober enough to be the alpha parent, the other is free to dabble, ever so often, as the alchy.

Anthony.

I hesitated to ask the question. “Does anyone relate to Casey Anthony?” I said to a group of 20-something women. “I mean, at all? If she did plot to kill her child, can anyone understand where she’s coming from?”

I’d rather have asked the group if they felt a close personal kinship with Jeffrey Dahmer. “No,” was the universal consensus.

But more quietly, individually, each pointed out that they could understand that motherhood could be exhausting, and how nice it must have been for Casey to be able to go out and get a tattoo just because she felt like it.

“Look,” a friend of mine whispered, “Jen, you have to remember how young she was. She’s only 25 now.”

“Oh, for heaven’s sakes,” I replied, “we’re 25. She was out competing in a ‘hot body’ contest a few weeks after her daughter died. Who does that?”

“But that’s what your 20s are generally for,” she answered softly. “For competing in hot body contests.”

I did start to think about what I had done the previous day and how much of that I could have done if I had a child. Assuming I could sink most of my salary into a full-time nanny or day care, I could still go to the office and eat lunch. But it’s hard to justify saying you’d rather see X Men: First Class than spend time with your infant.

But isn’t motherhood supposed to fill you with so much joy that those desires become nonexistent?

My friend Koa, an editor at parenting site Mommyish notes, “The Casey Anthony case reminds us that mothers typically move through our culture with certain one-dimensional identities.”

Sure. You’re supposed to take on a gentle, vaguely angelic identity.

But maybe motherhood isn’t your life’s greatest moment. Maybe you still dream about what it would be like to compete in hot body contests. Does that make you terrible?

When I was 11, my English class was given an assignment to go home and interview our parents about the happiest day of their lives. I believe my father said, “The day I married your mother,” which was the right answer. Gold star, Dad.

Then I asked my mother.

“Well,” she said, “I was living in New York. I was in my 20s. And I went outside—it was the fall—and bought a pretzel at one of the vendor carts. And the pretzel man let me have it without the salt, because I don’t like the salt. And it was good. And I just loved my job. And I loved being in New York. And I realized, even at the time, that at that moment, I was just totally happy.”

I explained helpfully, “You’re supposed to say, ‘The day you were born, my beautiful daughter.’”

“Oh,” my mother said, after which she paused from reviewing my math homework for a second and considered.

“No,” she replied cheerfully, “no, that wasn’t it. Definitely the pretzel thing. Go with that.”

At the time, I told her she was a bad mother and went off to scrawl an angry essay about how she loved a pretzel more than she loved me.  Of course, if I had read the article in The Daily Mail last week entitled “Am I a Monster for Wishing I’d Never Had Children?” I would have known that she was not a bad mother for thinking wistfully of a more free and breezy life. I would have known that she was a monster.

The article was about a 50-something woman who raised two boys but never had time to develop a career or go to university. Now she wondered what life would be like if she’d done things differently.  This seemed like stuff that Robert Frost pretty much covered in 1920, but I checked the comments.

“I am disgusted by this woman. If your life was ‘not what you wanted,’ you should have either a) never had children or b) been brave enought to give them to familys that love children unconditionally.”—Rachel, England 7/2

If motherhood is that much of a black-or-white proposition—if you’re never allowed to feel anything but abject gratitude to be blessed with the care of miniature people who, let’s be honest, can’t really make witty conversation and frequently defecate on themselves—then maybe it’s understandable to want to escape.

I called my mom. Did she ever want out?

My mother paused. “There was one time I wanted to leave you. You were 3. We were at a Chinese restaurant. Everyone was tired. It was tense. Dad hadn’t liked the food. And we finished and I said, ‘We’re going to the car, now,’ and you walked in the other direction. And I said, ‘No, no, no, it’s this way,’ and you lay down on the ground and just started screaming. And I seriously thought, ‘I will just walk away and not turn back.’ And at that moment I wanted to. But I didn’t.”

I told my mother that as a belated reward for not leaving me 22 years ago, the next time she comes to New York I will buy her all the pretzels.

editorial@observer.com

100 Questions

Actor Christopher Moynihan, last seen on NBC as part of the ill-fated attempt to bring Coupling to American shores, goes behind the scenes to executive produce this comedy about—wait for it—five single friends living in New York! And there’s a laugh track! We dare you to watch the four-minute extended preview and not want to immediately claw your eyes out and/or run and watch an episode of How I Met Your Mother to wash the bad taste out of your mouth. Seriously, why would NBC even bother with this?

Probability of a second season: 3%

Trauma

The first thing that has to go is the title: can you imagine telling your friends you watch something called Trauma? That aside, the series—about a group of first-responder paramedics—just feels like the kind that gets relegated to Friday nights and cancelled within a month. We love star Derek Luke, but he has to find a better use of his time.

Probability of a second season: 18%

Mercy

Not only can NBC save money with this show by recycling Grey’s Anatomy plots, they can also film it on the old ER sets. Win-win! Mercy deals with the lives of a trio of sassy/pretty nurses—played by Michelle Trachtenberg, Taylor Schilling and Jamie Lee Kirchner—as they navigate the troubled waters of Mercy Hospital. No truth to the rumor that the show was originally called Nurses.

Probability of a second season: 34%

Parenthood

Because the entire entertainment world is bereft of ideas, here comes a serialized version of Ron Howard’s Parenthood, a film that came out twenty years ago. We do want to like this show, specifically because Peter Krause—here taking what appears to be the Steve Martin role at the head of a large ensemble cast—deserves to be a gigantic star. Sadly though, everything we’ve seen thus far seems sorta dated. And even if the show turns out to be good, does anyone think it can survive in this economic landscape with such a big-name cast?

Probability of a second season: 49%

Community

Say hello to the one new show on NBC’s schedule that could be a legitimate success. Joel McHale stars as a former lawyer forced to go back to community college to get his degree. There, he meets a crew of misfits, headed by Chevy Chase. Community plays like a hybrid of Arrested Development and Stripes, and, best of all, there isn’t a faux-documentary crew or laugh track to be found. We’re making progress here, people!

Probability of a second season: 62%