Baby Number Two: I'm Just Not That Into You by Teresa Strasser on Creators.com

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Baby Number Two: I'm Just Not That Into You

My last ultrasound photo is somewhere in my glove compartment, most likely covered in a light dusting of Crystal Light. My point is, that thing isn't exactly laminated right now.

Sorry, Baby Number Two.

It's not that I don't care about you. It's just that this is no longer my first time at the rodeo.

There will be no shower in your honor. Your fetal photos will not be distributed to family and friends, nor will they even be regarded at all after the doctor pronounces you basically normal looking. I won't be investigating your tiny, embryonic face for my nose or my husband's brow or thinking it's AMAZING when you suck your thumb in utero. I mean, it is pretty cool, but mama has stuff to do now.

Baby Number Two, while we're leveling with each other, you probably won't be wearing any new clothes.

There, I said it.

Look, dude, if you were a girl, I would have had to buy you new stuff. But you will be crawling around in what were once your brother's $12 American Apparel cotton baby karate pants. They will be lightly stained but otherwise clean and hygienic.

There is a good chance that I will cry after you're born, because the whole miracle of childbirth never really gets old, not to mention the relief I know I'm going to feel if you are healthy and safe. I'm going to get the old Pottery Barn changing tabletop out of the garage and will seriously consider hitting it with some Pledge before sticking it back on the dresser in your big brother's room.

While we are getting things all out on the changing table, even your birthday week won't be your own. You are due exactly three years after your brother.

You may or may not go to Mommy and Me music classes and movies and discussion groups, depending on how lonely and bored I get. If the other moms start to drive me nuts, see you later , Mommy and Me yoga. Namaste.

If it makes you feel any better, I'm not exactly non-alcoholic-wining and dining myself, either.

No prenatal massages, no staring at myself in the mirror taking an endless series of baby-bump photos and slathering myself with expensive stretch mark cream. No relaxation tapes to prepare me for your birth.

Last time, I had a selection of pregnancy pillows and maternity clothes and pricey vitamins and acupuncture. This time, I have a toddler. And some jobs. And a long and winding commute to day care.

The dirty little secret is that on the first go-round, it wasn't just that I was inexperienced, and so everything was magical and new and terrifying and awe-inspiring and precious. Those things are true and probably obvious to anyone who is currently pregnant for the first time.

The secret is that I made a tacit, unconscious deal with the universe, one that is only becoming clear now. The deal was that if I worried about every single thing that could go wrong, it wouldn't. If I never took it for granted that I would have a healthy baby, that I would deserve him and know how to care for him, if I was fraught with terror and anxiety, the universe would know I wasn't getting cocky about making a human life.

This time, I know that bad things can happen. My worrying has almost no effect on the world. My worrying is about as effective a talisman as a rabbit's foot.

You see what just happened there, kiddo? I was totally talking to you, and I got sidetracked and forgot all about you.

My insouciance about you, about your innate and powerful and kickass ability to thrive, nurse, sleep, survive any ineptitude on my part, sustain the slings and arrows and rashes and viruses of babyhood, is the very thing I am loving most about you right now, 23 weeks into your life. Or is it 24? I forget.

Teresa Strasser is an Emmy-winning television writer, a two-time Los Angeles Press Club Columnist of the Year and a multimedia personality. She is the author of a new book, "Exploiting My Baby," the rights to which have been optioned by Sony Pictures. To find out more about Teresa Strasser and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.