Middle Row: Sivan Chapman, due April 30; Melissa Cohen, due December 23; Laurie Solomon, due February 9.
Bottom Row: Kimberly Oser, due March 15; Leilani Buckley, due March 3; Randi Marder, due February 23.
Photographed at a Big City Moms event at KidvillePhoto: Spencer Heyfron
It’s not easy being pregnant in New York. No one offers you a seat on the subway. Everything smells terrible. It’s normal to walk twenty blocks through rain and heat and snow, just like a postman, except nonunion and with the mail sack tied to your abdomen. There’s remarkable pressure to look stylish and put together even when your ankles have swollen up to the size of Murray’s bagels.
Which is why there was something perversely inspiring about the way that, one week before giving birth to Archie Arnett, Saturday Night Live’s Amy Poehler went out there swinging, her immense belly swaying over the “Weekend Update” desk, performing a wild, aggressive Sarah Palin rap—effortlessly shooting down both a dancing moose and the actual Sarah Palin. Anchor Campbell Brown savaged spin doctors throughout her first trimester, sharpened by fuzz-head hormones that fell other women. Saint Angelina alighted here for a while; even Ashlee Simpson named her son Bronx Mowgli, which is a lousy name, but let’s take it as a compliment.
But maybe it’s the ordinary pregnant woman in New York who should get our salute. Here’s to you, belly-first lady striding through the heat ripples of August! Try and ignore it when people scream “You’re huge” or “I can tell you’re having a girl, they steal the mother’s beauty.” Take it easy walking down the broken stairs to the F train, and here, have a seat. Just don’t name your child “Roosevelt Island.”
41. Because you can be poor and from the hood but still bump elbows with all different kinds of cultures. I grew up in the very rough parts of Bushwick, with a single mother originally from the Dominican Republic. Because of our limited resources, I was exposed to gangsters, hustlers, and all kinds of freaks. [But] an entirely different world was always a subway ride away.
—Ariel Estevez
42. Because despite the stereotypical high-mindedness of New Yorkers, most still watch crap TV.
—Jared McCarthy