WE—THE CDC, THE EXPERTS, THE EXPECTING MOM BLOGS, the websites represented in your top internet search results—are sorry to collectively report that the only safe amount of air for a pregnant woman to breathe is no air at all.
Even a small amount of air can cause permanent damage to the helpless ball of cells slowly forming into a human inside of you. You may say, “that is ridiculous, I need to breathe,” but did you know that healthy people can train themselves to submerge underwater without breathing as long as 12 minutes? So even if you do not quit breathing altogether, harm reduction is possible.
We are sorry ladies, no matter where you move in Baltimore, the Wheelabrator waste-to-energy trash incinerator off I-95 fumes will get you. We all know that your kid is going to turn out three-headed or with a tail if you breath that for too long. [Shut it down? Nah. Instead, we’ll give the incinerator clean energy subsidies and make it look pretty, with “Baltimore” written on the side in hipster font. This advice column is about what you can do for your baby. Stay focused.]
We don’t advise moving to Richmond, Indiana to try to get away. Even in middle America there is still the Purina cat food factory pumping out toxins; there is still Route 40 full of Amazon delivery trucks. Sorry, our hands are tied. Even if we made all the cars electric there’s still these micro-plastic particles coming off rubber tires [which, we should mention, is now in the rainfall, so do not drink water either (we advise keeping your mouth closed in the shower to avoid ingestion, and skipping lotions and shampoos that seep into the bloodstream)]. Even if we get rid of all the cars there will still be the smoke from the gas stoves, and if we get rid of them still smoke from the cooking oil, the candles, the incense, the wood fires, the grills, the fumes from the steak too well done.
If you must breathe, if financially feasible, we recommend using an oxygen tank. Be like that one scene in Spaceballs where the guy cracks open a can of clean “Perri-Air.”
If you must breathe, we advise wearing an N95 mask or two masks or (ideally) two masks and a respirator. If you must breathe, we advise scuba gear, plus activated charcoal pills to adsorb the toxins (use during pregnancy generally safe [bowel obstruction possible]). We further advise you not to worry about this report, as worrying about your pregnancy creates a toxin almost as bad as air.
You might comfort yourself that people have been having babies throughout time while breathing whatever air was available, not thinking twice. We read somewhere that in steel towns in Pennsylvania if you left a blank page in your study in the morning when you came back after lunch there would be a thick enough sheen of coal from the air that you could write your name with your finger.
The truth is that back then they did breathe as much air as they liked without worrying, but people didn’t live as long. The truth is they were bad mothers and everybody has pretty much been coming out fucked up for a long, long time, and that will happen to your kid too so long as you are breathing.
The truth is that the only safe place to breathe is in the shower (mouth closed) with the water running lukewarm so as not to cook your baby’s brain, letting the spray hitting your face so nobody can see you crying.
TIMOTHY DeLIZZA lives in Baltimore, MD. During daytime hours, he’s an energy attorney for the government. He won the 2020 Barry Lopez Nonfiction Award. His fiction and nonfiction have recently appeared in the Southwest Review, the Washington Square Review, and Salon. His work can be found here: http://www.timothy-delizza.com/
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