>Mother’s Little Secret

>You may share just about everything with your mom friends, from secret family recipes to candid advice on bikini waxing.

But there’s one secret that few moms will ever divulge. Find out what I’m talking about right in this week’s Nashville Scene edition of Suburban Turmoil, reprinted below for your reading pleasure.

Babysitter Confidential

Whether spilling the seamy details of a Patrick Dempsey fantasy or recounting her foolproof method of getting rid of unruly pubic hair, it’s amazing how quickly a mother will tell her friends nearly anything about her personal life. I guess moms spend so much time listening to their husbands, kids, doctors, teachers and co-workers that when somebody finally cares enough to listen to them, it all comes spewing out like a post-Gravitron funnel cake.

But while you can ask a mom friend about her breast enhancement or the contents of her bank account and get a detailed answer complete with a diagram mapped out on a paper napkin, there is one topic you must never broach, a secret guarded by moms more closely than the Roswell UFO incident.

Never, ever ask a mom for her babysitter’s number.

“Babysitter?” Your mom friend will say vaguely. “Why, I’m sure I don’t even remember her name. I barely use her. So what did you think about that big sale at Spaces last week?”

Before you know it, you’ll be a social pariah, scorned the neighborhood over. Word will have spread that you’re a Attempted Babysitter Stealer and that particular sin (unlike falling for the gauchos fashion conspiracy) is unpardonable.

Rather than facing the Babysitter Stealer Firing Squad, I tried simply staying at home after I had my first baby. But by the time she was four months old, I decided Death by Gossip was preferable to missing one more opportunity to put on a low cut top and drink martinis somewhere in the Gulch without a baby carrier in the chair beside me.

After more than an hour of calling up the weakest members of my mom circle and trying to confuse them into giving me their babysitters’ info, all I had managed to secure was the e-mail address of an 11-year-old girl who called herself DaHighHeeledHottie. So I dug up the outdated list of my stepdaughters’ old sitters and tentatively began making some calls. Amanda, a Belmont grad, was the first on the list whose line hadn’t been disconnected and after some negotiating, she agreed to take the job. She’d been great with the girls and I felt confident leaving Baby in her capable hands.

But my calm evaporated the moment Hubs and I left the house Baby-free for the first time.

“Do you have the phone?” I asked him as we pulled out of the driveway.

“Yes,” he said patiently, placing the phone on my lap. I gripped it like a talisman for the rest of the night.

Stay calm, I told myself firmly. Amanda’s going to be great with the baby. She obviously adored her from the moment they met.

But maybe she adores her too much! my inner worrywart shouted. How well do we really know Amanda, anyway? We don’t know her parents. We don’t know her friends. We don’t even know her social security number. Good Lord! She could be two states away by the time we get home, headed God knows where with my baby!

“Turn around!” I yelped.

“Everything’s fine,” Hubs replied mildly. “What could possibly have happened in the last five minutes?”

“Mexico…” I muttered weakly.

“Do you want to call her?” he asked. “Why don’t you just call her?”

“No!” I said quickly. That would be like giving in. Instead, I counted the minutes and finally phoned Amanda exactly two hours after we’d left.

“Is everything okay?” I asked brightly.

“Oh yeah, everything’s fine. She just went to sleep ten minutes ago.”

“Great. We’ll be home really soon, okay?”

“Okay. Bye.”

Once we were home, I raced inside and made forced pleasantries with Amanda, anxiously waiting for her to leave so that I could check and make sure Baby was in her crib (and not some cheap doll covered by a blanket) and that she was still breathing.

After that had been established, I rummaged through the kitchen trash can looking for used baby food jars. Oatmeal? Empty. Carrots? Empty. Hmmm. It was almost too perfect. Breathless, I flung open the refrigerator door and found what I was looking for. Baby had only drunk half of her bottle.

I knew it, I grimaced to myself. Amanda couldn’t even give her an entire bottle. This was unacceptable.

Of course, a week later when I’d been spit up on 15 times and changed two dozen poopy diapers, Amanda was more than acceptable and I called her up again. And again. And again. Until she turned traitor a year later and moved to California, where I hear babysitters are going for twice as much as they are here in Nashville. I had my own babysitting Benedict Arnold.

Luckily, by that time my oldest stepdaughter had been deemed mature enough to take care of the baby herself. Now that Baby is two, both my stepdaughters are on babysitter call, and we even have two of their trusted friends on hand as backup.

But don’t ask me for their phone numbers. Unless you want a blank stare and a detailed report on the weather forecast for tomorrow.

That shit is classified.