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Nina In New York: The New "Mommy Juice" (Hint: It's Actual Juice)

A lighthearted look at news, events, culture and everyday life in New York. The opinions expressed are solely those of the writer.
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By Nina Pajak

Being a mom changes everything in a woman's life: our schedules, our views toward career, our social priorities, our bodies, our abilities to finish a sentence, the frequency of our usage of the "royal we," our relationships, our grooming habits, to name a few. And of course, our drinking abilities. We spend nine months on an abstinence plan, or something close to it. Then we spend between three and twelve months completely deprived of sleep and possibly enslaved by a breastfeeding or pumping schedule. Even after the first year, we are constrained from nighttime activities by childcare availability and a distressing lack of energy to do much more than eat dinner sitting upright, let alone change out of sweatpants and put on makeup.

Which is all to say that, for quite some time after the birth of a child, most of us cannot hold our liquor. We can't party hard. We can't stay out that late, we can't have a quick one for the road, WE CANNOT DO SHOTS. For god's sake, we cannot do shots. Unfortunately, we may still have friends and family members who remain footloose and fancy free despite our decisions to procreate. It's annoying, I know. And when we go out with them, we may temporarily forget that our lives have, in fact, been dramatically altered. We may just want to have a night for old time's sake. We used to be wild! We used to be awesome! Wait, did we stop being awesome? We can still have a good time, right? We can still hang? We're still fun and young and alive and carefree and cool, right? LET'S DO A SHOT EVERYBODY, WOOHOOOO!

It all comes crashing down hard when you awake early the next morning feeling every second of your thirty or forty decades on the planet and your kid(s) are crying and asking you an endless stream of repetitive questions at full volume. You ache. You're exhausted. You're dizzy. You want to eat something greasy and then crawl back under the covers until noon, but instead you're pounding coffee and coconut water and hauling butt to the playground. You just desperately hope that you're not the only hungover parent struggling to prevent his or her toddler from falling off the jungle gym. Because as bad as you feel, realizing everyone else is more responsible and classier than you would make this a hundred times worse.

But . . . wait. What's that? That bright red liquid in the back of the fridge? Oh, it's an unfinished bottle of Pedialyte, the electrolyte beverage for children which you attempted to feed your poor, sad baby the last time she had a vicious bout of diarrhea. And, apparently, it's your new savior. The company is launching a campaign to appeal to an untapped but long-existing market: desperate, tore up parents.

I can't say I was in on this secret, but it seems people have been sneaking swigs of their kids' Pedialyte to soothe their raging hangovers for quite some time. I mean, why not? It's in your fridge, your child probably doesn't need it right now, and it's got the goods to cure what ails you. Bottoms up, as long as you can live with the mild shame that comes with being such an un-classy mom that you are not only parenting hungover, but you're curing your self-inflicted pain with the juice you keep around in case you need to nurse a sick kid. Meh, I'm over it. Makes sense to me.

Now, if I can teach my child to appreciate the joys of a bacon, egg and cheese sandwich in total silence, we can have ourselves a little "mommy's hurting" breakfast party. There's nothing that can bring a parent closer to her kid like attempting to address her hangover together. Precious moments.

Nina Pajak is a writer living with her husband, daughter and dog in Queens. Connect with Nina on Twitter!

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