Submitted by Abby, just Abby

So, you think that you’re going above and beyond by putting headphones onto your pregnant belly and playing Beethoven’s Ode to Joy? Forget about it. The BPE knows that is sadly ineffectual. Playing music to your fetus is not going to get them that pre-school scholly. Not even close. Maybe in 1992.

This is why the BPE uses a series of index cards, sorted by age (fetal age) appropriateness. Said index cards are held by daddy (or life partner) in front of mommy’s tummy (after the daily sonogram locates the best position), and backlit from behind so baby can see through the uterus. Cards are conveniently sorted by trimester, lest we accost fetus with too much information at such a tender age.

First Trimester: Simple things. A blue triangle. A cow, perhaps. Of course, this is the time to introduce the alphabet and numbers 1 - 100. Since baby’s eyes have yet to develop eyelids, this is actually a crucial time to impart information. Smart BPE’s hold these cards up to their uterus during ovulation. Waiting for a positive pregnancy test is just wasting valuable time.

Second Trimester: Remember those ABCs? Now we’re going to learn how they come together to form words! If your fetus can’t speak at least three languages by the time you start your third trimester? Well, it really doesn’t matter how much money you spent on the designer crib, then, does it?

Third Trimester: Your baby should ideally be taking notes at this point. BPEs catch a lot of flack for wanting to keep their placenta, and they nearly always use the guise that they want to bury it in the ground and let it fertilize plant matter in memoriam of the birth of their baby. This is a ruse. If you take a placenta and dry it in the sun for several days, you can put a paper on it and make a rubbing of your baby’s first note to you. This will tell you whether your efforts to educate baby in utero have met with success. Ideally, you will get a message beginning something like: RE: Harvard admission letter – need names of current deans. Ask mom for complete works of Shakespeare on tape for nursery, as have not yet memorized all the tragedies (comedies were a bit pedantic, but easily committed to memory). Marxism seems to have been dismissed unfairly before it was given a chance to flourish.

If your placenta dries, and looks like it has only chicken scratches? Well, that’s what state colleges are for. Oh, and you can always use it to fertilize a tree with which to mark your failure.

Because nothing makes a BPE prouder than the first time his infant says, “Lupe! Those bushes aren’t going to trim themselves!” and then says it again, in Latin. If your baby can’t spit out a simple sentence like this within 4 days of birth (5 days if you had a c-section), CALL YOUR PEDIATRICIAN. They may have therapies or medications you can try.

Tags: fetal index cards

This entry was posted on Monday, November 3rd, 2008 at 1:44 pm and is filed under family, parenting, satire. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.