Teresa Strasser Is ‘Exploiting' Her Baby

Teresa Strasser, Preggers, On The Set of TV Watercooler
When KLSX 97.1 FM flipped to Top 40 "The Adam Carolla Show" sank along with the station's talk radio format. Since this February change, Carolla and co-host Teresa Strasser ( we interviewed her a few months ago ,) have been quite active.

Veteran of Comedy Central's "The Man Show," Carolla’s jumping back into television. He’s shooting a CBS sitcom pilot which has all the right kind of buzz around town. Strasser’s also in production of sorts. She’s pregnant for the first time.

Her new blog, Exploiting My Baby , explores this growth period with brutal honesty and sharply hilarious wit. In her blog she has written about: advice-spouting moms nearly provoking her to violence; how she goofed, calling Nancy O’Dell the c-word on Carolla’s wildly successful podcast ; and her very real fears on becoming a new mother. LAist had a chance to find out more about this exploitation from the mom-to-be herself.

LAist: How preggers are you?

Teresa Strasser: I am due October 2nd, so this kid is almost halfway cooked. If he's born on his due date, he will share a birthday with both Ghandi and Groucho Marx. I guess this means he'll either be staging vaudeville acts, or acts of civil disobedience. The other possibility is that astrology is total bullshit, but people kept asking me who was born on that day so I felt compelled to look it up.

Do you really say "preggers?"

Thanks for addressing a concern of mine. "Preggers" is like the word "boyfriend" -- it kind of sucks, but is better than the alternatives. I basically got married so I could just say "husband" and get on with life. As for "preggers," it has a fanciful quality I like, but maybe tries too hard to be cavalier.

"Expecting" is overly wholesome and formal, whereas "knocked up" is now too Seth Rogen for me. "I have a bun in the oven" or "I'm with child" aren't even worth considering. And somehow, "carrying a developing fetus" is just clunky. If anyone has solved this problem, please let me know.

Why the blog?

What's the point of having a baby if I can't exploit the experience for some content?

Honestly, as a writer, I guess you "exploit" everything in your world. I'm not good enough to cook up prose about things I don't know, so over the years I've written about my mechanic father, my hated evil stepmother, my beloved black stepfather, my neighbors, my bosses, my dead end jobs, my apartment buildings that were like villages of the damned, my road trips, my break ups, my unexplained rashes, my busted cars, my two-bit revelations and non-binding epiphanies, my accidental Myspace dates and everything in between. While having a baby is not original or special (Octomom has done it 14 times, so there you go,) when it's happening to you, there isn't much else you can think about.

Pregnancy is like nine months of acquired situational narcissism, it's all about us and we want to make sure we're normal. Every little cramp or worry or symptom sent me right to Google, not to mention to the pages of every book I could find. If other pregnant girls are like me, this is all new to them, too. I hope ExploitingMyBaby.com will be a place to do what I've always tried to do as a writer, tell the truth even when it makes me look like an asshole.

Exclusive Photos by John Fugelsang / used with permission