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Emily Giffin

Baby proof

acknowledgments

Many thanks to my family and friends for their love and support over the past year. I am especially grateful to Mary Ann Elgin, Sarah Giffin, and Nancy LeCroy Mohler, who, as always, were there from the very beginning of this story with their invaluable input. I couldn't ask for a better mother, sister, and friend.

Abiding appreciation to my exceptional editor, Jennifer Enderlin, and to everyone at St. Martin's Press, including Kim Cardascia, Sally Richardson, Matthew Shear, George Witte, Jeff Capshew, Andy Lecount, Tom Suno, Gina Wynn, Brian Heller, Christine Jaeger, Jeff Cope, Jeff Willmann, Rob Renzler, Matt Baldacci, Carrie Hamilton-Jones, Nancy Trypuc, Anne Marie Tallberg, Josh Zacharias, John Murphy, Dori Weintraub, Tommy Semosh, Jenn Taber, Christina Ripo, Harriet Seltzer, Christina Harcar, Kerry Nordling, Mike Storrings, Elizabeth Catalano, Kelly Too, and Nicole Liebowitz. Thanks also to Kari Atwell and the good people at H. B. Fenn.

Special thanks to Lisa Reed, Julie Portera, Allyson Wenig Jacoutot, Jennifer New, Eric Kiefer, Brian Spainhour, Selina Cicogna, and Stephen Lee for their friendship and generous contributions to this manuscript. I owe so much to Stephany Evans, a fine agent and an even finer friend. And I am so lucky to have Carrie Minton, the best assistant anywhere.

A warm thank-you to all the gracious book clubs and bookstores I visited, and to readers everywhere who came to my signings or took the time to send me such kind and inspiring e-mails.

And finally, I thank my husband, Buddy Blaha, and our sons, Edward and George, for giving all of this meaning.

one

I never wanted to be a mother.

Even when I was a little girl, playing dolls with my two sisters, I assumed the role of the good Aunt Claudia.

I would bathe and diaper and cradle their plastic babies and then be on my way, on to more exciting pursuits in the backyard or basement. Grownups called my position on motherhood "cute"-flashing me that same knowing smile they give little boys who insist that all girls have cooties. To them, I was just a spunky tomboy who would someday fall in love and fall in line.

Those grown-ups turned out to be partially right. I did outgrow my tomboy stage and I did fall in love-several times, in fact-beginning with my high school boyfriend, Charlie. But when Charlie gazed into my eyes after our senior prom and asked me how many children I wanted, I reported a firm "zero. "

"None?" Charlie looked startled, as if I had just confessed to him a terrible, dark secret. "Why not?"

I had a lot of reasons, which I laid out that night, but none that satisfied him. Charlie wasn't alone. Of the many boyfriends who followed him, none seemed to understand or accept my feelings. And although my relationships ended for a variety of reasons, I always had the sense that babies were a factor. Still, I truly believed that I would someday find my guy, that one person who would love me as is, without condition, without the promise of children. I was willing to wait for him.