Multiple-choice question about motherhood

By Marcia

I have read my umpteenth short story (number umpteen: "Ghost Knife" by Sharon Pomerantz) in which a single 30something narrator describes her married, new-mother friend as dulled, fat, covered in acne, ignored by her husband, messy, bored, locked in a haze of nursing, lonely, frustrated ... I could go on, but I'm irritating myself all over again.

Is this how most women feel? I'm not in Everything-Is-Beyootiful Land here, don't get me wrong -- Isaac was fussing and thrashing in my lap as I finished the first paragraph and I had to retire to the diaper-changing table (nope, nothing there) -- but this doesn't resemble how I feel about my life at all.

I need someone to tell me whether:

a) The mothers in these stories are extroverts. If I weren't an inveterate, computer-lovin' introvert, I too would be climbing the walls. (And ugly, somehow.)

b) The women who write these stories don't know any new mothers, and write based on a story they once read. That writer also based her work on a story she once read, and so on, and so forth, back to the original new-mother story, which was written by a man.

c) I'm the weirdo. Everyone else feels dull, fat... and so on. Or they feel that way enough of the time for the depiction to resonate with them a little bit instead of just irritating the shit out of them.

d) Everyone in America feels this way. It's something they put in the water out there, like fluoride. I've only escaped because we drink bottled, in Egypt.

e) I really am dull, fat, covered in acne, ignored by my husband, messy, bored... and will recognize all this in due time.

Answers?