Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, January 12, 1995                   TAG: 9501200008
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: 1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: BETH MACY
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

FROM THE LITTLE TRIALS OF HAVING A BABY A BOOK IS BORN

Among the movies that she recommends pregnant women not see: ``The Hand That Rocks the Cradle.''

And she's fascinated by the concept of ``soap opera babies'': ``You know, a baby's born on a soap opera, and you never see it teething, no diaper rash, no colic.

``And then eight weeks later the baby's in the second grade.''

Nutt, a free-lance writer who lives in Salem, has just published her first book, ``And Baby Makes Four'' (Northwest Publishing, $7.95) - a day-by-day chronicle of her nine-month odyssey that starts when the home pregnancy test dot turns purple and ends with the birth of her son Kyle.

Along the way, Nutt chronicles the lighter side of morning sickness, bad perms, teddy-bear maternity frocks, a sun-eclipsing tummy and those stubborn, hard-to-clean stretchmarks.

She pays homage to the inventor of the epidural, but scorns the inventor of the doctor's scales - the ones that weigh their victims at least four pounds heavier than they really are.

``With your first child, you can't get your hands on enough books - you read, read, read,'' says Nutt, 32, describing the birth of her first child, Courtney, now 4.

With her second child, Nutt figured, why not laugh through all the weight gain? ``I gained 40 pounds with Kyle and 36 with Courtney,'' she recalls. ``And the way I handled it was to make fun of it.

``I envisioned my water breaking on top of the aerobics class.''

She laughed when she was playing softball for the Roanoker magazine team - at five months pregnant - and got flattened by a runner sliding into second base. Her husband, Bryan, didn't think it was so funny, though, suggesting she play left field instead the next game.

``So then I broke my nose playing left field,'' she says. ``The ball took a bad hop, and I didn't judge it right ... there was blood everywhere, and I had to keep playing because we didn't have enough people. My OB/GYN couldn't believe it either; he just looked at me.''

As for choosing a moniker for her son, don't think the surname Nutt makes for easy naming. ``There are a lot of things that sound really stupid with the word Nutt,'' Nutt says. ``Hazel and Hickory were definitely out.''

A former newspaper reporter in suburban Atlanta and Suffolk, Nutt does most of her writing in the evenings and while her children nap. She's currently at work on her second book, a yearlong survival guide for parents of preschoolers.

``It's sort of a sequel to this one. I'm trying to follow in my hero's footsteps,'' she says, referring to Erma Bombeck.

``My goal is I want people to say, `Yeah, that happened to me,' to have some sort of empathy, to relate to it.''

And there's still the goal of losing her remaining four pounds of pregnancy weight, 23 months after the fact.

``I have one of those metabolisms where it's like an act of Congress for me to lose weight,'' she says. ``I mean, just think, I gained 40 pounds - and I worked out the whole time.''

Nutt will sign copies of ``And Baby Makes Four'' from 1 to 3 p.m. Saturday at Books Strings & Things in downtown Roanoke.

Beth Macy is a features department staff writer and Thursday columnist - who also gained 40 pounds during pregnancy.