When I first came to Moscow, I didn't see how I could possibly have a baby here.


Not that I was worried about medical care. Somehow, I figured, those details would work themselves out. My concerns were more mundane: I was afraid of missing out on life.


Arriving in Moscow in the ebb of my 20s, I could hear my biological clock slowly ticking. I knew it was that time, but I just couldn't budge. Like working women all over the world, I was worried that motherhood would yank me from my adult life, sap me of my intellect and render me a babbling mush mind. And there was no place I feared that happening more than in Moscow.


I had studied Russian for 10 years and was determined to make the most of living here. I had mentally carved out a life that was dynamic and full of intellectual pursuits: long evenings of heady philosophical debates around a crowded kitchen table, regular trips to the theater, political demonstrations and the like. I guess I envisioned myself diligently getting to the bottom of the Russian soul.


Well, as you have already guessed, I finally gave in to the elements and decided to become a mom. By my fourth year here, anyway, my research on the Russian soul had gradually been supplanted by evenings of frozen pizza and tapes of "L.A. Law." What loss could there be of Russian culture if I was scarcely paying attention?


So I happily had a baby and did not worry anymore about missing sessions of the new Duma, hitting every concert, or reading philosopher Nikolai Berdyayev's "The Fate of Russia" -- one of many books I have bought over the years and kept meaning to read.


The funny thing is, now that my beautiful baby is here, I have discovered a completely new Moscow. I worried that I would never meet people if I was at home up to my elbows in diapers; instead, I have made a whole fun new group of friends through a weekend playgroup (interesting people whose paths I never would have crossed had I continued my previous existence as a couch potato). Friends who love to hold babies invite our daughter over to visit a lot, and we go along as chaperons. I have met dozens of neighbors too on walks with the baby: admiring babushki always tell me how cute she is, and then say they hope I have a boy next time.


I feared I would lose my Russian to Mother Goose and baby talk. Wrong. I speak more Russian now than ever before, thanks to my daughter's nanny, and am proud of my new vocabulary (like diyates : diaper rash, or srygyvat' : to spit up).


I get out shopping. I went to Detsky Mir for the first time in ages, and confirmed that it still is a store for children and not just an auto salon. I bought diapers and an inflatable swimming pool. I've been to the Babycare store and I've seen the "New Russian" stroller that everyone is talking about.


I even have a new perspective on Russian politics. I spent most of Boris Yeltsin's recent press conference trying to imagine the president calming his screaming infant daughter by pulling her to suckle on his manly chest (an incident he describes in his recently published memoirs). Would I have appreciated such crisis-solving ingenuity before?