Snoogle.

A brief sampling of product names I discovered during a grueling trip to Babies R Us today: Snoogle, Boppie, My Brest Friend (seriously, without the "a"), and Preggie Pops. There were more, but I kind of glazed over and gave myself that thousand-yard stare pep talk: just get past the next display, focus on the register, tune out the bib that says in bright pink letters, "My mom is hotter than your mom." This is the same way I used to get through long distance runs with shooting pains in my feet and a cramp in my side: make it to the next telephone pole, now the next, and so on.

What I keep thinking of is that scene in "Best in Show" where the yuppie couple loses their weimaraner's favorite toy before the competition and Parker Posey starts screeching, "Where's Busy Bee? Where the fuck is Busy Bee?" I can't help but thinking that perhaps many baby products are named the way they are because some sadistic soul in marketing actually wants a hormonal woman with stitches in her taint to turn to her husband in complete, black-out rage demanding to know what he did with the Boppie.

But I did it-- I actually bought one, the Snoogle, and trust me it was out of sheer desperation. My hips are being slowly driven wider apart, a feat I never would have thought imaginable (or necessary, for Christ's sake, they're already prominent enough), and the process turns side sleeping into this elaborate choreography of knee pillows and leg pillows and back pillows and stomach wedge pillows that has to be constantly built and rebuilt when one side gets too painful and I have to flip.

The Snoogle is like a giant outline of an ear, and according to its label, can be snoogled into all kinds of configurations to help with anything from sitting with hemorrhoids to reading with acid reflux to coughing with a C-section scar. Quite practical, in other words, this ridiculously named thing. And oh, how it's comfortable... I laid down today to try it out and was out like a light for three hours.

So even if the same cartel of babble-loving pun criminals that name Texas beauty salons is at work in the baby product industry, I reluctantly bow to the genius of the Snoogle, and resolve to keep an open mind.