Either you’re stuffing your face nonstop, or you’re throwing up all over Midtown Manhattan. There is no in-between when your life becomes a New York sitcom.

It was 1997 and I was working for Nation’s Restaurant News on Park Ave. as a newsletter writer. It was heaven. My job was literally to eat well and write about it. Everything we did was in restaurants: our 401K meetings, general work meetings, all of it. In Midtown Manhattan eateries. We were surrounded by amazing food constantly.

When we weren’t at restaurants, the restaurants were sending their food to our newsroom. In massive quantities. Chefs were sending us invites to new restaurant openings. It was a trip.

Then I got a fun surprise pregnancy, at 38 years old. Holy fuck. I’d been told I wouldn’t have children. Interesting. Plus, I was only working at my brand-new job for two months. The universe was having a ball at my expense.

And now I was already showing, like all the women in my family, but I was far from ready to tell anyone. So, I had to find clever ways to veil myself like a pregnant TV star until I was ready to reveal myself. I did everything but carry a giant plant around in front of me.

First, there was the magazine’s “quick 15,” a bet of sorts by the other restaurant reporters on how much weight a newbie might gain in their first two months on the job. The average gain was 10 to 15 lbs. before you learned how to taste food without consuming it; it was an art.

Ha, ha, guys, I gained 15 lbs. in my first two months! From the food. That’s right. From all the food. I was a fatty.

Also, our tabloid style magazine was quite large, physically; especially if you walked around with it wide open, pretending like you were really, really interested in reading it all the fricking time. It really hid a lot. I read it religiously.

Soon I was out of my own clothes and wearing Chuck’s much larger pants. Then his shirts. Suddenly I was walking around the newsroom like Annie Hall.

Then the constant odor of food started to get to me; the lurid smells of Midtown did not help. Baby did not like. Taxis, hot pretzels, bus fumes… I’d thrown up on every corner of Park Ave. near 56^th St. at one point or another. I would just hang onto the side of the building and barf. No one noticed; no one cared.

It extended to stores, subways and even restaurants, especially spicy cuisine. Ugh. I finally had to confess when one of the editors asked me to go to a new Southwestern-style restaurant for a meeting.

“Please,” I begged, “don’t make me smell Mexican food.”

And that’s how I announced my fun surprise pregnancy to my bosses.

Meanwhile my fiancé, Chuck, had been calling me Elaine before I even worked in the city because I was an editor with brown curly hair, like Elaine on Seinfeld. I even had a crazy neighbor who just walked into my apartment whenever he felt like it.

And it turned out that my colleague Mark was cousins with the guy on which the Kramer character was based. The episode where Kramer sells “The Real Kramer” tours was after Mark’s cousin tried to sell tours from his own car.

I actually parked next to him in a New York garage once. It was wild.

I had George Costanza’s red telephone at home. And Jerry Seinfeld’s cat potholder. And Elaine’s shoes. None of this was on purpose; it’s like they’d been watching my apartment and writing about it.

I even went to check out the Soup Nazi. Now that was on purpose. It remains the best soup of my life; I had the creamy shrimp bisque. There were maybe 30 people in line, and a couple of camera crews filming the whole thing. It was surreal.

Everyone in line was joking around, but when we got close to the ordering queue, we all shut up, just in case. No one wanted to piss off the soup man. I took my bread and soup and left without saying a word.

Mangia!

Food odors were now alluring; the Cinnabon at the top of the subway exit at Lexington & 57^th called to me each morning, with its aromas of sweet cinnamon and hot coffee, like a 5,000-calorie dream. It was the only way I could get my gigantic pregnant body up the stairs; the fragrance pulled me, like a cartoon.

Otherwise, I waddled around Midtown, eating whatever anyone suggested. I was wobbling down the street one day and heard a woman ask her friend what she’d had for lunch.

“A peanut butter and jelly sandwich and a yogurt,” was her response. I turned left into the next bodega I saw and got that PBJ and yogurt. And it was the best lunch I ever had.

If she had said, “turtle toes and an eagle egg,” I would have gotten that, too.

Near the end, when I was so pregnant I had to work from home and balance my laptop on the two inches of lap I had left, I had Friends for inspiration. The episode where pregnant Phoebe found Santa pants at Goodwill was everything. I went into labor during Friends a week later.

So, what did I learn from living in a real New York sitcom? It’s always something. Food is life. Soup Nazi rules. Babies eat a lot. Santa pants are where it’s at.

And I really should have named the baby Seven.

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