Unplanned parenthood

Alyson Palmer is sitting in a raised pedicure chair in an East Village salon, her feet dunked in slippery water for some last-minute, kid-free pampering before she hops a plane to Sweden with her family. A bassist and vocalist with the band BETTY for more than 20 years, as well as a director of the Mamapalooza arts organization, she and longtime partner and bandmate Tony Salvatore are the parents of two kids: Ruby, now 5, and Lake, an 18-month-old boy. She meets the question “Are you done having children?” with mock horror.

“Yes!” she exclaims, eyes widening below a fringe of dark, kinky-curly hair. “We don’t move to New York because we’re going to be baby-breeding machines, right? It would cut into our MoMA time.” Palmer says that after the birth of Ruby, whom she loosely refers to as a “9/11 baby,” the couple were content with the status quo. While they had discussed the possibility of a second child, it was a vague, far-off notion. Then the family moved from their Lower East Side rental to a nearby co-op; in the midst of all the chaos, Palmer and Salvatore managed to enjoy some spontaneous passion.

“We had sex one time,” Palmer says. “Normally there would have been condoms, but we were moving, downsizing.… I did some quick math in my head and figured it was just impossible to get pregnant.”

Palmer failed to connect her subsequent weight gain and irritability to the incident. When her doctor revealed the result of a blood test by announcing, “Congratulations!” she burst into tears. “Not because I didn’t ever want another child,” she says, “but because the timing was just so inappropriate.”

She admits that on this go-round, maternal love did not come instantaneously, as it had with Ruby, and that she grappled with guilt in the beginning. “My son came in like a stranger from another planet to our lives,” she explains. “I hadn’t planned on falling in love again.”

Today, Palmer proudly shows off a cell-phone photo of redheaded Lake, cherubic and laughing. She freely tells friends about his being a surprise. “It’s part of the miracle of life,” she gushes. “Telling is a way of sharing the miracle, even prolonging it.”