When People Comment on How Big You Are.

Yet another suggestion from a friend in the family way (who is NOT huge!).

Have you ever gone to Pancho's, Furr's, Golden Corral, or really anywhere that feeds you too much? Have you then walked out with a food baby, your belly so full that you look slightly pregnant? Remember how miserably you sat in the car on the way home, and the relief that came from unbuttoning your pants once no one was around? Let me ask you - would you have wanted your picture taken at that exact moment in time? Did you feel beautiful? Would you have wanted that EXACT moment to be when you ran into your high school rival, who had married your high school sweetheart, both of them fresh off of the runways of Milan? No. You felt like crap. Now imagine instead that instead of carbs and coke that you swallowed too much of, you swallowed a baby. A big baby. A baby that needs a big, roomy uterus, a nice, healthy, thick placenta, plenty of amniotic fluid, and causes constipation, water retention... and moodiness. You're waddling around, doing your best to look fly in those fly-less maternity pants. You're glowing with excitement and a fresh round of vomiting. You walk everywhere belly-first, proud to finally be able to show off what your body has been working so hard on. Then it happens.
Maybe it was a relative. It could have been a stranger. Either way, they better run. "You look so big, are you sure you're not having twins?" Jerk. You know it's happened to you. I know it's happened to me. No matter who says it, it's not okay. Ever. I have a friend who actually WAS carrying twins, and she looked just fine. I have a friend who was carrying one GIANT baby, and she looked miserable. Guess what, people? Babies get BIG. The stork is a myth. Babies do not appear bundled cleanly in fresh linens, delivered by birds - who are actually teeming with germs and bacteria. Babies get nice and comfy for a long time, and grow grow GROW the whole time they're in there! Almost from the moment of conception, a woman's body begins changing to prepare for this growing. Hips spread, pelvis shifts, back aches... We had enough trouble fitting just OURSELVES into our jeans, and now we have to shove a baby in there, too!
Think back to the food baby and how unattractive you felt. Now add a bigger nose, bigger feet, bigger hips, bigger rear, bigger belly... there's really only one part of us that we're excited to see get bigger, and even THAT gets unbearable. Hormones make hair... grow. Hormones make digestion... interesting. Simply put, we feel GROSS. Your comment on our ever-expanding size does not feel like a pat on the back for doing such a great job at growing this healthy baby. It feels like a slap in the face - the very broken-out face. We know we're big. Our pants tell us. Our bed tells us. The seatbelt tells us. Believe us, you're not breaking any kind of news to us.
You know whose job it is to break news to us? The doctor's. And thanks to modern medicine (that funny little thing that pregnancy spectators seem to forget about so often), the days of delivery-room twin surprises are nearly obsolete. So if we were having twins, we'd know. I had a friend who got absolutely miserably enormous, and she knew it. But I also knew that she had seen a doctor and was, in fact, only having one enormous baby. Did all of the comments she received make her feel any better? No. Did they help her? No. All those people did was call a dangerously hormonal and sympathetic-to-a-jury woman fat.
So shut yer yap, world. You grow a person and see if your body doesn't change in the slightest. We'll be over in the air-conditioned corner, allowing our bodies to do whatever needs to be done to grow a healthy family. Boo-ya.