My Apologies To Pregnant Women

I need to publicly apologize to all the pregnant women in the world who have walked by me these last 5 1/2 months. I’m sorry for having so blatantly gawked at you. I should have had better manners, since I am from Texas, but it’s just that I feel like a dog at a kill shelter watching my buddy who’s been in the slammer for 3 1/2 months longer than me, and I know where he’s going is where I’m going.  So yeah, I’m scared. Especially before my bump started to show. Back then I felt like I was in hiding, able to observe from a safe distance. I don’t know how the preggos didn’t sniff me out.  I thought being pregnant was like being gay–if you are one you know who else is. But they never caught on and so I watched with mouth agape as they waddled to their cars, picked out baby room decor and asked for the nearest restroom.

But now I’m here and starting to show and I don’t know if I like that people can tell. Especially since I’m in that weird stage of it, where to some it may look like I’ve been drinking too much beer rather than had sex without protection. As a result, karma’s getting the better of me and I’m getting double gawked at by other incognito mother’s-to-be and the security dude at my office. And I understand it, I’m a walking “Morphing-Into-Something-Else-Being” right now. I’m straddling the two worlds of no baby and yes baby and no one can do anything but watch as I drift into another reality and become one of “them”.

“Them” as in couples with babies. Not that I ever wanted to think of them as “them”, but so many families rip themselves from the rest of us. And I don’t think that has to be the case. When my husband and I visited Barcelona a couple of years ago, families were walking around and hanging out at bars and restaurants filled with drunken singles. They didn’t get all huffy when a person next to their baby started smoking or got wasted. Sure they might have moved the kid, but they moved, they didn’t ask anyone else to. To each his own! As a result, all seemed happy. The parents didn’t even look like parents the way American parents do. Something about parents here; it’s like they lose their identity and end up looking like casual fashion ads from REI where the family is dressed to compliment one another so everyone can see they are of the same unit. While overseas parents were just as dressed up or down as anyone else-very much themselves; by chance they had a little one dangling off their shoulders, but they kept talking away with their friends without their kids interrupting or expecting to be the center of attention.

So why is it that the generation that brought pajamas to office attire and tattoos to the mainstream have somehow or other become more obnoxiously sterile and constrictive about what a family should be than those in the 50’s who propagated the Stepford Wife nuclear family ideal? Aren’t we cooler than that? Do we have to be so uptight like a bad rom-com female protagonist? The strangest part about it all is that some have assumed that I’d like to be one of “them” without ever even asking.

Just because I’m gonna be a mom, please don’t assume I want to go to baby conventions and events (seriously I just found out about some). Just because I’m gonna be a mom, don’t think that being a mom is the number one thing on my mind (well except in my blog). And don’t think because I’m gonna be a mom, I’m as excited about joining the mommy club as you might have been.

Thank God we have friends who somehow balance being parents with being people. I know there are ways to make life’s conventional roles your own. In my marriage, we never assumed that we needed to “settle down” and only hang out with other married couples. We continued to surround ourselves with all different people in all different stages of their lives. Of course, I did feel a similar slip into a different reality when I left the world of singles. It was a little scary then to know I’d no longer get to spend a night with girlfriends partying it up to prove that the guy who dumped me made an obviously major mistake (look at me now!); but the change into married life felt reasonable since many of our friends were in relationships themselves. We may have been the only married people for awhile, but not the only couple, so we never felt too different. But suddenly a baby comes on board and I see it in the eyes of my friends–I’m falling off the life raft and slowly slipping into the abyss. As my stomach grows I see their faces grow more distant. I want to say, please don’t let me fall, but I know they’re just waiting to see if I can swim.

Related articles

• Does This Baby Bump Make Me Feel Bad About Myself? Self Magazine Sinks to New Low! (airbrushednation.wordpress.com)

Should I Raise My Kid To Be A Jerk?

Aw man… I thought this whole time I was supposed to figure out how to raise my baby with good old-fashioned values passed down to me from the historically popular ethics specialist, Dr. Jesus Christ. You know, do unto others as you would have them do unto you. That way hopefully the kid will become a good person so they can have the love, empathy, heroism, independence and drive to succeed in life. Sure enough, I was wrong. In July, I read the New York Magazine article “Money-Empathy Gap” and it turns out being nice just makes you sad and poor. My alternative? Raise the kid to be a jerk. Even worse, maybe even a douchebag.

Wait how does that make any sense? Isn’t success all about the people you know? Don’t people promote people they like? In research conducted by Timothy Judge and his crew at Notre Dame, folks seem to be drawn to promote the people they don’t like at a company rather than their friends. This is because those who are less “agreeable” are more likely to be associated with money, and therefore higher positions–whether or not they are actually qualified doesn’t matter, they are still seen by others as a better fit for upper management than the “agreeable” type.  Basically it comes to this: the average person sees rich powerful people as jerks, so when they meet a grade-A asshole and a position of power comes up, the  average person will automatically link the asshole with the position whether or not he/she can do the job. After all it’s a natural fit, right?! So to those men who complain that women only like jerks… well, it turns out it’s not just the ladies who like them, men do too.

I can’t help but think, everything I ever learned that I felt so ready to share with my kid…is any of it relevant? In terms of having a happy relationship, I can definitely hand that over, but how to be a good person always looking out for others, I just don’t know if that will make them successful and therefore happy. Yep, I said it… success=happy. I know it’s not cool to even think it, but there is nothing worse than being out of a job and feeling like you have no place or need to fill in this world. Even research shows that poor people are less happy and more stressed than the rich. I don’t want that for my kid. I want my kid to kick ass in his/her field of choice. I wish I could beg the world to stop being pushovers and stop promoting meanies or letting them slide, but wishing won’t get my kid anywhere. Instead I’ll accept the fact that people like the unlikable and stop promoting this fantasy that the nice hardworking person always wins in the end.

So now how do you teach your baby the opposite of everything you know? How does a nice person teach their kids to be jerks? And how do you handle having to live around a douchebag of your making? And so I have my dilemma: for his/her own good should my kid be raised to think about money, getting ahead and feeling entitled enough so he/she will end up entitled in the future; or for my own sanity make my kid the kind of likeable person I would want to hang out with for the remainder of my life?

Aw man… I hate douchebags and everyone who’s contributed to my having to possibly raise one.

Related articles

• The Money-Empathy Gap (nymag.com)
• Do You Have to Be a Jerk to Run a Company? (openforum.com)

My Eyes Are Up Here

I finally know what it must be like for women with big breasts. Not because I’m getting busty–although I finally do fill an A cup–but because no one can look me in the eyes anymore. Everytime I talk to someone they first look down to see if my pregnant gut is sticking out and then to my eyes, back to my gut and then back to my eyes again. Some don’t even waste their time with my face. From the moment they see me, they zero in on my mid-section and won’t stop until they’ve come face to face with it, measured its progress, decided if it’s a girl or a boy and made a comment on if it looks the right size for my stage of pregnancy. Others act like pervs–being sneaky about it like it’s dirty or something, trying to get a sideways look, or waiting until I look away for a second so I don’t catch them take a peak at the abyss of my belly. But you know what? Don’t trouble yourself…look at my stomach! Here ya go world, it’s yours to gawk at. I won’t get offended. It’s not like it’s mine anymore. I don’t even mind people touching my belly. Hell, I’m grabbing people’s hands and making them feel what resembles a plastic guard in my stomach. Why? Because I don’t want to be the only one going through this!

So yes, I understand. You just want to see if my pregnancy this whole time has been real, or be the first one to catch the bump, or revel in the progression of your friend looking like all those other women called mothers that you’ve only heard about but never known in person outside of your own mom. It’s all just weird. Of course you gotta look. I look at it every morning and every night. This week in particular it popped out further than ever. It’s official…I’m pregnant and I’m freaking out! My clothes are no longer fitting and I’m looking like all those women I see at the malls and grocery stores with basketballs in their bellies. I’m one of them now and I can’t stop looking! So go for it. Look. Or take a picture–it’ll last longer. No wait, I already did.