Goodbye Polite Society

Pregnancy is a strange anti-filter device for the world. To survive polite society, people usually have some sort of filter on their brain, keeping them from saying everything they think. You may think your boss is a prick, for instance, but that filter keeps you from saying it aloud, and thus succeeds in keeping you gainfully employed. You might think your husband is getting a bit chunky, but you keep it to yourself to make marriage work. You might think your friend is a fucking loser, but you keep it locked deep inside. Without the internal filters keeping our mouths at bay, polite society wouldn’t be so polite at all. It would, in fact, be a pretty unpleasant if interesting place to be.


Pregnant women live in this anti-filter world. It’s as if the mere thought of a pregnant lady forces jokes about weight and flatulence to come flying out of people’s mouths. They are impulsive words, shot out like projectile vomit. I have yet to figure out if people really do realize what they are saying, or if they are so past the filter stage they are hallucinating. Pregnant women are no longer women, they are pregnant women. Pregnant women, it seems, are fair game for ridicule.

We found ourselves biting our tongues at what people would say. At times, my husband would snipe something at someone who irresponsibly insulted me, but mostly we shut our mouths in deference to the brain filters that had somehow been lost. Restoration of these filters, it seemed, was a lengthy progress.

“Oh my god, I could never be pregnant! I mean, god you can’t drink, you have to watch what you eat, you get fat! Oh wow, I could never, ever be pregnant.” The girlfriend of one of our friends laughed gaily as she downed her martini. “Yeah, I could never, ever be pregnant. But you guys...yeah. Good luck.”

“Oh hey, you’re pregnant? Wow, I was wondering why you were getting so fat!”

“When I was pregnant, I gained all my weight in my face too!”

Despite all this, I couldn’t wait for when I was larger. I couldn’t wait until I was actually showing, until I actually looked like I was pregnant. My boobs had gained a full cup size, and since I had started out with C cups prior, my new D’s were causing me all types of problems.

Practically, I didn’t have any bras that fit.

Physically, when we went to the beach my nipples threatened repeat appearances.

And mentally they required a lot more concentration, as they had enlarged to the point where they acted as both bib and napkin and kept catching everything I dropped from my dinner plate into the endless cavern between them. It made for some embarrassing meals.

I couldn’t wait until my belly caught up with my enormous chest. My husband couldn’t wait either, and we began to plan our future together. It was still early, but we had seen the heartbeat. We had lasted almost to the end of our 1st trimester with no complications. And we had less than a 5% chance that something would go wrong.

Was planning for something that had a less than 5% chance of survival morbid?