Quiz! You see before you...

[metaphortunate]

When you see a person who is visibly pregnant, you feel:

• vaguely grossed out and embarrassed for her, as though you were seeing someone loudly hawk up phlegm or perform some other unattractive and probably sticky biological function in public.
  
• a protective tenderness. You want to offer her a seat, or get her a snack, or stand between her and the person who’s about to try to touch her belly.
  
• a creeping biological horror, as if watching a video of Cordyceps fungus infesting an ant, changing its behavior, killing it, and erupting from the back of its head.
  
• like giving her a high-five!
  
• a strange, slight jealousy. You don’t want to be pregnant; and yet.
  
• an impotent terror, as if watching someone trip and fall towards a counter and reflexively put out their hand down into the sink where a garbage disposal is running. You want to shriek NOOOO! STOP! and you know it is far, far too late.
  
• welcoming. Another member has joined the club; you’ll have so much to talk about, and now there will be someone else who always has wet wipes that you can borrow.
  
• a jealousy so strong it tastes bitter. If she already has children, you might have to just look away; keep your face still.
  
• pleased that you might have found someone who could use your outgrown newborn clothes, or baby swing.
  
• irrationally terrified that she might break her water or throw up or something and you’ll have to deal with it.

ETA:

• "Better you than me, sister."

Comments

[rosefox]

Sympathy.

[norah]

This. And a vague glad-it's-not-me. I get the weird jealousy when I see people with wee babies, but not for pregnant women.

[jae]

I get the "glad-it's-not-me", but I also get (simultaneously!) an appreciation for the beauty of the way pregnancy makes a woman's body look (what can I say, I like curves). I just want to admire it from the outside. ;)

-J

[metaphortunate]

Dude! I forgot "Better you than me, sister"!

[jae]

I know you're just trying to make it sound snappier, but "better you than me, sister" has a different connotation from "glad it's not me"--it implies that someone has to get pregnant. While I suppose that's technically the case if you care about sustaining the species, it's not actually a thought I've ever had personally.

-J

[metaphortunate]

Interesting: I see what you mean, but to me, "glad it's not me" has the same connotation. "Glad I'm not," wouldn't.

[jae]

Right, "glad I'm not" has it even less, but "glad it's not me" still has more element of choice behind it. More "glad I didn't feel moved to make that choice" and less "someone had to do it, and I'm glad it wasn't me in the end," which makes me frown.

-J

[metaphortunate]

But the interesting thing is, I phrased it that way because - as I'm sure you've guessed - these are all things that I have thought at various points in my life, and that one is one that I sometimes think, now, as a mother of two, and it's not that I'm thinking that someone has to continue to get pregnant, it's just that I see a pregnant woman and, being someone who thinks in words, all the time, among the many things I think and feel, I think "Better you than me, sister."