Living in oblivion

Some pregnant women complain about people commenting on how huge they are. Not me… my complaint is the “wonderful people” I work with who live in oblivion and have just realized I am pregnant… today.

I just got back from my one of my coworker’s offices. He is one of the few people I still work with regularly back from my post-doc time. We have had a paper in the works for the last year or so, usually when one of us has the time. Since spending time in the lab, on my feet, is just really unpleasant, I thought I would give this paper another good hard push. I was leaving his office after ambushing him with a multitude of questions, and mentioned to him that I wanted to work hard on this in the next 6 weeks so we could (maybe) send it off before I go out on leave.

He looks at me and says, “leave?”

“Maternity leave,” I told him.

“I didn’t even know you were pregnant! When are you due?”

My gut tells me to say ‘are you freaking kidding me, you didn’t know I was pregnant?’, but I smiled and said “six weeks” instead.

“Really!” he says, “well you just started showing then, huh? I swear you weren’t pregnant last month.” (Yeah, that’s it, I am 8.5 months pregnant and I just started showing. Rolling my eyes. And I am not touching that last sentence with a 10 foot pole.)

“J!” I exclaimed, “I am freaking huge! My shirts don’t even cover the bottom of my tummy, which with this wind just sucks! How can you even say you didn't know I was pregnant?”

He laughed and told me, “well it should be a compliment, you hide pregnancy well. And why am I always the last to know? I was the last when you were pregnant with Leif too!” (Ok, so he may have been the last to find out with this one at 6 weeks from my due date. But he was FAR from the last with Leif considering he found out at a Christmas party I didn’t attend thanks to a blabbermouth female coworker - Leif was born in late July.)

And can I just ask, why should my ability to “hide pregnancy” be a positive thing? And I was never trying to hide anything! I can laugh though, truly I am, because J is one of those single nuclear physicists I work with who has told me in the past that “after awhile your foot just starts to taste good in your mouth”. If he didn’t say weird off the wall things to me I would wonder if he hadn’t been kidnapped and replaced with a look alike spy.

You know, if this was an isolated incident from today, I probably wouldn’t be neurosing so much… but earlier today I was in the restroom in my building and one of the older women who works in my building came in.

“NM,” she says, “I haven’t talked to you in forever!” She turns around from washing her hands. “Oh my goodness! Are you… you know… I hate to even say it because if you aren’t I am going to kick myself since you never ask a woman if she is pregnant.”

“Yes,” I tell her and she is immediately relieved.

“I am so out of the loop,” she tells me, “I didn’t even know. When are you due?”

“Six weeks,” I tell her and I thought I was going to have to catch her.

“I walk by your office everyday and I didn’t even notice!” she exclaims.

Really, I am not trying to hide it. And the fact that I have had two of these episodes in one day makes me more wonder… I mean, I understand the “well I was wondering if you weren’t pregnant”, comments. But taking people completely by surprise? That doesn’t make me feel quite so great.