Telling People You're Pregnant: Lessons from Tina Fey

In addition to being With Child this past week, I have also been With Rhinovirus. (Translation = I had a cold.) And while usually I would approach a week of sniffling and sneezing with a whole arsenal of drugs to dull the pain, make me lightheaded, and knock me out so I can sleep through the night, this time I went au naturel. It was pretty miserable. From now on, whenever I am reading my historical fiction (translation = romance novels) and daydreaming about living in a simpler time, I need someone to remind me: all of the people wearing those lovely flouncy dresses had no access to NyQuil. Forget modern dentistry, anesthesia, deodorant, etc. When you are up all night sneezing, you will do unspeakable things for some NyQuil. Well, I considered some, anyway.

But last week was not only defined by my prodigious tissue consumption. It was also the week in which I told people I'm pregnant - not only the close friends and family who were notified of the whole ongoing  infertility saga by email or on the phone, but the world at large. I told my work colleagues, I told several acquaintances, I went to a party in a maternity dress and made passing references to "my due date," and by and large it went really well. It feels good to have things out in the open, but I was amused at the range of responses I got. There was my favorite:

:::sounds of hyperventilation through the phone line::: "Aaaaaaaaahhhhhh! I can't believe it! Oh my gosh! This is such big news!"

And my least favorite:

"Oh, I knew you were pregnant. I saw that you were starting to get a little belly a month ago."

I would characterize the first response as pure joy, which was wonderful and very much appreciated. But the second example was really ridiculous, because first of all, no you didn't. I didn't have a little belly a month ago. A month ago, I was still eating the equivalent of one string cheese per day and desperately supplementing my diet with ginger or peppermint tea. All of my clothes still fit and the scale was telling me I'd actually lost a few pounds. And secondly, WTF? You can't muster up a "congratulations" at the beginning of that bodysnarking sentence?

Initially I rolled my eyes, but when I thought about it a bit more, the person behind response #2 actually let on more than I suspect she wanted to with her comments. First of all, she has a young daughter and went on and on about how easy it was to conceive at the time of her pregnancy, but despite dropping giant hints about wanting to have a sibling last year, nothing's happened on that front for some months now. And she's always had some serious issues with her weight, too, which might explain her supposed scrutiny of my own body. In Bossypants, Tina Fey talks about the various things people have said to her over the years about her facial scar and how they often reveal more about the question-asker than anything else: for instance, the person who wondered aloud if her attacker had "marked" her as a child so he'd be able to find her later in life. (Creepy suggestion, dude!) I think the same thing is happening here. To Snarky McBellyscrutinizer, I'm guessing that my pregnancy was a way for her to address her own body insecurity and, yes, feel a bit better about her own possible fertility issues. And who among us hasn't been in the same position? Hell, I'm wearing maternity jeans right now and I still wince when I hear someone talking about being pregnant. But I'm polite when I hear those announcements. And I always was. I can't control what people say to me, but I can control my response, which I hope reads simply as "I'm so happy for you!" And then: move on. Change it up. Find another topic.

Speaking of which, how 'bout those Dolphins?!?