Outed at 28 weeks

Among the things I had heard about second pregnancies was the idea that I should get bigger faster than the first. I was fully expecting to be huge really early, but it didn't really happen. For the first few months I was pretty much on the same weight gain curve that I was with Jackson. That meant I didn't really start showing until about the fifth month of pregnancy. People who knew could tell that I was showing, but there were certainly plenty of people who I didn't know well enough to include in my news-breaking circle. I'd catch these folks stealing furtive glances at my belly and then avoiding eye contact because they didn't want to have to ask if I was pregnant and be caught in an embarrassing error. But I can say that it was at 28 weeks when I grew to a size to be clearly pregnant.

See, I meet with a group of 6 other faculty members every other week. We've been meeting since September, as part of a Medical Education Fellowship. In the beginning, I didn't tell them that I was pregnant mainly because I didn't feel like we ever had an appropriate moment to announce something like that without sounding self-aggrandizing. And then at about the point that a room full of doctors should have recognized that certain anatomical changes were taking place, I decided to just see how long it took them to notice. Finally, at 28 weeks of pregnancy, when I clearly no longer fit into normal clothes, and strangers would walk up to me and rub my belly, one of my colleagues smiled broadly at me in class and asked when I was due. It was kind of funny to hear the other two women exclaim, "I thought it might look like you were pregnant, but I didn't want to say anything." And even funnier to hear the one guy (whose wife just delivered their first baby) say, "Oh. I really don't know how I didn't notice".

Altogether, it's been an interesting sociocultural experience to see how people respond to my growing belly. By the way, I am now growing bigger faster than I did with Jackson. I think my last two weeks of weight gain put me a few weeks from where I was when I delivered Jackson. I can't believe I still have 9 more weeks to grow. When this one comes, I'm going to look like a python after swallowing a small animal.


Clarice