The Pregnancy Police

On deflecting unsolicited advice and inappropriate questions.

By Meagan Francis

As I'm getting closer to my third trimester, and am showing now even underneath my bulky winter coat, I've been once again noticing how the sight of a pregnant woman seems to bring people--and their opinions--out of the woodwork.

Each time I've been pregnant I've been approached by strangers who fancied themselves instant experts on pregnancy: though they sometimes have no childbirth or pregnancy experience of their own, they still feel compelled to relay advice, often medically-impossible tales of birth gone wrong, and predictions about my unborn baby's gender, due date, size, or temperament.

For instance, there was the attractive young Italian waiter who assured me that my ultrasound technician was wrong in declaring my last baby to be a boy. "I say she is certainly a girl," he said in a thick accent, staring down the neckline of my shirt.

I have had total strangers declare that I wouldn't make it until my due date, a few even predicting that the baby would "just fall out" while I was walking down the street. People have watched my belly shift with a particularly hard kick and informed me that I will give birth to a football player, tap dancer, or a baby afflicted with Restless Legs Syndrome.

But perhaps even worse than the instant experts are the people who feel that it's their duty to horrify pregnant women with gruesome tales of their own--or their mother's, sister's, cousin's, or hairdresser's--births. Just listen to the horror stories, heavily laced with hyperbole, that experienced mothers will often tell to try to "educate" a soon-to-be first-time mom and you'll understand why women tend to be afraid of childbirth:

"And that's when I started beating my head against the wall, hoping I would either be knocked unconscious or die."

"Oh yeah? That's nothing. I punched a nurse in the nose, wrestled a passing police officer to the ground, took his gun, drove to the anesthesiologist's house, kidnapped him at gunpoint and forced him to come back to the hospital so I could get my epidural."

"You think you had it bad? My baby came out sideways. I had to undergo 20 hours of reconstructive surgery when it was all over, and I'll never be able to sit down again."

And on and on it goes, until the poor first-time pregnant mom listening is reduced to a quivering mass of dread. And the reality, of course, is that most births go smoothly, some go not-so-smoothly--but scaring somebody out of her gourd ahead of time isn't likely to help the process along.

But usually I just listen, nodding and trying to hide my amusement. I wonder if, in these days of technology, e-mail and cell phones, when people tend to be isolated from extended family and reserved in public, pregnancy and birth is one tie that still binds us--we've all been through it at least once, whether as the birther or the birthee.

Already, if I believe all the predictions I've been dealt so far, I'll be giving birth either a month early or two weeks late to a hermaphrodite ballet dancer-slash-soccer player, my labor will be both short and easy (like my last three) and long and horrid (because the fifth is bound to be a surprise) and my baby will be both hairless and hairy (perhaps bald on top, but with a beard and a hairy back?).

I bet you can't wait to see the pictures.