- ‘OOOH DOESN’T THAT FEEL AMAAAZING…’
…as you rub the bump you weren’t invited to rub. Do you seriously not understand that a pregnancy bump isn’t some sort of ‘clip-on extension’ to my body – it is an actual part of me that starts under my boobs and stops at my vagina. My vagina. If you insist on grabbing for it and rubbing the underside of the bump – at my vagina – with that ridiculously delighted-to-be-a-part-of-the-magic grin on your face, I’m going to put my hand right down your boyfriend’s pants the next time I see him. Shove that up your Debbie McGee.
2. ‘OH MY GOD YOU’RE HUGE!’
Are you joking me? I’m entirely exhausted from growing this person inside me as I carry on working/walking the dog/dealing with the increasingly deranged staff in Eurocycles/Eurobabies, I had to quit smoking, my Forever 21 sparkly mini dress now makes me look like Little Miss Sunshine when I wear it, no one will have sex with me (and believe me, I’ve asked everyone), I’ve just watched the video of a woman giving birth from the 70s in Holles Street – and you’d like to tell me that I’m fat?! I swear to god, I could smack you with my shoes…. If I could reach those Birkenstocks.
3. ‘WOW ARE YOU STILL HERE?!!’
This is also known as ‘Have you not had that baby yet ha ha!’, a distant cousin of ‘Is it your first? You’ll probably go about two weeks over so’. Like, who are you – some uterin cosmologist who specifically knows the course of my gestation period? And if so, where the fuck were you approximately (who can say, we were drunk a lot) 40 weeks ago to tell me to make him put on a condom? And yes, to answer your first cousin above, I am clearly ‘still here’ (and fairly hormonal).