The Right to Privacy.
It's important.
My daughter, currently three-going-on-fourteen, insists on shutting doors for herself and others in the name of 'piracy'. The ACLU is obsessed with it. You're used to having it.
But when you try to inform your relatives that you are PREGNANT you may be surprised to find that your middle isn't the only thing growing. The circle of people familiar with your temperature, constipation, and hormonal rants expands as well.
For example, if you confess to your mother that a series of hormone-based birth control has caused you to gain six pounds in two weeks while crying constantly, you think that is private information. But the public thinks that reproductive health is not only your concern, it is everyone's concern (insert national politics). So when my doctor recommended taking a break from the contraception that had turned me into a raving lunatic, my mother shared this information with a friend while standing in a hardware store. And they decided it would be a great thing to pray that God would give me a baby.
Now which would you suspect is more effective? Three forms of birth control? Or two women praying in a Lowe's?
You know the answer.
I was sitting in the doctor's office for my birth control shot two weeks later when the nurse came back smiling. "I ran two tests," she said. "They are both positive. Congratulations!"
Piracy - - I mean, privacy. It went right out the window.
I stammered, "But... but... HOW?!"
She winked at me. "You'd know better than I would, dear!"
The. Horror.
Soon, the post office employee was asking me, "Are you sure you know who the daddy is?" The random passerby would smile sweetly and say, "Awww!" Strange children would gape and say, "Do you have a BABY in there?"
"That's what I'm told."
Your middle becomes a public talking point. Where once people commented on your fabulous taste in shoes, they now speculated on your past sex life. And strangers in Target were happy to corner you near the yogurt to advise you on natural birth practices or the absolute need for an epidural the minute you set foot on hospital grounds. I have never discussed my nethers with so many people I didn't know.
Which brings me to the story of my second child. Since our first was eighteen months old, some insane instinct informed me that having more children couldn't be that much harder than having one (Note: There is no evidence to support this idea). My dear husband and I decided to 'think about it'.
A week later, my mother came to visit. She descended from the guest room for breakfast and announced, "You're pregnant."
"I'm not," I sighed between flipping pancakes and wiping juice off the chair legs. "I don't have time."
"You are," she informed me. "I dreamed that you are pregnant."
"I'll inform my biological clock," I answered.
Two weeks later, I called to inform her that she was correct. "Please, please don't dream about me having twins," I joked (NOT A JOKE.)
The following week, my brother, on tour in Afghanistan, called from an undisclosed location.
"Guess what?" I asked, swaying nauseously.
"You're pregnant!" he cried.
"Mom told you?"
"No," he said. "I dreamed it."
"That is NOT how people get pregnant," I told him. (Right?)
"I dreamed it!" he insisted. "I dreamed that you were pregnant, and it's a little girl!"
"I can't guarantee that."
"I know it," he said sagely. "It's a girl."
"Please, please," I begged, "You and mom have got to stop dreaming about my reproductive system. Please."
It was a girl.
'Uncomfortable' doesn't begin to cover the feelings that come with knowing your family is dreaming about your *ahem* 'lady parts'. More horrifying still is the moment when a friend asks, "How many weeks are you?" and you see them mentally counting backward, trying to pinpoint the moment of conception, and really hoping it wasn't while you were visiting them, and all the while you realize -
Now everyone knows you've had sex.
At a dear friend's wedding, sitting among the bridesmaids dishing out post-wedding advice, I added a tidbit of my own. There followed a shocked silence.
"I keep forgetting," one said, "that you're married. You've... ya know."
And I looked down at my enormous five-month bump. "Yes. Yes I have."
Privacy. You will have none. You won't have any after the kid either. It's just one of those things you have to give up for, say, twenty years. Be prepared.
