Secret's Out

They don't tell you that you really shouldn't tell anyone the first three months since the new life is so tenuous you could lose it. But this proposition is slightly silly and exposes the vanity of the new mother because she begins to thicken like a polar bear readying for winter.

As the subcutaneous fat builds up, her bedtime creeps slowly backward until it's around the setting or the sun or that of school age children, depending where on the globe you live.

This week we had the much awaited first trimester appointment. After this we were going to tell co-workers, friends, strangers on the street.

Annoying, frustratingly, predictably, our appointment was delayed by two hours. I felt terrible because the reason for our doctor's delay is that she was delivering someone else - two women actually - who were having emergency C-sections. I was not in the least bit grumpy and put out: it was nearly nine p.m. and I hadn't had anything to eat since the grapes in the car on the way over. When the receptionist told me (only after I marched up and asked, mind you) that the 6:00 p.m. appointment had not yet been seen, I was ready to use the excuse of pregnancy hormones and go on the rampage.

Instead, knowing it would have the effect of a blow dryer on a wig, I took out my Nokia, asked for the password for the wireless, and caught up on work messages.

A man was yelling down the hallway and it turned this man was the back up doctor, German, who I could see as my doctor for that evening. Needless to say, I was less than thrilled at this prospect having heard him chewing out all the nurses. Desperate as we were to know whether we had a viable pregnancy, we took him, grumpiness and all. Luckily it was an abdominal sonograph as my last few pap smears have been with women; and before I was married. The idea of a vaginal sonograph with my husband looking on with a new male doctor was about to send me over the edge of my glucose starved mind.

With the tummy scan we saw him/her: sleeping! I had to get up and do a few jumps to see if the little blur with a spinal cord and heartbeart would wake up. But she didn't: she dreamt on, likely food starved like her mother.

The good news is that we are a go: now news is spreading. And my vanity is appeased. Yes, there is a reason for the growing belly!