I can't help the feeling that they ought to know better - being that they too must have endured a long nine months carrying a baby. Maybe once was enough, maybe a couple of times, maybe even three or four, who cares. The point I'd like to make, is that I'd rather you approached me and put your hands all over the bump, do a little Reiki if you like, knock yourself out - before I you - Personally, that's preferable to size shaming my bump, and me, yeah it's personal. The bump is attached to my body, so its not a separate public thing you're talking about, it's my body in case you hadn't noticed. Oh and if this little one develops an eating disorder at a strangely early age, I won't blame her.
Look, there was no chance I was ever going to be small. Not after carrying twins, and another not long after. Does anyone even realise how big your body has to get to carry two babies at one time. I doubt it. A twin pregnancy is no NCT group, daisy-smelling, hardly showing, slip the baby out in the birthing pool affair, and any pregnancy there after is destined to not be either.
Try eight months of complications, scares, threatened miscarriages, pre-eclampsia, three months of bed rest, followed by five days and nights of agonising itching all over your entire body day and night due to your liver shutting down, an emergency c section topped off nicely with an incomplete anaesthetic - which if you want to know, feels I imagine like something similar to being hung drawn and quartered.
Yeah..I'm not bitter NCT daisy-smellers...just different. It's a reality that when it comes to pregnancy and childbirth there are two camps: For the first its an uncomplicated, blissful (really?) affair. Uncomplicated enough that you might post a little scan picture on face book, decorate a nursery ahead of time, maybe even be so bold as to have an online sweep stake on when the baby will arrive. Then there's my camp. We ain't buying nothing, not painting nothing, till there's a real live baby (or two) in our arms, and even then we won't believe it for a while.
So getting back to the school gates, when you see me there, multiple times a day and you think its a good time to make remarks like 'wow, you're so big, are you sure it's not twins in there?', or 'baby's growing too fast', or 'you just get so much bigger each time I see you' (really, did I enlarge so radically between 9am and 3.30pm?) Maybe you, and the multiple others who choose to comment multiple times a day, as fellow mothers, women, sisters, should have a little compassion. Understand that my pregnancy journey might be more complicated than you know. You don't know my history, my scars, if I've ever lost any babies, why I choose to carry this one, that I am measuring big - correct - and that I have a growth scan in the morning to check if this baby is okay. Hell, you don't even know my last name.
I understand it is not appropriate to comment on other women's size and body shape in random bouts of verbal diarrhea at school. I'm never going to run up to you and tell you that your face looks different because you've put on weight. The rules don't change just because someone is growing a human inside of them. If you've got that little to say, I empathise, the school gates can be tricky. Or if you're so bored or desperate for any kind of conversation that only drivel comes out your mouth - just skip the pregnant mum with the massive bump--She's feeling self conscious enough already.