Privacy, Please

Pregnancy makes people ask questions they would never think to ask others. When you're expecting, expect that your private life is now privy to anyone who can see you're pregnant. This includes co-workers, the stranger standing in the elevator with you, and the sandwich artist at Subway.

The question that is causing me to shake my head in disbelief this week has to do with my netherregions. It goes something like this:

"When are you due?"

"July 1st."

"Wow, that's coming up. Is your cervix dilated yet?"

I am just dying to respond with something crass, like, "I'll tell you about what my cervix is doing if you tell me about what your vagina's up to. " Or how about, "Well, when I checked it this morning..."

Sorry, friends, I know you mean well and that you are simply wanting to know how things are progressing. But please don't ask me about my hoo-ha. I'm not sharing.

I have heard that by the time you are giving birth, you loose all cares about who is looking at what. There are so many people poking, prodding, and peeking, that you don't even care if you're spread-eagle when the maintenence guy comes to change a lightbulb in the room. Of course, I can't really know how I will feel when I am in labor, what I will be thinking about, how I'll react. But it's hard to imagine that in a matter of hours I will become comfortable with a major lack of privacy. Oh well, I know that the doctors and nurses and maybe even those mainenence guys see this stuff every day. I'm not really concerned about what they think; after all, they are the ones that really need to know what my cervix is doing, not the woman I just met five minutes ago.