There is No Nice Way to Ask a Woman if She's Pregnant

The lovely, dark-haired woman climbs slowly out of the swimming pool trying in vain to detach the two kids from her arms and legs as they attempt to convince her to stay in and play a bit longer. As the water slides off her body and the sunlight shines on her face, she looks nowhere near her forty years of age. Her utter confidence is a sign of her maturity.

Finally, untangling herself from the grasp of the equally dark-haired children, she struts across the pool deck and flops down on the lounge chair next to her sister-in-law. Just as she settled in and starts thumbing through her copy of I Just Want to Be Alone, her sister-in-law leans over and asks, “Jill, are the three children in the pool the full extent of your family plans?” and then she looks meaningfully down at Jill’s midsection.

“Unless you want to include the bean and cheese burrito baby currently in my belly, yes, those three kids are the only fruit coming out of my loins.”

In the first few months of my own pregnancies, I was terrified that people would think that I was fat. However, I was not terrified enough to want to break my silence and share my exciting news before I was ready. For the first ten weeks, that secret was for me and my husband alone, to hold and savor and dream about without any thoughtless comments from the peanut gallery.

Now that I am most certainly not pregnant, and definitively done having babies, I worry about the opposite. Will people look at my post-lunch bloat and start waiting for a pink or blue announcement card?

I can never say I’m nauseous, even if I am simply because I’ve had too many cups of coffee in the am. I sometimes change clothes several times in the morning just to try and avoid the appearance of an impending maternity leave that might derail my career… ”Hmm, Lynn looks a bit round, perhaps we should give someone else the promotion.”

• If you ask if I’m pregnant, and I am and haven’t told you, there is probably a reason for that. And shouldn’t I be the one who gets to decide how and when to share that news? Putting me on the spot with the question is the equivalent of turning around and sharing the news on Facebook before I get a chance to do so. Don’t make me, or any other pregnant lady lie to you.

• If you ask, and I’m not pregnant, I surely will not thank you for the reminder that I crapped out of the 30-day ab challenge on day 1. I think we can all agree that my waistbands and scale do a good enough job of alerting me to the extra pounds and no further public attention is required.

To sum it all up, in case you are completely obtuse, there is NO nice way to ask someone if they are pregnant. There is no cutesy phrasing that will make your intrusive, probing question acceptable. So shut up and keep those thoughts to yourself.

Lynn Morrison is a smart-ass American raising two prim princesses with her obnoxiously skinny Italian husband in Oxford, England. If you’ve ever hidden pizza boxes at the bottom of the trash or worn maternity pants when not pregnant, chances are you’ll like her blog The Nomad Mom Diary. You can also find Lynn over on Facebook, Twitter and in the awesome new book ‘I Just Want to Be Alone’.