One Belly Band, Please

Have you ever noticed how the bulging belly of pregnancy, especially that of a woman expecting her first child, seems to act as a magnet for unsolicited advice and/or labor horror stories?

It would seem that the trendy belly band, created to help woman wear their pre-pregnancy clothes longer, might be put to even better use as a muzzle for some of those well-meaning, loose lipped information disseminators. I'm not exactly sure why, but something about a prego tummy screams out to strangers, "Please vomit some nuggets of wacky parental wisdom on me!"

And judging from my own experience in this area, there is a reason I chose the word STRANGE-rs. Perhaps my favorite memory of this odd behavior came from a lady in the grocery store when I was in my 8th month.

"So, I see that you are pregnant. Hopefully you have already started the screening process for preschools. There is nothing worse than an unprepared parent."

Had I somehow moved to the Upper East Side of New York and become a character in the Nanny Diaries without realizing it? I stifled a giggle, thanked her for her advice and told her I'd keep that in mind when my child was turning 3 or 4. (The last part may have been under my breath due to a little aversion I have to confrontation.)

And then I never thought another thing about it until last weekend.

Somehow I unintentionally joined the ranks of the unsolicited advice givers by sharing my labor horror story with a sweet friend in her final days of pregnancy. (Although, in my defense, she does look more like she is in her first trimester.)

What started out as innocent discussion among girlfriends in the car together on the way to a baby shower, ended with me sharing I had feared labor would be equivilant to being repeatedly stabbed with a knife. In an attempt to back pedal after seeing the very wide eyes of a very pregnant friend in my rearview mirror, I assured her that I had definitely been wrong in that assumption.

"It was much more like STAB....no stab...STAB-STAB ....no stab, and so on and so forth," I heard myself saying. Realizing things were going downhill fast, I attempted one last rescue mission of my "open mouth, insert foot" conversation.

"But-t-t," I stammered, "I'm-I'm-I'm sure that was only because I pushed for 5 and 1/2 hours. I feel certain the average labor is much more enjoyable. Take yours, for instance. Stabbing probably won't even be an issue for you."

The other gals in the car must have felt like they were watching a bad train wreck in slow motion.

Oh, sweet Holly. Please forgive me. It seems that even though I'm not a stranger to you, I have somehow become every bit as strange as those folks I previously made fun of.

Do you happen to have an extra belly band I could borrow?

Or, maybe you should break out the burp rags early, to clean up any lingering images I may have vomited into your brain.

Of course, to take your mind off the pending labor, you could always start looking into some good preschools for Colt. Because rumor has it that there is nothing worse than an unprepared parent.