I attempt very hard not to let my pregnancy, and all its symptoms put other people out.  I have often heard myself using the phrase “I’m pregnant, not feeble” and have only ever once asked for somebody’s seat, and that was because sometimes I have a bit of trouble breathing comfortably while standing.

But I happen to believe that pregnancy does not entitle a woman to any special treatment.  Here are a few stories of women who apparently don’t subscribe to my line.

The Entitled Pregnant

This is the woman you’ve probably met and definitely resented.  The woman who automatically cuts to the front of the line, even though you and your fellow liners have been waiting patiently for your turns,  without casting one apologetic ‘may I please?’ look over her shoulder to the rest of us.

And why should she ask for permission?  Isn’t the fact that she has a belly an all access pass?  Isn’t the word ‘pregnant’ synonymous with the word ‘entitled?’

The Sickening Sap Pregnant

The pregnant woman who gets teary-eyed whenever she thinks about or mentions her ‘pwecious widdwle baby bean.’  Nothing in the world has ever been this important, this momentous before and nothing (nothing) ever will be this important again.

She speaks only in baby talk even when out with the girls so her baby won’t feel left out.

Later she will send out mass mailings of the DVD with her birth on it, and calls you later to compare notes.

The Over Protective Pregnant

I was listening to a radio story a long time ago, so long that I cannot give proper credit to whom it belongs, where a pregnant woman (she described herself as just beginning to show) was shopping, pushing a grocery cart.  When she chanced to come around a corner at the same somebody else and their cart was coming around that corner.

This woman flings her cart away ahead of her, huddles on her ankles with her arms over her belly and screams.  One presumes she couldn’t think of a better way to handle the situation?  Like, remembering that you’re a pregnant woman, not an active bomb.

The Annoying Pregnant

The woman who gets pregnant and then willfully refuses to talk about anything else.  She has even been known to break into your conversations (say, on the virtues of Lynyrd Skynyrd.) and switch the tracks with something like ‘my baby’s almost a free bird!’

This behavior elicits nothing but a collective eye roll, with some heavy sighing.  But do you think she’ll take the hint?

NooOOOoooo.

That will just remind her that she hasn’t told you that her mother-in-law is hardcore hinting middle names and isn’t that horrendous behavior?

The Pageant Production Pregnant

This woman likes to stage things.  She hires a professional photographer to take her pregnancy photos complete with the one where she and her husband’s hands make an oh-so-adorable heart shape over her stomach.

She hires a baker to insert gender-specific buttercream filling into oversized (overpriced) cupcakes and invites everyone over to watch her eat them.  Oh!  It’s a boy!  I could’ve just called you, but I wanted everyone to take a couple hours out of their day to drive over here and consume empty calories before driving back from whence you came until I beckon again.

Then she’ll have a belly bust done, casting her stomach in paper mache and painting/beading/bronzing it so you can then eat gender-specific nachos out of it at the baby shower, which, by the way, she has not allowed her ‘host’ to plan for her.  Why?  When she could just do it herself and get it right.  Right?

The Critical Pregnant

This is the mother to be whom, upon seeing you enjoying chocolate-covered peanuts at the movies, rolls her eyes and scoffs loud enough for you to notice her disdain.  “I would never eat that, my baby deserves to have proper nutrition.  Doesn’t your baby deserve better?”

Wherein, if I had the nerve to think of something like this off the cuff, I’d say, ‘You deserve to know the truth, nobody cares what you have to say, #@tch.’

Here is a song by Garfunkel & Oates called “Pregnant Women are Smug”  If you’re offended and can’t laugh at yourself a little… then it probably hits too close to home.  Hmmm?