I’ve been doing some reading up recently on when pregnant women begin to “show.” Not only does it vary widely, but the descriptions of the shapes of women that are more and less likely to show early on were outrageously funny. If you’re tall and thin, you’ll show sooner. If you’re short and round, no one may notice for awhile. If it’s your second baby, you’ll show a lot sooner than for your first baby (accompanied by all sorts of descriptions of your body “knowing already what to do” and “stomach muscles already ‘relaxed'” or, my favorite, you being “already broken in”). If you are extremely fit, your ‘killer abs’ may keep things slimmer for longer. Sydney merely snorted when I mentioned this possibility out loud. Okay, okay, no killer abs here.
And then there are the metaphors for the embryo-turned-foetus. People get the strangest literary bents when they get pregnant: women carry peanuts, pork chops, drumsticks, cantaloupes, watermelons–lots of food. When Sydney and I first found out we called it our little bug. That became extremely appropriate when I began to feel like I had a three-month flu. Later the baby became a lime, and then a lemon, to remind us of its approximate size. As one who encounters people every day who dismiss metaphors and the like as merely poetic classroom talk, I’m astonished to find the metaphors coming out in full force when the topic turns to pregnancy.
Erin