Problem with Pregnancy Part 2

2.  I Learn Things I Didn't Need to Learn about People.  (and share things I didn't want to share.)

There is also an odd dance between women once you enter the world of pregnancy.  It is a waltz between helpful information and over sharing.  Obviously, we each can fall victim to either ditch in any area of life.  Over sharing is over sharing--regardless of the topic.  From personal experience and from what I have observed, pregnancy and childbirth leave many women with a need for some post-traumatic counseling.  Seriously.

For generations the way we handle our battle scars is not by actually heading to a mental health professional, but by processing the whole event with another pregnant woman.  Sometimes, for some women, any old pregnant woman will do.

I remember being overwhelmed by how many women *needed* to talk about their pregnancy and childbirth experience with me with my first pregnancy.  There was no way out of the conversation, and that first go around, I couldn't always see it coming.  What seemed like an innocuous conversation about bibs and baby drool, became a lesson on someone's anatomy or a fear based story complete with the blood and guts.  Whether they had given birth last year or last decade, many people had a story that needed to be told.

This third time around, I'm ready for it.  I go to my internal happy place, put a smile on my face and mentally sing...  "la, la, la..."

Part B of this subsection:  the topic of How Babies Are Made.  (This overlaps with my comments on feeling vulnerable.)

When you are pregnant, people know you had s-e-x.  (shhhh)  And, likewise as women are sharing their stories, I know they had s-e-x.  Often, we learn when a couple is "trying" to make a baby as well.   This information, as a visual learner, is a huge 'eeew' for me.

This time around many people knew we weren't planning on a third child so a whole new area of discussion was broken open.  I could watch people try to figure out our birth control method.  Now granted they were probably wondering out of fear for their own "planning," but from my mom, to acquaintances in my mom's groups, I watched the wheels in their heads work out how they could ask 'the question' (how'd this happen?)  without getting too personal.

(sorry, folks, once the story brings s-e-x  between two people who you actually know, into the conversation, it is too personal for church coffee hour or Christmas dinner.)