Friday, December 29, 2006

How ya doing?

It's an innocuous enough question, one that Americans give each other every day of the year. The expected reply is generally something to the effect of "great, how are you?"

This doesn't work so well when you're pregnant. And it's a question that pregnant (particularly showing) women hear often. OK, constantly. I must have had 10-15 different people yesterday pass me in the hall at work and as how I was feeling, how I was doing, how I'd been lately... all of them women, and all of them clearly referring to my ever-growing baby boy belly bump.

Now I appreciate that they want to acknowledge my pregnancy and say hello, but this does create a bit of an awkward situation. When you both know that what they really mean is "How are you doing with your pregnancy?" it just doesn't sound right to answer "Great, how are you?"

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Sort of an innocuous question. I know what you mean, most often if you tell people how you are really doing (I feel like Sh*t)it's TMI. I am guilty of it too though. I work in a hospital and have a tendency to walk into a patients room and ask "how are you doing?" when the answer should be fairly evident. If they were doing good they wouldn't be there.

Anonymous said...

My reply was always "still pregnant"

Momai said...

Today I tried to anticipate the question and ask people first, to see what would happen. I noticed that they then tended to add a gesture of their hand to their own belly when they repeated the question back to me.

:)