You look great!

Repeat after me, “You look great!”

This is what you should say to any pregnant woman. Every pregnant woman. Every woman you think might be pregnant. But especially, and particularly, every pregnant who you were about to say something different to.

Let me explain. Every woman is different. We are short. Tall. Thin. Plump. Athletic. Whatever. In addition to already looking different from the woman who is standing in line at the grocery store flipping through Town and Country magazine, I also look entirely different from the woman sitting next to me in the OB office who has the exact same due date. We all look different when we have an entirely different human being growing inside of our bodies.

So.

So, here is what you do not say to a pregnant woman: “You can’t be eight months pregnant. You’re not big enough!”

I know it seems harmless. Complimentary, even. But, truly. Knock it off.

Here’s why. I am on the tallish side. I also maybe have squishy insides that allow for a baby to hide, creating a baby bump that is on the small side. I assure you, it makes me no less pregnant. So after a slew of well intentioned folks exclaimed, “there’s no WAY you’re six/seven/eight months pregnant! You’re too small” I did the only thing I could do.

I freaked the fuck out.

I am doing too much yoga! Not eating enough! Not resting enough! Too stressed at work! My baby will be tiny! It will be all my fault! I am inflicting all kinds of developmental delays on him! He must be undernourished! And it is All! My! Fault!

I began meticulously taking kick counts. I paid attention to my energy level (too low? That would obviously mean I was sucking necessary nutrients from this poor kid’s brain. Too high? Obviously I was over-caffeinated/ over-sugared/ over-somethinged and it would result in an awful childhood disorder that I couldn’t pronounce). I watched my weight gain. I held my t-shirt close to my belly to scrutinize my profile. I flipped up my t-shirt for a better view. I looked this way and that way. I fretted.

I talked to my doctor. I told her that I was concerned about my growth. Because people have been telling me that I am too small. And you know, they must know best, right?. True, they were probably trying to be complimentary, but they managed to freak me out. Because here’s another thing about pregnant women: It takes precious little to freak us out.

An entire industry exists because we are so easy to freak out. Pregnancy is nine months of freak out peppered with food aversions and cravings for pickled beets. They make at-home fetal heart rate monitors, lead blankets to protect fetuses from electromagnetic waves from our laptops, special diets, exercise regimens, and books about the dangers of everything you can imagine from bisphenol-A to goat cheese. We freak out. Aside from growing a human inside of our bodies, we freak out. It’s what we do.

My doctor measured me. She frowned. Well, maybe you’re measuring a leeeeeeettle small, she told me. Let’s get you on the office ultrasound and have a look. We lubed up my belly and she cranked on the machine. She measured. She studied. She measured again. She studied again. Measured, studied, measured, studied.

Finally, she pronounced the baby to be about a week behind his gestational age. This did little to allay my fears. He was small and it was all my fault, clearly.

But then she told me that this ultrasound could be off by plus or minus three weeks. She decided to have me go into the hospital for another, more accurate, ultrasound. Just to be sure. Not that anything was wrong, she assured me. Babies grow at their own rate and this was just a crude ultrasound and she was no ultrasound technician.

I spent two weeks freaking out while waiting for my ultrasound appointment and while trying not to freak out. The reality is, I didn’t even know how worried I was. I went to work. I read to the kids. I cleaned the kitchen. I practiced yoga and kept up a normal exercise routine. I read the newspaper. And over all of that, day in and day out, a deep dark cloud of worry hovered above my head. I was not even aware how much of my life was overshadowed with this worry. The worry that our baby was too small, that he wasn’t thriving and that it was something that I was doing terribly wrong.

The day of the ultrasound came. The ultrasound tech measured and studied. She measured again. She studied again. Measured, studied, measured, studied. She was very quiet. I watched the screen anxiously, looking for a definitive answer. I tried to make sense of the smoosh that was on the screen. There was so much baby I couldn’t tell what was what.

Finally, the measurement results were tallied. The baby’s gestational age: 35 weeks, 1 day. The baby’s average ultrasound age: 35 weeks, 3 days. He was in the 66th percentile for size.

Boo-ya.

I cried from the relief.

We were tracking and trucking right along. He isn’t on the smallish side. He is on the perfect side. I couldn’t believe how relieved I was. I hadn’t known how much worry I had been carrying around. How much guilt. How much self- berating I had done.

So.

So, listen. Mothers worry. From the moment we see two lines on a pee stick to the day we die, we worry. But we especially worry when we can not see our small people and examine their owies and talk to them or their doctor.

Comments about a woman’s belly are a wildcard, but are generally ill advised. We will worry that we are too small. We will worry that we are too big. We will worry. We just will.

Now repeat after me, “You look great!”

Because, really, she does.