Men have sports to knock down the barriers.

Wednesday, November 10, 1999

Men have sports to knock down the barriers. The suit and the common laborer may not meet at the country club on a regular basis or share many friends, but if they both love the Steelers, then there need be no search for conversational fodder. The Hormel exec and the Hormel line worker may not agree – or even speak – about many of the company’s policies, but if they happen to meet at a sports bar all that doesn’t matter.

Pregnancy, I have found over the past several months, does the same thing for women. The walls come down, particularly between older, pregnancy-wise women and the first-time mom-to-be.

Face it. Even if you’re royalty, you still have to reproduce the old-fashioned way and the fact that you’re carrying an extra bundle soon becomes apparent to the rest of the world. Of course, you may wear a nicer line of maternity clothing, and someone else may decorate your nursery, but you still have to go through 40 weeks – you hope – of being an incubator. You may get stretch marks; you may swell up like a balloon … it doesn’t matter how much money you have or don’t have.

Prior to being pregnant, I would have pooh-poohed both of the above observations as sexist nonsense, but not anymore. Yes, they are generalizations, but they are generalizations that I have come to believe are true for a majority of the population. It’s remarkable how many people that wouldn’t have given you the time of day before now will ask – and truly care I believe – how you’re doing.

You would be better off remembering that your pregnancy is communal property as well. People feel free to comment on your appearance and – worse yet – touch your stomach without asking permission. Not everyone does it, but I’ll never forget the shock that went through me the first time a male friend patted my stomach.

I wanted to hit him.

Now, I don’t care if people pat my stomach – it’s gotten so big it’s almost ceased to be a part of me.

And I know now that there was a reason that older women started talking to me like my IQ had dropped several points when they found out I was pregnant – I think it has. Now it remains to be seen whether Brady’s IQ will drop after the birth, the way Sheila said her husband’s did after every child.

Amazing, isn’t it, that the entire world reproduces this way? And that they’ve been doing it this way for a very long time. And that the entire world hasn’t been populated by morons – how were intelligent babies created before we had books telling us how to start teaching your baby vocabulary before it is born.

"Stroke your stomach, say ‘Stroke, I am stroking you.’ Now pat your stomach, say ‘Pat, I am patting you …"

Why exactly would one want the babe to emerge knowing the words ‘stroke’ and ‘pat’ and how little does that pregnant mother have to do?

One would think, upon reading the myriad magazines and books available on the subject of human gestation, that it was something only the educated could do.

I’m not sure how much good all those books are going to do once push comes to shove … but if anyone out there has any further practical pearls of wisdom – like pouring vodka on a feverish child – please feel free to send them this way. They would be much appreciated.

Jana Peterson’s column appears Wednesdays