When did it become good manners to walk up to an acquaintance in a supermarket or at the gym, and blurt out the words: So when you going to give your husband a baby?
If you ask me, the state of my uterus is my business. It’s not something that should be on the mind of a person I used to work with, or a girl I used to go to school with, or some friend of a friend who wouldn’t spit on me if I was on fire. Bluntly put, it’s a fast question and none of your GD business. But here we are in Jamaica, a country filled with fast people who conveniently forget good manners when it gets in the way of potential gossip.
This question about ‘when you’re going to have a baby’ never goes away, so let me give you something to think about the next time you see someone you hardly know and it pops into your head.
Why do you assume she is not already trying to have a baby? Why do you think that just wanting to have a baby, makes a baby appear? Has it ever occurred to you that perhaps she is trying to have a baby and it is Just. Not. Happening? Do you have any idea how hurtful it is for a woman in this situation to be constantly hounded, day and night, by relative strangers because they assume she is somehow withholding her magical baby making powers?
For a woman who is actively trying to get pregnant, try to understand the agony and disappointment she faces each month when it becomes clear that nothing has happened. It is heartbreaking. She eats well, gets enough sleep, tries to stay active, takes her vitamins and still nothing. Her husband stops smoking, starts flossing, lays off the red meat and the tighty-whities and still nothing. They see doctors who put them on to other doctors. They see specialists who refer them to other specialists. They weigh their options hoping that one month, against all odds, something will take and they will be pregnant. It is a waiting game punctuated by monthly utter despair, because it is literally outside the realm of anyone’s control.
So…. that woman does the best she can to keep busy. She takes on more work, plans a few vacations, goes on living her life, all the while the hopelessness builds against the hope in the back of her mind that maybe, this month….while everyone around her gets pregnant without even meaning to–without even trying! They tell her they don’t know how it even happened as she can barely contain her tears.
And then she runs into YOU–a literal NOBODY to her–and gets bombarded by your thoughtless, reckless questions regarding the state of her uterus. She maybe smiles politely and gets away as quickly as she can, or she devolves into an emotional wreck because she feels, YOU FEEL, she IS DOING SOMETHING WRONG and literally cracks under the pressure. Then she has no other choice than avoid you for the rest of her life because all of a sudden you think she’s unhinged, because who cries in a supermarket during pleasant conversation?
Well guess what? You deserve a punch in the face, because it’s none of your mother loving business! That is a personal question and you don’t even KNOW her! How would you like it if someone asked you how big your penis is? Or if you have a venereal disease? Or how often you take a dump?
That’s right–asking someone about the state of their uterus is as repellant as asking these similarly distasteful questions.
If she wanted you to know she was pregnant, she would tell you! Until then, mind your mother loving manners!
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La Dolce Vita 