Annoyingly Repeated Comment Of The Week

This week's Annoyingly Repeated Comment is brought to you by Knuckles the 33-Week Fetus.

I'm carrying Knuckles pretty low and far out, which is consistent with my last two pregnancies. Only Sonshine carried further out than Knuckles. But Knuckles is entirely outside my normal frame; he's literally carrying like I had a basketball tucked under my shirt.

So everywhere I go, people ask when I'm due and goggle when I say "March." OK, technically it's March 3, and they will induce labor on that day rather than let me go over term because of the gestational diabetes, and none of my pregnancies has ever made it to the due date anyway, so it's highly likely I'll have a baby by the end of February. I know, though, it seems amazing that my belly should be this large, and it doesn't surprise me that people who don't know me should be thusly astonished, especially when my neighbor (who's about a month behind me in her pregnancy) is only now just starting to look like she has meat on her bones, let alone is 7 months pregnant.

Somebody asked my neighbor once where she was hiding her baby, and I piped up that she was hiding it in my belly. So I've got a sense of humor about this whole thing. But for some reason it's starting to get really annoying when people say to me, "And you're due in March?? How many babies do you have in there??" It's funny, it's witty... the first 1500 times you hear it. After that it gets kind of boring.

I should be used to it. After all, my maiden name was Brilliant, and I endured 20 years of people saying to me "Brilliant... are you? Har har har!" as if the previous thirty-five million people I'd met hadn't already said it. There's a snappy comeback to that one, though: "Why yes, I was born Brilliant." I can't think of any snappy comeback to the "how many babies" question, though, probably because I'm so tired. So if you can think of one, please leave it in the comments.

UPDATE: one of the OB nurses suggested that the funny answer to "How many babies do you have in there?" is "Six!"