Since you’re in your 30s expect it to take at least a few months to get pregnant.

Sushi will hurt your baby. And wine. And cold lunch meat. So will brie, and all the other delicious soft cheeses. Actually, anything that isn’t gluten-free, non-gmo, certified organic and veggie-based will hurt your baby. But you should absolutely be having cravings.

No, you don’t look fat. No, you don’t look like the dwarf women from The Hobbit movies.

You shouldn’t lift that.

There is no safe way to exercise when you’re pregnant.

It’s cute how huge your belly is. Your pregnant waddle is also cute.

You definitely have the hips to naturally birth that almost 10 pound baby.

You should go into labor in the next 24 hours just as soon as I do this very uncomfortable, painful thing to your cervix.

Okay, now you should go into labor in the next 24 hours just as soon as I do this very uncomfortable, painful thing to your cervix again.

A regular dose of narcotic pain medication will numb the c-section pain enough for you to be walking by the end of the day.

No, nursing doesn’t hurt. Nursing will help you lose the baby weight more quickly. Nursing is a magical experience.

You will definitely have time to write during your maternity leave.

You’ll learn how to live with a permanent sleep deficiency.

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Maybe it’s just me, but pregnant women are treated in a way that feels very… old-fashioned.

Regressive. I mean regressive.

Here’s what people seem to forget: people with uteruses have been having babies for quite literally hundreds of thousands of years. The uterus, and the body attached to it, was designed by nature to be a formidable, durable life-sustaining machine. The body is capable of carrying on with a majority of normal daily activities while nurturing the life inside it.

It probably doesn’t help that I live in the South. While I did end up in a liberal pocket in north Texas, there’s still an undercurrent to social mores that show that the outdated men are men and women are women ideal is still ingrained in the social consciousness.

Like being called honey when your male partner is referred to as boss. Like asking for the check at dinner, and repeatedly seeing it handed to said male partner.

It’s wonderful that so many men get to feel even more like men when they refuse to let a pregnant woman carry something that weighs more than a checkbook. Blessed is the womb of the mother or whatever.

I mean, blessed only during pregnancy, obviously. The expectation that American women return to work, on average, within 10 weeks (which is generous— one quarter of American women return to work within two weeks) is a whole other can of worms for another time.