How To Announce Baby Birth Quotes

She was the first close friend who I felt like I’d re­ally cho­sen. We weren’t in each other’s lives be­cause of any obli­ga­tion to the past or con­ve­nience of the present. We had no shared his­tory and we had no rea­son to spend all our time to­ gether. But we did. Our friend­ship in­ten­si­fied as all our friends had chil­dren – she, like me, was un­con­vinced about hav­ing kids. And she, like me, found her­self in a re­la­tion­ship in her early thir­ties where they weren’t specif­i­cally work­ing to­wards start­ing a fam­ily. By the time I was thirty-four, Sarah was my only good friend who hadn’t had a baby. Ev­ery time there was an­other preg­nancy an­nounce­ment from a friend, I’d just text the words ‘And an­other one!’ and she’d know what I meant. She be­came the per­son I spent most of my free time with other than Andy, be­cause she was the only friend who had any free time. She could meet me for a drink with­out plan­ning it a month in ad­vance. Our friend­ship made me feel lib­er­ated as well as safe. I looked at her life choices with no sym­pa­thy or con­cern for her. If I could ad­mire her de­ci­sion to re­main child-free, I felt en­cour­aged to ad­mire my own. She made me feel nor­mal. As long as I had our friend­ship, I wasn’t alone and I had rea­son to be­lieve I was on the right track. We ar­ranged to meet for din­ner in Soho af­ter work on a Fri­day. The waiter took our drinks or­der and I asked for our usual – two Dirty Vodka Mar­ti­nis. ‘Er, not for me,’ she said. ‘A sparkling wa­ter, thank you.’ I was ready to make a joke about her un­char­ac­ter­is­tic ab­sti­nence, which she sensed, so as soon as the waiter left she said: ‘I’m preg­nant.’ I didn’t know what to say. I can’t imag­ine the ex­pres­sion on my face was par­tic­u­larly en­thu­si­as­tic, but I couldn’t help it – I was shocked and felt an un­war­ranted but in­tense sense of be­trayal. In a de­layed re­ac­tion, I stood up and went to her side of the ta­ble to hug her, un­able to find words of con­grat­u­la­tions. I asked what had made her change her mind and she spoke in va­garies about it ‘just be­ing the right time’ and wouldn’t elab­o­rate any fur­ther and give me an an­swer. And I needed an an­swer. I needed an an­swer more than any­thing that night. I needed to know whether she’d had a re­al­iza­tion that I hadn’t and, if so, I wanted to know how to get it. When I woke up the next day, I re­al­ized the feel­ing I was ex­pe­ri­enc­ing was not anger or jeal­ousy or bit­ter­ness – it was grief. I had no one left. They’d all gone. Of course, they hadn’t re­ally gone, they were still my friends and I still loved them. But huge parts of them had dis­ap­peared and there was noth­ing they could do to change that. Un­less I joined them in their spa­ces, on their sched­ules, with their fam­i­lies, I would barely see them. And I started dream­ing of an­other life, one com­pletely re­moved from all of it. No more chil­dren’s birth­day par­ties, no more chris­ten­ings, no more bar­be­cues in the sub­urbs. A life I hadn’t ever se­ri­ously con­tem­plated be­fore. I started dream­ing of what it would be like to start all over again. Be­cause as long as I was here in the only Lon­don I knew – mid­dle-class Lon­don, cor­po­rate Lon­don, mid-thir­ties Lon­don, mar­ried Lon­don – I was in their world. And I knew there was a whole other world out there.

Sometimes adoptive parents will go through a virtual pregnancy, using “birth clinics” or accessories called “tummy talkers,” package kits that supply a due date and body modifications, including the choice to make the growing fetus visible or not; as well as play-by-play announcements (“Your baby is doing flips!”) and the simulation of a “realistic delivery,” along with a newborn-baby accessory. For Second Life parents who go through pregnancy after adopting in-world, it’s usually with the understanding that the baby they are having is the child they have already adopted. The process is meant to give both parent and child the bond of a live birth. “Really get morning sickness,” one product promises. “Get aches.” Which means being informed that a body-that-is-not-your-corporeal-body is getting sick. “You have full control over your pregnancy, have it EXACTLY how you want,” this product advertises, which does seem to miss something central to the experience: that it subjects you to a process largely beyond your control.

Details were important to me. If I missed one number, it could be catastrophic. That was why I didn’t miss numbers. I studied details. Yet, I’d missed a glaring one. Catherine was pregnant. Now that I’d been made aware of it by my smug friends, Weston and Luca, I questioned how I could have missed it. Seated across from me, her round stomach stretched her thin, black sweater to within an inch of its life. I didn’t like being surprised almost as much as I hated blue ink. She lifted her eyes from her tablet, catching me studying her. Her head cocked, and she rubbed her lips together. I glanced down at the swell of her belly, and she exhaled. “Are you ready to have this conversation?” I asked. “Not really.” Slowly, she lowered her tablet to the seat beside her. “An email would probably be more efficient.” “We seem to be in the car for the long haul. I’d prefer to make use of our time.” I tapped the window, drawing her attention to the bumper-to-bumper traffic. “Were you planning on giving birth at your desk?” Her mouth twitched. “That would have been quite an announcement. No, that was never in the cards.” “Are you coming back after your leave?” She jolted like I’d shocked her. “Of course I am. I have to work.” “How will you do this job with a small baby at home?” Her hands stacked in her lap. “Are you allowed to ask me that?” “Probably not, but it’s a genuine concern. Will your husband be able to take over childcare while you’re traveling with me?” She let out a lilting laugh. “Oh, I don’t have a husband.” I would have been surprised if she’d said she did since her background check hadn’t turned up a marriage. But a lot could change in a little time, so anything was possible. “Your boyfriend?” “Same answer.” For the second time, I was taken aback. The background check had revealed Catherine owned a house in Denver and lived with her partner. Whether they were still together was none of my business, and I was certain she’d tell me exactly that if I asked. “Do you have a plan?” I pressed. “You don’t have to worry about my plans, Elliot.” “I do if it affects your work. Is this”—I outlined the shape of her stomach in the air in front of me—“going to slow you down?” “Again, are you allowed to ask me that?

Mothers not only pass the harms of endocrine-disrupting chemicals on to their fetuses but on to even more distant generations. When a mother is exposed to EDCs, so too are her fetus's germ cells, which develop into eggs or sperm. "It's thought that during that exposure, the chemical can target those germ cells and do what we call reprogramming, or making epigenetic changes," says Flaws. "That can be a permanent change that gets carried through generations, because those germ cells will eventually be used to make the next generation, and those fetuses will have abnormal germ cells that would then go on to make the next generation." In the mid-20th century, scientists documented this in women who took a synthetic form of estrogen, called diethylstilbestrol or DES, to prevent miscarriages.? The drug worked as intended, and the women gave birth to healthy babies. But once some of those children hit puberty, the girls developed vaginal and breast cancer. The boys developed testicular cancer, and some suffered abnormal development of the penis. Scientists called them DES daughters and sons. "When those DES daughters and sons had children, we now have DES granddaughters and grandsons, and a lot of them have increased risk of those same cancers and reproductive problems," says Flaws. "Even though it was their great-grandmother that took DES and they don't have any DES in their system-their germ cells have been reprogramming, and they're passing down some of these disease traits." And now toxicologists are gathering evidence that mothers are passing microplastics and nanoplastics complete with EDCs and other toxic substances- to their fetuses. In 2021, scientists announced that they'd found microplastics in human placentas for the first time, both on the fetal side and maternal side.Later that year, another team of researchers found the same, and they also tested meconium-a newborn's first feces and discovered microplastic there too. Children are consuming microplastics, then, before they're even born.