Sympathy for the fat man

I am ever amazed at the proportions I am developing.  Not having a round belly feels like another lifetime and I can't imagine that there will be a time when it goes.  This week's big news is the big belly.  The little fellas must be having a growth spurt.

Monday, I was feeling tight.  The commute played havoc on my back and I think I felt the beginnings of lordosis - a curve of the lower spine common in people with belly weight, such a preggos like me and beer-bellied men.  I came home and treated myself to a little yoga, a routine I used regularly before pregnancy and with only minor adjustments since.  But on Monday evening, my belly wouldn't fit into certain positions, even though it was only a few days previously that I last managed the poses with ease.

It is obvious to all that I am indeed a pregnant lady.  The people I know who had yet to mention my expanding waistline have started to suddenly declare that they can see I am pregnant.  This week I found myself standing on the Underground, which I didn't mind much on that day.  I had my trainers on and my handbag was light having been recently purged of all redundant lip glosses and bits of rubbish.  A fat man looked at me from his seated position near my belly.  He could tell and I could tell he could tell.

While the Underground etiquette is to offer your seat to the elderly, injured or pregnant, we commuters know this happens irregularly.  There was a debate in the letters section of the Metro a few years ago following a letter from a woman disgusted that no one offered a seat despite her big, pregnant appearance.  The debate took two distinct sides - those who agreed that we should all be more compassionate to those less able to stand and those who saw pregnancy as a woman's choice and no reason for the rest of the world to give a monkey's, let alone a seat.

I looked at the fat man's belly and wondered if he felt like me.  Crammed into my undies, shifting uncomfortably from foot to foot when stood for a length of time, breathless at the sight of stairs and salivating at the smell of the patisserie.  Probably.  I realised that I never before had sympathy for fat men.  I knew the pain of the aching lordosis he must have.  As we sized up each other's bellies, him firmly planted in his seat, we might have been thinking the same thing:  that the discomfort was ultimately the consequence of the other's choice. My choice was not to have a big belly, but to have a child.  His choice was probably not to have a big belly either, but a chocolate éclair.  In any case, I stood until a much trimmer man offered me his seat, something that will never happen for my poor fat comrade.  I sat, fat and happily, across from him for a few stops looking pretty damn smug.