by Jenny Jaffe

The barista who handed me my iced coffee was pregnant, but I barely noticed. The person right behind me in line was pregnant, too, but I thought, oh, that’s a coincidence, and kind of shrugged it off. 

On the walk back to my house, I passed a couple pregnant joggers, a pregnant mailman, and a phalanx of pregnant dogs being walked by a pregnant dog walker. So that’s when I started to be like, wow, I guess something’s in the air. 

My first zoom wasn’t until 10. I had an hour to be productive, so I scrolled through TikTok while continuing my re-watch of Sex and the City. I was up to the episode where Carrie, Miranda, Charlotte, and Samantha are all pregnant, which was not an episode I remembered from my first six or seven watch-throughs. Everyone on TikTok was pregnant, too: the tarot reader who said this message was made for me, Billy Porter in the bootleg clip from Cabaret, Ryan Reynolds in his Mint Mobile ad, the ghoul puppet on live stirring a cauldron of wood soup. 

It probably goes without saying that everyone on my zoom was pregnant, too. I congratulated all of them, of course. 

I tried to get some work done, but first I had to find the perfect YouTube video to watch while I did it, and at that point I was like, “hold on, even LoFi Girl is pregnant?!” I thought for sure the live chat would be pointing it out, but they were all busy exchanging a/s/l like we were still on the good version of the internet. 

I texted the group chat, Garfield’s Lasagney Mommys 🍝, and asked if they were all pregnant, too. All four of them sent back a mirror selfie showing off their pregnancy bumps, but they all made sure to like, flip off the camera or stick out their tongues so it wouldn’t come off like they were trying too hard to look cute.  

“Oh man, I feel like I’m like the only one who’s not pregnant haha”, I texted, even though I was starting to not feel very “haha” about it. 

By the time I got into bed that night, the pregnant Duolingo owl was getting mad at me, but truth be told, the whole “everyone being pregnant but me” thing was a little distracting, so I used a streak freeze. I thought, “when I wake up tomorrow, I’ll probably be pregnant, it’ll be fine”, and I went to sleep. 

I was not pregnant when I woke up. 

I was proud of myself for going to Pilates, where the pregnant instructor helped the pregnant members of the class, which was all of them, find pregnancy-friendly modifications. I had to do it all normal, two red springs and everything. ‘

I was proud of myself for liking the pregnant photos of every single person I followed on Instagram, as well as a few from people I didn’t follow but whom the algorithm ever so kindly suggested to me. Tap tap. 

I was proud of myself for smiling through dinner with my pregnant friends Mallory and Todd. I thought, wow, I’m being so generous and normal with my thoughts and feelings! I’m so mature! I thought, one day, when I’m pregnant, I’ll want them to be happy for me, too. Just as happy as I am for them.

Probably, as a reward from the universe for being so good at not being pregnant,  I’ll be pregnant tomorrow. 

I woke up and pressed snooze on the cracked pregnant belly of my iPhone 15. I could tell without even looking that I still wasn’t pregnant, but I checked anyway, just to be safe. My jeans didn’t fit, but it wasn’t because I was pregnant; it’s because they were. I was very happy for them, blah blah blah. 

I thought, I’ll feel better if I go for a walk. I clomped into my pregnant Crocs covered in pregnant jibbitz and tried to remind myself that I don’t know if it was hard for the pregnant stop sign to get pregnant, maybe it was. 

It was too hard to be out in the pregnant world with its pregnant sidewalks and pregnant blades of grass, so I went home to rot on my pregnant Joybird couch. The Spoonflower throw pillows were pregnant. The Ruggable was pregnant. The TV itself was pregnant, and when I asked ChatGPT “is everyone and everything in the universe pregnant but me?” It typed out “yes” in pregnant letters. 

“Universe,” I yelled. “What am I doing wrong?! I’m a basically good person! A responsible adult! Are you mad at me? Do you hate me? Is this karmic payback for something from a different life?I know there are far bigger injustices, universe, but this sucks a big bag of butts and it’s just like, why is that pigeon and that mailbox and the concept of tipping pregnant but not me?! WHY?!??”

And the universe replied, “Ummm idk sorry, pregnancy brain 🤪”

I screamed and I screamed, and the screams were pregnant, too.