Other worst response

I know I've been absent and I'm sorry. I'm desperately trying to write my PhD thesis in the next two weeks while also taking care of myself and not pushing through it when the baby sucks all of my energy out of me, so blogging seems like something I needed to temporarily cut out of my life. But I'm procrastinating at the instant, so I thought I would share the most hilarious response I got to my announcement that I'm pregnant.

I've mentioned before that I became something of a workaholic as a way to deal with the emotional pain of infertility. Although all of my coworkers also put in long hours, some of my past experiments (in 2009 when we were still trying unsuccessfully on our own) were especially notable, with me staying in the lab for over 20 hours straight and getting 3 hours of sleep before coming back to continue. So now you know what a psycho I am : ) It's worth pointing out that it was fueled solely by my own motivation, without coffee or any other caffeine. That period only lasted for a month, and I always took the weekends off to recover. Anyway....

Telling my coworkers became something of a spectacle, because almost everyone was around for it, and I have no experience with telling groups of more than 2. And it turned out that the secret hadn't leaked at all, which I had not expected based on my boss's gossipy ways and the fact that 4 other people in the lab knew as well. I had just assumed that word had gotten out. That was clearly foolish of me, so instead, when I brought out the ultrasound photos to show a coworker who already knew, the girl who sits behind me said, "who's pregnant?" When I said, "I am," the chain of "wait, who's pregnant?" spread quickly through all 10 members of the lab. This brought over a girl who I'm not as close to, late in the chain, and the first thing she said was, "I don't know how you had time for that when you're never home in the evenings." Really. That was her response to the good news. Who says that?? "I can't imagine when you have time to have sex." Really? I've decided not to judge her for the comment, since she was clearly taken by surprise, and I don't know what else goes through her mind when she hears this kind of announcement (she's in her mid thirties and isn't married).

The benefit of the comment was that it gave me the opportunity to mention the assisted reproduction aspect ("well actually, this baby was conceived in a doctor's office, so that wasn't really a problem"). I didn't go into all the details, because I assume that a group of people doesn't necessarily want to listen to my medical story, but I did get them laughing with the line about how a perky blond female doctor knocked me up, and I don't even remember her name. So it went well overall, but it was definitely an awkward moment.

So there's your long story for the day. Hopefully this rounds out my collection of bad responses.