Day 35 - Pregnancy and Cognitive Fallacies

Heavy title for a pretty trivial post!

As you will know if you've been reading this Blog, K___ is recently pregnant and we're not saying anything until we get passed that all important 12 week barrier. So, with that in mind, it's astonishing how much pregnancy and babies are being mentioned all of a sudden. I am, or at least I try to be, a rationalist; I am not superstitious, I do not believe in seances or horoscopes and I don't believe in God etc. etc.. With this in mind, it's still astonishing that so many instances seem to have occurred of late. What have we had:

• A mailing list K___ and I are both on, about our favourite band. All of a sudden there's a big discussion about "Don't say, 'We're pregnant'. It's not a 'we' thing..." I see it and go off and check this Blog to see if I've been so crass (I agree with the above). I haven't. Phew!
• We have lunch with my parents. My brother E___ is there with his girlfriend M____. M____, K___ and Ma are in the kitchen. M____ and my mother start talking about pregnancy dresses.
• We go and see Nana, as do E___ and M____ - it was her birthday on Friday. Our cousin H______ turns up out of the blue. H______ is newly engaged. She turns round and says to K___, "Hurry up and knock one out. I want a flower girl when I get married in a couple of years time..."
• Nana is way too deaf to have heard this and in any case was talking to E___. As we leave, E___ says, 'Nana wants a great grandchild'. It's speculative and directed as H_____ as much as us.

Those are the big ones, but I'm sure there have been more. Now obviously a lot comes down to being sensitised to any mentions of pregnancy. That's what I meant by 'cognitive fallacy' in the title; it's a distortion in the way we perceive reality. Probably there's always lots of mentions of pregnancy around, but previously we'd not accorded them any great significance. It's the same way as if you come across a word that you'd never seen before. All of a sudden, you'll see it mentioned everywhere. I really, really honestly don't believe there's anything supernatural going on, but I have to tell you, it's a right bugger stopping yourself from shouting out, 'Yes, okay, we get the fucking point already. Yes, we're (sic) pregnant! Are you happy now...'

You can just imagine the dropped jaws as the people you've so rudely just informed try and process the information.

So, anyway, babies; they distort reality. Luckily, I'm not a Super-Villain, or I'd find some way to exploit this fact.