Birthing the Alien

by Leila Brillson

“Did you just hard launch a baby?” an old coworker of mine wrote. 

“OMG Beyonce drop iconic” said a high school friend.

My personal favorite: “oh my god leila, wtf??”

Amidst the 😱 😱 😱 and hearts, I kept getting sent that breathless Washington Post article about how pregnancy announcements were over and people were just straight up skipping to the baby. Then The Romper, the mom-site dripping with millennial pink platitudes, made the case for “surprise debuting” a child without the traditional Insta-announcement of expecting. These articles posited all sorts of reasons why the pregnancy announcement felt stale; posting fatigue, superstition, the extremely understandable hesitation from parents who were high risk. But none of these captured the reason for my own secrecy, which felt utterly Occam’s Razor. What if I just believed that being pregnant sucks?