The term “baby bump” is now a pervasive and increasingly odious term. I imagine it’s meant to be cute, but I seriously have to stop myself from throwing a Molotov cocktail at the local 7-11 when I pass by the newsstand and a headline proclaims, “Photos of Recent Brangelina Baby Bump!” Entertainment programs on TV also use the word ad nauseum. To add insult to injury, even the major Internet news outlets are using the term “baby bump” in their headlines, which confirms what I have believed for a long time: the “news” is not the news anymore. It’s sensationalized fluff.
Having been pregnant twice, I can tell you that both those children were not “bumps.” The first one, who came in at over nine pounds, made me appear as though I were sporting a watermelon. I couldn’t wear gray because I was afraid of being confused for a baby elephant or an aircraft carrier. My first-born spent the entire nine months in utero bouncing around like a Globetrotter and jabbing me in the ribs with his big feet. I was sure I was black and blue on the inside.
I knew my second child was a girl right after amniocentesis, and called her by her given name as soon as I was sure. She wasn’t nearly as large as the first child, nor as active, but she was no “bump.” She was a baby.
The dictionary defines a “bump” as a “slight swelling or lump; a raised or rounded spot, a bulge.” (There’s no definition of “baby bump” except in Urban Dictionary, and even they think it’s an annoying term.) My pregnancies were not of “bump” proportions. No, my babies took over my body like a couple of parasites and blew me up into touring balloon proportions. (Oh, I love them, but please. Pregnancy is no grand promenade in the park complete with white gloves and lacy parasol.) I imagine that is how most pregnant women feel: temporarily invaded by body snatchers. If my two had been mere “bumps,” I might have been persuaded to have a couple more.
To protect the civil rights of the unborn as well as for my own sanity, I’m calling for a unilateral and bipartisan protest of the term “baby bump.” This repugnant term has to be eliminated - the sooner the better.
Article comments
1 - Wanda Rizzuto
Well, seeing as how the people sporting the baby b----s (and the people writing about them) tend to think of children as accessories anyway, what do you expect?
I'd join you in your boycott but I don't think I ever used the term in the first place.
2 - Bennett
That was a fun read, Joanne. I too am mildly annoyed by the term and will not mourn when it passes away in a few years to be replaced by something even more "cheeky".
You're not old, you're pre-pre-old.
3 - Chris Beaumont
I concur with this boycott.
4 - Marcia L. Neil
A 'baby bump' remains midsection after the child is born, barring intense physical exercise, and truly might indicate that more pregnancies are in mind. We're also having some trouble with 'muffin-top' which might be used as slang to indicate the puffy abdominal appearance post-pregnancy.
5 - Kevin Freitas
Add "va-jay-jay" to your word protest list please... Have we lost the ability to speak like adults?
6 - CallmeMaddy
I'm 16, so I don't think of it as an insult. I guess talk to me in ten years?
7 - Melissa
The lingo that makes my skin crawl like nails on a chalk board is "preggers." Not for any moral reason; it's just annoying and not remotely cute.
8 - Lisa
Agreed! But not at all for the same reason. I find the term to sound borderlne obscene, though I can't explain exactly why. It seems like a strange way to refer to a woman's body - and the obsession with women's stomachs, particulrly celebrities, when they are pregnant. There is enough over-sexualization of women's bodies and obsessing with their varying shapes to begin with. And this ugly term is supposed to make it cute and acceptable. It isn't cute at all - it is biology. I have never been impressed with pregnancy to begin with, and now that this ugly term is ubiqitous, I am even more turned off by hearing abut it all the time. The term is pregnat, or pregnancy. Only morons would use "baby bump".