The new social leper #1 - the mum to be

I hate to start my new blog on a whinge, but the most annoying thing about being pregnant (well, perhaps not the most annoying thing, that would be the large bump, being tired all the time, and your body doing and leaking things it really shouldn't) is the way other people treat you. You become public property and a social leper.

A pregnant woman, as my mummy friends also tell me, means that you have now been elevated to the divine status of nurturing the next generation. I quite like this idea, and my bump kicks me regularly to inform me of her importance. However, I feel that I am nurturing MY next generation - and the Boy's - not the wider world's. Despite being in the cosmopolitan city that is HK, and most of the people I know are pretty high powered career people, I seem get as much attention and unsolicited advice as if I was living in a small village community up a hillside in Vietnam.

Amongst the "should you be eating that?", and "should you still be running/rowing/swimming?" is my favourite "should you be wearing high heels?".

It's not just my friends and colleagues. Every baby book I have read seems to tell you that around about 5 months I should be in flat, comfortable, Clarks shoes. Preferably of the horrible black and brown ilk that my Mum used to make me wear to school when I would rather have been wearing a pair of Kickers.

Apparently it has something to do with my sense of balance, or lack of it now, and fear I might fall over. How utterly ridiculous! The most walking I do in this city is when the Boy drops me off each morning at the bottom of the escalator that leads to my office. I can manage to get in and out of a single scull or outrigger canoe, and move the damn things with quite a high degree of balance and poise so I am not sure why high heels are supposed to be a problem. I have been wearing high heels since I left school (being the shortest in my family and the Boy well in excess of 6 feet, I have no option unless I want to look like a dwarf) and the only time I have ever turned an ankle I was in flats.

One my my lovely friends, who is a lover as I am of all things high and spindly that one can place on ones feet, has been happily supporting me (not physically, however) as I continue to totter around HK on the highest heels in my wardrobe. Now, whenever anyone has a sharp intake of breath and asks me whether I should be in heels, I am wide-eyed and innocent and ask them why. So far, no-one has given me a reason.