My New Shirt

I always knew Dave and I would refer to our unborn baby as a "parasite," even years ago before we were married. We're just dorky like that. After all the definition of parasite is "An organism that grows, feeds, and is sheltered on or in a different organism while contributing nothing to the survival of its host." If that doesn't say "fetus," then I don't know what does. (Incidentally, my doctor says that a fetus is also like a self-limiting tumor.)

At school I told lots of my friends and colleagues that I wanted to make some funny pregnancy shirts. I looked for some funny ones online but most are either lame or not so funny. The worst one says "birth control is for sissies" and that just makes me mad. That sounds irresponsible to me, as if you are too lazy to use any and just--oops--ended up with yet another kid. I do like those shirts that say "I grow people" and "alien symbiote."

During spring break, my friend/labmate Yumi decided she wanted to do or make something for me and the baby. So our friend Garrett told her about the shirts I wanted. And guess what? She ran straight over to the UC Davis art center and silk screened me a shirt! She was worried that the drawing on it would offend me and that I wouldn't like the shirt. Boy, was she wrong. It is HILARIOUS!
I wore it to our lab meeting yesterday and everyone (my new professor included) just cracked up when I walked in. And during the meeting while we were all trying to talk to a visiting scholar from North Korea who speaks almost no English, we kept trying to ask him where he was born. We wrote "born" so he would know what we were asking and after a few mintues of confusion, another student says "BORN--like that" and points to my stomach. Haha! At that point our foreign friend understood.

I'm sure some people would be offended by this but to them I say "lighten up!" It is a joke and just because I refer to my unborn child as a parasite does not mean that I don't love him very, very much.

Here's the shirt:

She even drew a fetus on my bump:
Yumi has agreed to make me two more shirts so stay tuned for more!